Up Through an Empty House of Stars: Reviews and Essays, 1980-2002

by David Langford

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. Com

Genres: Science

312 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

About the author

British science-fiction author, editor and critic. He publishes the newsletter Ansible.

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/535400.html[return][return]When I grow up I want to be David Langford. I think his "Critical Mass" column in White Dwarf must have been the first regular sf review column I read, over twenty years ago now; I have fond memories also of his just-about-non-sf novel The Leaky Establishment. This volume brings together his own selection of his favourite reviews from the years in question. Some of them - perhaps even all of them - are archived on his website, but there's nothing quite like the printed page for riffling back and forth to find favourite bits.[return][return]Not all of the reviews are of sf; Dave has a great familiarity with the classic detective novel, and as well as reviewing several examples of that genre, spots homages to Dorothy L. Sayers in Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign that had quite passed me by. Not all the pieces are reviews: there are lovely obituaries of people I had heard of, like Bob Shaw, and people I hadn't, like George Hay. There are pieces on Terry Pratchett (not on-line) and Tom Holt. There is much about the merits (well-known) of Gene Wolfe and Stephen Baxter, and also (less well-known) Jack Chalker and James White.[return][return]And it's all a joy to read. Dave possibly finds it easier to write at length about books that he didn't like than ones he did - see for instance his take-downs of Heinlein's The Number of the Beast and David Wingrove's The Science Fiction Sourcebook (which I've reviewed more positively - having said which, I think Dave's exposition of the book's flaws is masterly). There are great one-liners like his adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from an ad-hoc plot device".[return][return]I winced a bit at the