Author

David Langford

David Langford (1953 - )

David Langford was born in 1953, took an honours degree in physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, worked for several years as a nuclear weapons physicist with the Ministry of Defence, and since 1980 has been a freelance author and editor. He is married, with a happy absence of children, and lives in Reading, Berkshire.

His published books include War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology (nonfiction), An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871 (non-fact UFO spoof), The Space Eater (a science fiction novel), The Leaky Establishment (comedy about nuclear weaponry, reissued in 2001 with an appreciative introduction by Terry Pratchett), Earthdoom! (farcical disaster novel written with John Grant), The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (SF parody collection), The Silence of the Langford (articles, essays and speeches), and The SEX Column (SFX magazine columns). A fuller list appears on his website at www.ansible.co.uk.

Langford has received many awards for his writing and SF journalism, including British Science Fiction Association Awards for both short fiction and nonfiction, and - twenty-nine times as of 2013 - science fiction's top prize, the Hugo Award.

His association with Terry Pratchett goes back to the early years of Discworld. In 1985 he described The Colour of Magic in his regular White Dwarf book review column as 'one of those horrible, antisocial books which impel the reader to buttonhole friends and quote bits at them.' As a freelance editor, Langford wrote the reader's report recommending Gollancz's publication of Equal Rites, and worked on full-length Discworld novels from the fourth, Mort (1987), to the 2005 Thud!. As a contributor to reference books, he has analysed Pratchett in David Pringle's St James Guide to Fantasy and The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, in the multiple award-winning The Encyclopedia of Fantasy edited by John Clute and John Grant, in his text commentary for Josh Kirby's art book A Cosmic Cornucopia, in an introduction to the millennial collection of academic studies Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature edited by Andrew M. Butler, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, and in the again multi-award-winning third edition of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by himself, John Clute and others.

Langford had probably been fated to write the first official Discworld quizbook The Unseen University Challenge (1996) ever since the 1980s conversation in which he said, 'I know where the name Rincewind comes from ...' and Terry Pratc