The Silence of the Langford

Cover photo (DRL, Real Ale, presumably, & Ansible 70, May 1993) John D. Rickett, design Anthony R. Lewis. The NESFA edition had the photo only partly covered by white diagonal "A new book incorporating Let's Hear / It for the Deaf Man by Hugo-Award-win- / ning author Dave Langford", and the name bottom left was given with Dave in smaller letters so as not to interfere with it. Dragons, of course, symbolise author's native Wales.

The Silence of the Langford (also subtitled Essays (And Some Stories)), a NESFA Press collection of fanwriting by Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow (and Anthony R. Lewis), was published in August 1996 as a 278pp trade paperback. This was significantly expanded from the 1992 mimeographed chapbook Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man with the same publisher and editor Yalow. Silence, as reissued with slight corrections in December 1997, is still available from NESFA Press. A further expanded ebook edition was released by Langford's small press Ansible Editions in 2015 with a slightly modified cover (shown here).

As noted on the new cover, The Silence was a 1997 Best Non-Fiction Book Hugo finalist; it ended up fourth but Langford decisively won the Best Fan Writer Hugo, as was usual at those times.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
• The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
• Untrue Names
• Contrivances
• What Are They Doing in There?
• This Does Not Compute (columns from 8000 Plus / PCW Plus, 1988–91)
  • 100 Years Ago
  • Nebulous Statistics
  • Hack's Quest
  • Misleading Cases
  • Another Useful Review
• Trillion Year Sneer
• Follies of '88
• Endless Loops
• Some Informal Remarks toward the Punctuational Calculus
• Fun with Senseless Violence
• Best Foot Forward
• Ansible Review of the Year
• Somewhere near Penrhyndeudraeth
• Hugos and Critical Mass
• The Moving Accident
• The Leaky Establishment: The Final Drips
• Fizz! Buzz!

Slightly Foxed: The Million Columns

• 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
• Tell Me the Old, Old Story
• Foodies of the Gods
• You Do It with Mirrors
• The Great Con
• The Arts of the Enemy [story]
• Wisdom of the Ancients
• Leaks [story]
• If Looks Could Kill [story]

Lies, Damned Lies and Ansible

• Obituary, 1979-1987
• The Ansible Review of the Year: 1992
• The Ansible Moose of the Year: 1994
• Ansible Hyperlink

[Further articles and information]

• What the Black Holes Foretell
• Our Lady of Pain
• Highballs!
• Inside Outside
• Bio-Bibliography
• Original Appearances
• Back Cover Blurbs

Platen Stories: Extras [added in the ebook version]

• The Book of War: Chapter 2080
• One Hundred Years Ago [Channelcon Programme Book 1982, not to be confused with the PCW "100 Years Ago"]
• The Inverted Baked Alaska, and After
• The Yellow Peril and other clerihews [mostly from “The Woodwind Lyre” in TAFF-Ddu alias Twll-Ddu 17, March 1980; one from Platen Stories, August 1987]
• A Load of Crystal Balls

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• https://www.nesfa.org/book/the-silence-of-the-langford/ ISBN 0-915368-62-5 with original cover, details, blurbish "Praise — and other things — for David Langford", and excerpt Ansible Review of the Year
• https://ae.ansible.uk/?t=silence ISBN 978-1-913451-14-1
  • https://ansible.uk/books/silence.html – page for the 1996/7 ed. with detailed contents/bibliography of original appearances and Reviews

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Publication

1996

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