David Langford

His novelette An Account of a Meeting with Denizens of Another World, 1871, published in 1979, is an account of a UFO encounter, as experienced by a Victorian; in its framing story Langford claims to have found the manuscript in an old desk (the story's narrator, William Robert Loosley, is a genuine ancestor of Langford's wife) and he analyses the story from a modern perspective, highlighting apparent descriptions of nuclear physics and quantum mechanics in Loosley's record.

This has led some UFOlogists to believe the story is genuine, including the US author Whitley Strieber, who referred to the 1871 incident in his novel Majestic.

Langford wrote the story as a spoof at the suggestion of his publisher and says that since publication he has always admitted the story to be fictional when asked — but, as he notes, "Journalists usually didn't ask."

David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field.

He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins.

David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Wales, before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford, where he first became involved in science fiction fandom.

Langford is married to Hazel and is the brother of the musician and artist Jon Langford.

His first job was as a weapons physicist at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire from 1975 to 1980.

Langford also had one serious science fiction novel published in 1982, The Space Eater.

Langford wrote the science fiction and fantasy book review column for White Dwarf from 1983 to 1988, continuing in other British role-playing game magazines until 1991; the columns are collected as The Complete Critical Assembly (2001).

The 1984 novel The Leaky Establishment satirises the author's experiences at Aldermaston.

In 1985 he set up a "tiny and informally run software company" with science fiction writer Christopher Priest, called Ansible Information after Langford's news-sheet.

The company has ceased trading.

Langford has worn a hearing aid since childhood, and increasing hearing difficulties have reduced Langford's participation in some fan activities.

Langford's 1985–1988 "The Disinformation Column" for Apricot File was about Apricot Computers systems; these columns are collected as The Apricot Files (2007).

This column ran, though not continuously, from the first issue in October 1986 to the last, dated Christmas 1996; it was revived in the small-press magazine PCW Today from 1997 to 2002, and all the columns are collected as The Limbo Files (2009).

The first of these stories was "BLIT" (Interzone, 1988); others include "What Happened at Cambridge IV" (Digital Dreams, 1990); "comp.basilisk FAQ", and the Hugo-winning "Different Kinds of Darkness" (F&SF, 2000).

The idea has appeared elsewhere; in one of his novels, Ken MacLeod has characters explicitly mention (and worry about encountering) the "Langford Visual Hack".

Similar references, also mentioning Langford by name, feature in works by Greg Egan and Charles Stross.

The eponymous Snow Crash of Neal Stephenson's novel is a combination mental/computer virus capable of infecting the minds of hackers via their visual cortex.

The idea also appears in Blindsight by Peter Watts where a particular combination of right angles is a harmful image to vampires.

The roleplaying game Eclipse Phase has so-called "Basilisk hacks", sensory or linguistic attacks on cognitive processes.

The concept of a "cognitohazard", largely identical to Langford's basilisks, is sometimes used in the fictional universe of the SCP Foundation.

The image's name comes from the basilisk, a legendary reptile said to have the power to cause death with a single glance.

Langford has won numerous Hugo Awards for his activities as a fan journalist on his free newsletter Ansible, which he has described as "The SF Private Eye. The name is taken from Ursula K. Le Guin's science-fictional communication device. The newsletter first appeared in August 1979. Fifty issues were published by 1987, when it entered a hiatus. Since resuming publication in 1991, Ansible has appeared monthly (with occasional extra issues given "half" numbers, e.g. Ansible 531⁄2) as a two-sided A4 sheet and latterly also online. A digest has appeared as the "Ansible Link" column in Interzone since issue 62, August 1992. The complete archive of Ansible is available at Langford's personal website. Ansible issue 300 was published on 2 July 2012.

Ansible has for many years advertised that paper copies are available for various unlikely items such as "SAE, Fwai-chi shags or Rhune Books of Deeds".

A collection of nonfiction and humorous work, Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man, was published in 1992 by NESFA Press.

He has also written a regular column for SFX magazine, featuring in every issue from its launch in 1995 to #274 dated July 2016.

In 1996, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote: "Tell me what I can send in exchange for Ansible. In Oregon we grow many large fir trees; also we have fish."

This was incorporated into a follow-up collection, consisting of 47 nonfiction pieces and three short stories, and published as The Silence of the Langford in 1996.

His own jocular attitude towards the matter led to a 2003 chapbook anthology of his work being titled Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man.

As a writer of fiction, Langford is noted for his parodies.

A collection of short stories, parodying various science fiction, fantasy fiction and detective story writers has been published as He Do the Time Police in Different Voices (2003, incorporating the earlier and much shorter 1988 parody collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two).

Two novels, parodying disaster novels and horror, respectively, are Earthdoom! and Guts, both co-written with John Grant.

Up Through an Empty House of Stars (2003) is a further collection of one hundred reviews and essays.

His 2004 collection Different Kinds of Darkness is a compilation of 36 of his shorter, non-parodic science fiction pieces, the title story of which won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2001.

A number of Langford's stories are set in a future containing images, colloquially called "basilisks", which crash the human mind by triggering thoughts that the mind is physically or logically incapable of thinking.

A tenth-anniversary collection of these columns appeared in 2005 as The SEX Column and other misprints; this was shortlisted for a 2006 Hugo Award for Best Related Book.

Further SFX columns are collected in Starcombing: columns, essays, reviews and more (2009), which also includes much other material written since 2000.

David Langford has also written columns for several computer magazines, notably 8000 Plus (later renamed PCW Plus), which was devoted to the Amstrad PCW word processor.