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He Do the Time Police in Different Voices

By David Langford

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| Paperback | 9781592240586

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Book Description

A collection of Langford parodies and pastiches incorporating the whole of The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (1988, long out of print) plus some 40,000 words of additional material.

1 Review

"The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odissey Two"

Langford has always been a brilliant critic, with sharp, sarcastic wit and a great command of the English language (along with a degree in Physics).
As he explains in the foreword, parody is a great criticism tool. Very good authors are practically impossible to make fun of - in the actual parody s ... (continue)

Langford has always been a brilliant critic, with sharp, sarcastic wit and a great command of the English language (along with a degree in Physics).
As he explains in the foreword, parody is a great criticism tool. Very good authors are practically impossible to make fun of - in the actual parody sense, at least - in most cases you are forced to insert completely unrelated elements, like anachronism or pop-culture references - as in the case of "Bored with The Rings", but that's not a real parody.
Also, as he eminently points out in the same foreword, a good parody is a short one - and it's also very tiring to compose.
Hence, the relative scarcity of the genre. This book(let - a mere 220 pages) collects all his works in the area, including a couple which are more properly homages than parody (Lovecraft and Conan Doyle).
Some of them appeared originally in magazines or other books, but they are quite hard to find out.
I am giving this a very high rating considering that I really like Langford as a critic (even more than as a novelist) and so I am sort of a fan of his.
It could also be a great gift for someone who likes "Golden Age" SF - alas there is nothing regarding cyberpunk or more recent tropes/styles.

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Pamar said on Apr 30, 2010 | Add your feedback