Customer Reviews

The Silence of the Langford: Essays (And Some Stories)

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I was amazed at how witty these essays are. How did Langford manage to be so creative? I laughed a lot. Langford makes fun of SF as only someone with a clear and through understanding of SF can. Despite his savage wit--boy, can he tear people apart-- he doesn't seem mean-spirited (not that there's anything wrong with a good muck-racking mean-spirited book). He makes fun of Stephen Donaldson, for example, but he doesn't make me personally feel stupid for liking Donaldson and in fact makes me want to go re-read Donaldson so I can re-enjoy the good parts and laugh at the silly parts that Langford pointed out-- silly aspects that in retrospect were there all the time but which I somehow completely failed to notice. I liked that Langford uses a mixture of big SF names (Asimov, McCaffrey, L. Ron Hubbard, etc) and lesser known names to illustrate his points about SF mechanisms and contrivances. He is clear enough that when he talks about authors I don't know then I still understand the points he's making and find him amusing, and I do like hearing about new authors, but I think I would have lost interest if he never spoke about books that I know. His comments have added interest when I can fit them in with my own knowledge of SF.