ISBN 978-1-913451-15-8 (ebook)
Cover
Ansible Editions, June 2017
Cover photo: ESA/Hubble and NASA, Djorgovski 1 globular cluster
Ebook edition only, published June 2017. Since expanded with five further articles and some index corrections, most recently in December 2024. Over 265,000 words.
Short Shrift collects the short book reviews perpetrated by the famously witty David Langford over a span of more than 40 years and not included in his past nonfiction compilations. Sources include his own fanzines, such publications as Ad Astra, Computer Weekly, Extro, Foundation, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (“Curiosities” columns), New Scientist, The New York Review of Science Fiction, SFX, The Skeptic, Starburst and Vector – plus the dread Amazon.co.uk, for which Langford wrote hundreds of commissioned reviews. Besides book notices there’s also a sprinkling of bonus items such as spoof reviews, brief essays and a few shorter obituaries. Some of the material is published here for the first time.
Short Shrift is an Ansible Editions ebook original first published in June 2017. No print edition is planned. The contents page lists more than 650 items, some being multiple review roundups; there are well over 800 book reviews in all, not counting the complete runs of Guardian and Sunday Telegraph SF columns relegated to appendices. There are three indexes: of authors, of book titles, and of the titles of the included columns, essays, obituaries, etc.
Click the first button below to read the Introduction.
