The Silence of the Langford by David Langford is a collection of 47 nonfiction pieces from SF fanzines and other sources, mostly humorous and/or critical about SF and the SF scene, with three comic stories and a bibliography thrown in for luck. There is an introduction by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Silence incorporates almost the entire contents of Let's Hear it for the Deaf Man, an earlier NESFA Press Langford collection issued in fanzine format in 1992. Publication Date: September 1996 (Reprinted with slight corrections, December 1997) Publisher: NESFA Press, Massachusetts, USA Format: B-format paperback ISBN: 0915368625 Page Count: 278 Cover Artist: design by Anthony R. Lewis, photo by John D. Rickett Availability: NESFA Press • Amazon.com • From David Langford (in UK only) Reviews

Contents
• The Dragonhiker's Guide To Battlefield Covenant At Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (speech at Seacon '84; Xyster 5 ed. Dave Wood, 1984)
• Untrue Names (Conspiracy '87 Programme Book, 1987)
• Contrivances (Contrivance Programme Book, 1989)
• What Are They Doing In There? (Rastus Johnson's Cakewalk 4 ed. Greg Pickersgill, 1994)
• This Does Not Compute (columns in 8000 Plus, later PCW Plus, 1988-91)
  • 100 Years Ago (April 1989)
  • Nebulous Statistics (March and May 1989)
  • Hack's Quest (January 1991)
  • Misleading Cases (December 1988)
  • Another Useful Review (August 1988)
• Trillion Year Sneer (speech at Conspiracy '87; Xyster 13, 1987)
• Follies Of '88 (Pulp 11 ed. Avedon Carol, Rob Hansen, John Harvey & Vincent Clarke, 1988)
• Endless Loops (Pulp 12 ed. Avedon Carol, Rob Hansen, John Harvey & Vincent Clarke, 1989)
• Some Informal Remarks Toward The Punctuational Calculus (opening ceremony remarks at Orycon 11; Diolch Yn Fawr ed. David Langford, 1989)
• Fun With Senseless Violence (speech at Orycon 11; Diolch Yn Fawr ed. David Langford, 1989)
• Best Foot Forward (8000 Plus, 1988; revised Interzone 35 ed. David Pringle, 1990)
• Ansible Review Of The Year (speech at Conspiracy '87; Pulp 6 ed. Avedon Carol, Rob Hansen, John Harvey & Vincent Clarke, 1987)
• Somewhere Near Penrhyndeudraeth (Science Fiction Five-Yearly 8 ed. Lee Hoffman with Patrick & Teresa Nielsen Hayden, 1986)
• Hugos And Critical Mass (ConFiction Program Book, 1990)
• The Moving Accident (Cloud Chamber 13 & 17 ed. David Langford, 1982)
• The Leaky Establishment: The Final Drips (speech at Novacon 14; Xyster 8, 1985)
• Fizz! Buzz! (Trapdoor 6 ed. Robert Lichtman, 1986)
• Slightly Foxed: The Million Columns (columns in Million: The Magazine of Popular Fiction ed. David Pringle, 1991-1993)
  1. Thud & Blunder
  2. Banned in New York
  3. Bound & Gagged
  4. The Worst Crime in the World
  5. Ancient Images
  6. The Reader Is Warned
  7. On the Twilight Edge
  8. Gorey Stories
  9. The Rest of Chesterton
  10. Notes & Queries
  11. The Missing Bits
  12. Owl Stuffing Time
• Me And Whitley And The Continuum (revised from Sglodion 2 ed. David Langford, 1990)
• Tell Me The Old, Old Story (speech at Boskone 29; Quantum 42 ed. Doug Fratz, 1992)
• Foodies Of The Gods (speech at Helicon; New York Review of SF 58 ed. Donald G. Keller and others, 1993)
• You Do It With Mirrors (Mimosa 14 ed. Dick & Nicki Lynch, 1993)
• The Great Con (The Caprician 3 ed. Lilian Edwards & Christina Lake, 1988)
• "The Arts Of The Enemy" (fiction -- Villains! "created by" Mary Gentle & Neil Gaiman, ed. Mary Gentle & Roz Kaveney, 1992)
• Wisdom Of The Ancients (Focus 15 ed. Liz Holliday, 1988; revised Australian SF Review 20 ed. Jenny Blackford, Russell Blackford, John Foyster, Yvonne Rousseau & Janeen Webb, 1989)
• "Leaks" (fiction -- Temps "devised by" Neil Gaiman & Alex Stewart, 1991)
• "If Looks Could Kill" (fiction -- Eurotemps "devised by" Alex Stewart & Neil Gaiman, ed. Alex Stewart, 1992)
• Lies, Damned Lies And Ansible
  • Obituary, 1979-1987 (Sglodion 1 ed. David Langford, 1989)
  • The Ansible Review of the Year: 1992 (Helicon Programme Book, 1993)
  • The Ansible Moose of the Year: 1994 (Confabulation Programme Book, 1994)
  • Ansible Hyperlink (Interzone 94 ed. Charles Platt, 1995)
• What the Black Holes Foretell (Nexus 3 ed. Paul Brazier, 1993)
• Our Lady Of Pain (Chuch ed. Avedon Carol & Rob Hansen, 1986)
• Highballs! (New York Review of SF 8, 1989, as "On High"; slightly revised Vector 152, 1989)
• Inside Outside (New Worlds 4 ed. David Garnett, 1994)
• Bio-Bibliography
  • Langford In Exactly 100 Words
  • Books and Chapbooks
  • Short Stories
  • Regular Columns and Miscellaneous
  • Selected Fanzines

Reviews

Ursula Le Guin, letter, May 1997

I am having a lovely time with The Silence of the Langford. I've been working on a little book for people who write but who have not realised that, basically, writing involves being able to read, & I wish I could steal some of your more elegant autopsies of dead prose as awful examples, the way farmers tack up coyote skins on the barn wall....

Tom Easton, Analog, April 1997

In 1992, NESFA published some of his material in a mimeographed chapbook, Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man. Now the same outfit offers us The Silence of the Langford. There's some overlap, but most of the book is newly collected. And it made me howl and snicker and snort, so I suspect it will you, too.

Especially if you enjoy book reviewers who first cosh their targets with lead-weighted baseball bats and then dance prolonged tarantellas on the corpses. The hatchet job done with manic verve, wit, and glee is a great deal of fun to commit as well as to read (except for the target), and I have been known on occasion to commit it (and to enjoy doing so). Perhaps very few books other than L. Ron Hubbard's final abominations really deserve such treatment, a thought that reins me in much more than it does Langford, but a witty hatchet job is still fun.

Gregory Feeley, Washington Post, 1 September 1996

British writer Dave Langford is the best and funniest sf journalist now working, as well as an extremely good short story writer, whose work is too little known in this country. The Silence of the Langford (NESFA Press, PO Box 809, Framingham, Mass. 01701-0203, $15) goes some way to remedying this, as it gathers a generous sampling of his articles, reviews and speeches, along with several welcome stories. The nonfiction is for a slightly specialized audience -- you have to know at least a bit about science fiction to understand why the last volume of Stephen Donaldson's Covenant trilogy "is so deviously complex, the book should have been called `Tinker, Tailor, Leper, Spy' " -- but the stories can be enjoyed by everyone. "Leaks," which has never previously been published in this country, is one of the funniest things I have read in years: It deals with a bibulous British superhero on retainer to an ill-paying state agency, who is cursed with an especially useless superpower.