Fiction As a writer of fiction, Langford is noted for his
parodies. A collection of short stories, parodying various
science fiction,
fantasy fiction and
detective story writers, has been published as
He Do the Time Police in Different Voices (2003), incorporating the earlier and much shorter 1988 parody collection ''The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
. and Guts'', both co-written with
John Grant. 2005 in
Glasgow, with two
Hugo Awards His novelette
An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871, published in 1979, is an account of a
UFO encounter, as experienced by a
Victorian; in its
framing story Langford claims to have found the manuscript in an old desk (the story's narrator, William Robert Loosley, is a genuine ancestor of Langford's wife) and he analyses the story from a modern perspective, highlighting apparent descriptions of
nuclear physics and
quantum mechanics in Loosley's record. and says that since publication he has always admitted the story to be fictional when asked — but, as he notes, "Journalists usually didn't ask." Langford also had one serious science fiction novel published in 1982,
The Space Eater. The 1984 novel
The Leaky Establishment satirises the author's experiences at Aldermaston. His 2004 collection
Different Kinds of Darkness is a compilation of 36 of his shorter, non-parodic science fiction pieces, the title story of which won the
Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2001.
Basilisks A number of Langford's stories are set in a future containing images, colloquially called "basilisks", which
crash the human mind by triggering thoughts that the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking. The first of these stories was "
BLIT" (
Interzone, 1988); others include "What Happened at Cambridge IV" (
Digital Dreams, 1990); "comp.basilisk FAQ", and the
Hugo-winning "Different Kinds of Darkness" (
F&SF, 2000). The idea has appeared elsewhere; in one of his novels,
Ken MacLeod has characters explicitly mention (and worry about encountering) the "Langford Visual Hack". Similar references, also mentioning Langford by name, feature in works by
Greg Egan for his activities as a fan journalist on his free
newsletter Ansible, which he has described as "The SF
Private Eye. The name is taken from
Ursula K. Le Guin's
science-fictional communication device. The newsletter first appeared in August 1979. Fifty issues were published by 1987, when it entered a hiatus. Since resuming publication in October 1991,
Ansible has appeared monthly (with occasional extra issues given "half" numbers, e.g.
Ansible 53) as a two-sided A4 sheet and latterly also online. A digest appeared as the "Ansible Link" column in
Interzone from issue 62, August 1992, to issue 295, September 2022. The complete archive of
Ansible is available at Langford's personal website.
Ansible issue 450 was published on 2 January 2025.
Ansible has for many years advertised that paper copies are available for various unlikely items such as "SAE, Fwai-chi shags or Rhune Books of Deeds". In 1996,
Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: "Tell me what I can send in exchange for
Ansible. In Oregon we grow many large fir trees; also we have fish." Langford wrote the science fiction and fantasy book review column for
White Dwarf from 1983 to 1988, continuing in other British
role-playing game magazines until 1991; the columns are collected as
The Complete Critical Assembly (2001). He has also written a regular column for the magazine
SFX, featuring in every issue from its launch in 1995 to #274 dated July 2016. A tenth-anniversary collection of these columns appeared in 2005 as
The SEX Column and other misprints; this was shortlisted for a 2006
Hugo Award for Best Related Book. Further
SFX columns are collected in
Starcombing: columns, essays, reviews and more (2009), which also includes much other material written since 2000, and
All Good Things: The Last SFX Visions (2017). David Langford has also written columns for several computer magazines, notably
8000 Plus (later renamed
PCW Plus), which was devoted to the
Amstrad PCW word processor. This column ran, though not continuously, from the first issue in October 1986 to the last, dated Christmas 1996; it was revived in the small-press magazine
PCW Today from 1997 to 2002, and all the columns are collected as
The Limbo Files (2009). Langford's 1985–1988 "The Disinformation Column" for
Apricot File was about
Apricot Computers systems; these columns are collected as
The Apricot Files (2007). A collection of nonfiction and humorous work, ''Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man
, was published in 1992 by NESFA Press. This was incorporated into a follow-up collection, consisting of 47 nonfiction pieces and three short stories, and published as The Silence of the Langford
in 1996. Up Through an Empty House of Stars'' (2003) is a further collection of one hundred reviews and essays. Much of Langford's early book-length publication was futurological in nature.
War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology, published in 1979, and
The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000 (1985), jointly written with fellow science fiction author
Brian Stableford, are two examples. Both these authors also worked with
Peter Nicholls on
The Science in Science Fiction (1982). Within the broader field of popular non-fiction, Langford co-wrote
Facts and Fallacies: a Book of Definitive Mistakes and Misguided Predictions (1984) with Chris Morgan. Langford assisted in producing the second edition of
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) and contributed some 80,000 words of articles to
The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997). He was one of the four chief editors of the third, online edition of
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (launched October 2011), and shared this reference work's 2012
Hugo Award for Best Related Work. The fourth edition (launched October 2021) is closely similar in appearance but with a change of web host and two chief editors,
John Clute and Langford. He has also edited a book of
John Sladek's uncollected work, published in 2002 as
Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek. Langford's critical introduction to
Maps won a
BSFA Award for nonfiction. With
Christopher Priest, Langford also set up Ansible E-ditions (now
Ansible Editions) which publishes other
print-on-demand collections of short stories by Sladek and
David I. Masson; essays and review columns by
Brian Aldiss,
Algis Budrys,
Peter Nicholls and again Sladek; and ebooks of historical interest to
science fiction fandom, downloadable at no charge from the
Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site. Excluding collections, Langford's most recent professionally published book is
The End of Harry Potter? (2006), an unauthorised companion to the famous series by
J. K. Rowling. The work was published after the publication of the sixth volume in the
Harry Potter series, but before publication of the seventh and final volume. It contains information, extracted from the books and from Rowling's many public statements, about the
wizarding world and popular theories concerning how the plot will develop in the last book. A revised version was published in the US in March 2007 by
Tor Books, and in paperback form in the UK in May 2007. The book was commissioned from Langford by
Malcolm Edwards of
Orion Books, who were seeking a book about the Harry Potter series. Since 2011 he has devoted most of his time to
Ansible, Ansible Editions and
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. He has been a guest of honour at
Boskone,
Eastercon twice,
Finncon,
Microcon three times,
Minicon (see
List of past Minicons),
Novacon,
OryCon twice,
Picocon several times, and
Worldcon (see
List of Worldcons). ==Awards==