All Good Things

The Last SFX Visions

David Langford

ISBN 978-1-916508-06-4 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-916508-14-9 (trade paperback)

Ansible Editions, 2023
Cover artwork by Arthur (Atom) Thomson, 1969

The previous Langford SFX column collections The SEX Column and Starcombing are also available as ebooks: see links at left.

Expanded ebook edition published 1 June 2023. Trade paperback published September 2023.

All Good Things: The Last SFX Visions is the third and final collection of David Langford’s popular columns for SFX magazine, first published by NewCon Press/Steel Quill in 2017. Besides the uncollected columns, that edition included a generous helping of articles and reviews from The New York Review of Science Fiction and elsewhere for a total of 100 pieces. This ebook is further expanded with a few post-2017 bonus items and a complete listing of the whole run of Langford SFX columns and features. Over 80,000 words.

“In British fandom Dave Langford is regarded as a national treasure.” – Christopher Priest.

“Wit, slightly deaf person, raconteur and finest swordsman in all of Christendom.” – Terry Pratchett.

From the Introduction: A little back-story. The first 128 columns, from June 1995 to March 2005, were assembled – with several special features also written for SFX – as The SEX Column and Other Misprints (Cosmos Books, 2005; Ansible Editions ebook, 2016); the title alludes to the perennial practice of laying out the magazine’s front cover with some actor’s head obscuring part of the title’s F and thus making it hilariously ambiguous. Columns 129 to 183 – April 2005 to June 2009 – were then collected along with a mass of other recent Langford nonfiction as Starcombing (Cosmos Books, 2009; Ansible Editions ebook 2016). Earlier, mostly non-SFX, critical efforts had already appeared in the big retrospective volume Up Through an Empty House of Stars: Reviews and Essays 1980-2002 (Cosmos Books, 2003; Ansible Editions ebook 2016). Finally, The Last SFX Visions concludes the long colonnade with SFX instalments 184 to 274 – July 2009 to July 2016 – plus a handful of extras from the same time period that brought the contents to a round 100 items.