HB ISBN 1-59224-054-2 ($34.95)
TP ISBN 1-59224-055-0 ($21.95)
At last, Up Through an Empty House of Stars brings together
the best of the never before collected SF reviews and articles that helped
build David Langford's towering reputation since 1980. Complementing the
review columns collected in The Complete Critical Assembly and
the knockabout essays and squibs in The Silence of the Langford,
this volume's 100 glittering selections mix serious critical insight with
the inimitable Langford wit. In 2002 David Langford won his sixteenth
Hugo award as Best Fan Writer, for critical and humorous commentary on
SF. In the same year his occasionally scandalous SF newsletter _Ansible_
won its fifth Hugo. Langford also received the 2001 Hugo for best short
story, and the 2002 Skylark Award. Here he shines a unique light on classics
like Ernest Bramah, G.K. Chesterton, Robert Heinlein and Jack Vance, and
analyses major SF -- and major clunkers, and minor eccentrics -- of the
1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, continuing to the latest by such current
stars as Gene Wolfe and China Mieville. Plus witty asides on crime fiction
and its SF links, gleeful examination of writing so bad it's almost good,
and (even at his most serious) turns of phrase to make you laugh aloud.