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Overview
A major fiction collection from multiple Hugo Award winner David Langford, Different Kinds of Darkness complements his parody assortment He Do the Time Police in Different Voices. Besides the acclaimed, Hugo-winning title piece and its influential prequels, the 36 stories include the British SF Association Award winner "Cube Root", and eight "Year's Best" and "Best Of" anthology choices. SF, fantasy, horror, and unclassifiable Langford weirdness ranging from 1975 to 2003.Synopsis
A major fiction collection from multiple Hugo Award winner David Langford, Different Kinds of Darkness complements his parody assortment He Do the Time Police in Different Voices. Besides the acclaimed, Hugo-winning title piece and its influential prequels, the 36 stories include the British SF Association Award winner "Cube Root", and eight "Year's Best" and "Best Of" anthology choices. SF, fantasy, horror, and unclassifiable Langford weirdness ranging from 1975 to 2003.
Publishers Weekly
Even the most serious of these 36 tales of fantasy, horror and science fiction are charged with a subversive wit and spirit of playfulness that show Langford's determination to turn genre clich s on their heads. "Cube Root" plays out as a standard post-apocalyptic scenario about the breakdown of social order following a nuclear strike-until the soldiers whose eyes it is seen through discover the disaster was faked, and that they're possibly part of a behavioral study. In "The Motivation," pictures discovered in a pornographer's stash point to a mystery whose solution provides its own peculiar titillation. A physicist by profession, Langford (He Do the Time Police in Different Voices) laces his stories with teasing references to particle theory, fractals and higher mathematics, and often finds ingenious fictional analogs for them, as in "Waiting for the Iron Age," in which the immortal Wandering Jew offers a brief meditation on quantum physics and the inevitable entropic decline of a world he'll outlast. The author is particularly fond of closed-room mysteries, which he wreaks variations on with the vigor of a math prodigy unraveling insoluble theorems. Vampires, Lovecraftian horrors and virtual reality simulations all make appearances, but Langford's deft and clever touch makes them seem refreshingly original themes. (June) Forecast: The title story won a Hugo Award, of which Langford has won a total of 23, most for his writing in Ansible, his highly intelligent and amusing SF fanzine. Since Cosmos Books has little bookstore presence, word-of-mouth among SF fandom will largely fuel sales. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.