The Complete Critical Assembly by David Langford collects his 101 sf/fantasy book review columns written for the British games magazines White Dwarf, GM and GMI from 1983 to 1992. These were previously collected in two volumes published by Ansible Information, Critical Assembly (1987) and Critical Assembly II (1992). As the blurb written for Amazon puts it: Crammed with critical insights and acerbic wit, the "Critical Mass" -- later "Critical Hits" -- column was notoriously the first page turned to by White Dwarf readers, and it brings Langford appreciative fan mail to this day. Read the whole sequence and learn how to acquire 22 Hugos.... "Absolute models of what brief fiction reviews should be." -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books. Publication Date: October 2002 Publisher: Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press), USA Format: Trade paperback ISBN: 1587153300 Page Count: 335 Cover Artist: Lauren Halkon Availability: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com Reviews Publication Date: April 2001 Publisher: Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press), USA Format: Hardback without jacket ISBN: 158715398X Page Count: 335 Cover Artist: none Availability: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com Reviews

Adam Roberts, The Alien Online, May 2003 [in passing, while reviewing Up Through An Empty House of Stars]

Anybody interested in recent sf would do better reading the Complete Critical Assembly and Up Through An Empty House of Stars than any of the literary critical histories of the genre currently available.