May 02, 2012

Langford, David

Tagged: Author | Editor | Fan | Critic

(1953-    ) UK writer, critic, editor and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996) edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos and one Semiprozine Hugo for his self-produced news magazine, Ansible. His one fiction Hugo is for "Different Kinds of Darkness" (January 2000 F&SF) as best short story.

Langford began to publish sf professionally with "Heatwave" for New Writings in SF 27 (anth 1975) edited by Kenneth Bulmer. His first book-length fiction, An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871 (1979) as by William Robert Loosley and edited with commentary by Langford, centres on a spoof nineteenth-century report of a Close Encounter; its main narrative was summarized as if factual, without permission or payment, by Whitley Strieber in his "fiction based on fact", Majestic (1989). In Langford's one serious novel, The Space Eater (1982), emissaries from a devastated Earth are sent by a highly unpleasant form of Matter Transmission to a distant colony planet, where they must persuade the local military not to endanger the fabric of the Universe; there is some satire on Military SF. The Leaky Establishment (1984), borderline sf, hilariously examines a crisis involving lost nuclear warheads at what many readers have assumed is what was then the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston (where Langford, who has an MA in physics, worked 1975-1980). In Earthdoom! (1987) with John Grant, a Parody of the Disaster-novel genre and of countless sf Clichés, a multitude of catastrophes afflicts the world, more or less simultaneously. The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (coll 1988) assembles parodies of sf and fantasy writers; its contents were incorporated into the much more substantial Parody and pastiche collection He Do the Time Police in Different Voices (coll 2003).

Though much of his short fiction is entirely serious, Langford was long best known for the witty and ironic humour of his fan writing – first effectively distilled in the fanzine Twll-Ddu (1976-1983) – his numerous magazine columns, and most of his full-length fiction, although it is sometimes over-broad. Columns currently appear in Interzone – "Ansible Link", a digest of Ansible news, published since 1992 – and SFX, comprising general sf commentary and humour in every issue since the magazine's launch in 1995. A tenth-anniversary collection of the latter is The SEX Column and other misprints (coll 2005); further SFX columns appear amid much other material in Starcombing (coll 2009).

An early "nonfiction" book appearance is in The Necronomicon (anth 1978) edited by George Hay, Langford's contribution being to construct a hoax history of Computer decipherment of the eponymous "lost occult text" invented by H P Lovecraft but in this book supposedly known to and enciphered by John Dee. Langford has also written, often in collaboration, a variety of nonfiction texts of sf interest, all imaginatively conceived and soundly based: War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology (1979), Facts and Fallacies: A Book of Definitive Mistakes and Misguided Predictions (1981) with Chris Morgan, The Science in Science Fiction (1982) with Peter Nicholls and Brian Stableford, Micromania: The Whole Truth about Home Computers (1984) with Charles Platt, and The Third Millennium (A History of the World: AD 2000-3000) (1985) with Brian Stableford. His introduction to the posthumous John Sladek collection Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (coll 2002), edited by Langford, won a BSFA Award for nonfiction. Though still producing occasional stories, Langford now devotes most of his time to nonfiction projects including the present encyclopedia. [JC/NT/DRL]

see also: Anthropology; Black Holes; Cosmology; Eastercon; Fan Funds; Games Workshop; Genetic Engineering; Humour; Hyperspace; Immortality; The Infinite Matrix; Loch Ness Monster; New Writings in SF; Prediction; Pseudoscience; Skylark Award; Tuckerisms; UFOs; Upload; Utopias; Wandering Jew; Weapons; White Holes; Worldcon.

David Rowland Langford

born Newport, Monmouthshire: 10 April 1953

died

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nonfiction

nonfiction collections

works as editor

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