Dr Malcolm Snafu

Founder, Snafu Research Ltd. (1982 – 1986 / 2025 – present*)

Dr Malcolm Snafu (1947 – 1993) was a computer engineer, dream archivist and accidental futurist whose experiments with data, memory and motion briefly bent the rules of physics — and occasionally, common sense.

After leaving an unspecified Cambridge laboratory, he founded Snafu Research Ltd. in 1982 with a manifesto scrawled across a whiteboard: “We make machines that remember the future.”

From a dimly lit industrial unit between Cambridge and Trancentral, Snafu and a handful of believers produced a range of impossible devices: the ZX Mirage, capable of rendering images that existed only in the viewer’s mind; the Snafu Spectrum+, which crashed only when it doubted itself; and the Data Cassette Reintegration System, alleged to store dreams on ordinary BASF C60 tapes.

His colleagues described him as “calmly chaotic,” equally at ease explaining quantum logic or wiring cassette decks in series “to capture the silence between the bytes.”

In 1993, while testing an ION Engine Backpack — intended to make personal computing truly portable — Snafu was reportedly propelled into the upper atmosphere. Eyewitnesses recall a flash of green light, a trail of ozone, and the faint sound of a dial-up handshake fading into the clouds. His body was never recovered.

In 2025, fragments of his archives and prototypes resurfaced, prompting the re-establishment of Snafu Research as the publisher of The KLF Adventure and custodian of Snafu’s peculiar legacy.

“Innovation is a loop. The moment you think you’ve moved forward, check behind you — someone’s already there.”
— Dr Malcolm Snafu, 1983

*Snafu Research Ltd. was formally re-registered in 2025 by persons unknown.