Talk:David Langford

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I now know that one shouldn't edit one's own Wikipedia entry (mea culpa: I made several small corrections before realizing this). The bit about the 1993 Encyclopedia of SF is slightly misleading. I didn't in fact write any articles for this book. My contributions consisted of technical support (which here means "dealing with John Clute's computer problems") and writing detailed notes on the draft text, as received on 5.25" disks. John Clute was kind enough to add my initials to the credits of a couple of entries where he quoted my input.

On the other hand, I was a Contributing Editor of the Clute/Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy and wrote some 80,000 words of entries for this book.

Ansible Information continues in a very small way, but Christopher Priest is now a sleeping partner; I do all the day-to-day work myself.

The first fanzine of mine to receive a Hugo nomination, Twll-Ddu, isn't mentioned. Some extracts are indexed on line at http://ansible.co.uk/bibfnz.html#td

--David Langford http://ansible.co.uk/

It's fine for someone to correct errors in an article about them; it's more of a prohibition against starting an article about yourself, or removing (or spinning) information that you might not want there. Since your doing neither, nobody will mind. See Wikipedia:Autobiography for more. --Bob Mellish 20:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! One doesn't want to, er, make a Stanek of oneself.... --David Langford

[edit] Snow Crash?

Why is there a cross-reference link to Snow Crash? Langford isn't mentioned there. I'm a fan both of Langford and of Stephenson, but I don't see any notable connection between the two. Kestenbaum 06:37, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, to answer my own question, maybe it's about the connection between Langford's basilisk (clouding the mind, so to speak) and the fate of characters in Stephenson's novel who suffer a "snow crash". Perhaps this needs to be more explicit? Kestenbaum 06:40, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Spot on. I've attempted to expand that a bit. Blufive 11:27, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Looks good -- thanks. Kestenbaum 14:33, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Langford references in other's fiction

Snow Crash is granted an explicit mention, but the novel(s) of Ken MacLeod, Greg Egan and Charles Stross that reference Langford are not named. I'm particularly keen to know which Egan novel it is. -- Jon Dowland 15:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

In Permutation City, a "Langford mind-erasing basilisk" is mentioned (as a joke). For MacLeod, I think it's The Cassini Division, and the Stross I can't remember, but I'd guess it's either The Atrocity Archive or The Concrete Jungle. --Bob Mellish 17:41, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

- Cassini Division repeatedly mentions "the old legend" of the Langford hack - don't think it occurs elsewhere in that series. Shimgray | talk | 21:26, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

- The Stross reference is in his Asimov's story "Router", incorporated into Accelerando. --DeafMan 19:25, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Amstrad PCW

I'm not sure whether this is notable enough to go in the article, but for some years Langford wrote a column for the generally interesting British Amstrad PCW users' magazine, 8000 Plus, which later on changed its name to PCW Plus and became generally boring. These, plus some later ones for a different mag, are online at the Ansible site. Also, AnsibleIndex was reasonably (code for "most people knew about it, but I don't know how many actually bought it") popular on the PCW. Loganberry (Talk) 05:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC)