He Do the Time Police in Different Voices

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He Do the Time Police in Different Voices -- 1st hc and pb cover

He Do the Time Police in Different Voices collects 25 sf/fantasy/horror parodies and pastiches (plus introductory material containing several more brief skits) by David Langford. This includes the whole of the short 1988 collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two, with some 40,000 words of added material bringing the total to over 70,000 words. See reviews below.

  • Reviews
  • Publication Date: July 2003
  • Publisher: Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press), USA
  • Format: B-format paperback
  • ISBN: 1592240585
  • Page Count: 222
  • Cover Artist: Juha Lindroos
  • Availability: Wildside Press
  • Reviews
  • Publication Date: July 2003
  • Publisher: Cosmos Books (an imprint of Wildside Press), USA
  • Format: Hardback
  • ISBN: 1592240577
  • Page Count: 222
  • Cover Artist: Juha Lindroos
  • Availability: Wildside Press

Reviews

Michael Bishop, The New York Review of Science Fiction, August 2004

Hilarious [...] The pieces in Part One may prod one to helpless guffaws, but those in Part Two prompt not only smiles but also some fairly heavy cud chewing, musing, and cogitation. [...] I enthusiastically recommend He Do the Time Police in Different Voices and urge you to send multiple copies to your elected representatives, city, state and federal. Today.

Tom Easton, Analog, October 2004

... a delightful collection of SF parodies and pastiches. It includes everything in The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two (reviewed here in July 1989) and adds another 40,000 words of good, clean fun ...

Cheryl Morgan, Emerald City 100, December 2003

This monstrous tome, known throughout the galaxy as He Do The Time Police in Different Voices (Voices to its friends), is structured in two diabolically different halves. (The temptation to say, "it is a book of two halves, Brian," is overwhelming, but I know a lot of you won't understand soccer commentator jokes.) The earlier part, one inscribed in mighty strokes of cuneiform on its deep, blood-red leather bindings as "The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two; The Collected Science Fiction and Fantasy Parodies of David Langford, Volume 1", was once published under that ringing, sonorous epithet, but has since languished forgotten amongst the crumbled, blasphemous vaults of the sea-weed drenched, cyclopean, basalt-blocked library of the cursed forgotten city of R'lyeh, hidden in an angle of the shelves that human geometry is unable to comprehend. The latter section, known only by its cryptic online "handle" of "2", is a fast-paced, chrome-plated, virtual stab at the bleeding edge frontiers of science-fiction pseudo-multi-hypertextual imagery. Or something like that. Anyway, there are two bits, one of which was published eons ago under a different name, and one of which wasn't. Unfortunately for you, O luckless victim of my undoubted criminal genius, both of them contain devastating Langfordian parodies of well-known writers. These texts have, in the past, been known to reduce cool, rational, scientific beings with minds much stronger than those of mere, feeble humans to gibbering, witless wrecks. Now, before some dashing, clean-cut hero can appear in the nick of time and save you from your ghastly fate, I present some examples.

[Various quotations follow.]

Ha! While you have been listening helplessly to the hypnotic tone of my voice an irresistible subliminal command has been inserted into the deepest parts of your feeble brains. You will go out and buy this book. Now! Immediately! You are all doomed. Dooooooomed!!!!

Bwaaaaahahahahahaha!

David Pringle, Interzone 191, September 2003

Langford, David. He Do the Time Police in Different Voices: SF Parody and Pastiche. Cosmos Books [PO Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, USA], ISBN 1-59224-058-5, 222pp, trade paperback, $16.99. (Sf/fantasy collection, first edition; there is also a hardcover edition [not seen; price not given]; this welcome book subsumes Langford's earlier parody collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two [1988]; the original gathering has been more than doubled in size, with the inclusion of a dozen more ingenious, funny stories ["almost pointlessly brilliant," according to Michael Swanwick] ... recommended; Cosmos Books is an imprint of Wildside Press, a US print-on-demand publisher; to order, see the website: www.wildsidepress.com.) July 2003.

On individual stories

Michael Swanwick, Locus, on "The Spear of the Sun"

Almost pointlessly brilliant.

David G. Hartwell selected "The Spear of the Sun" for Year's Best SF 2 (1997)

"The Net of Babel" was selected for The Best of Interzone (1997).

Gregory Feeley, Washington Post Book World, 27 March 1994

David Langford, a remarkably funny British writer not well known in this country, offers the perfect send-up of country-house weekend thrillers, locked-room mysteries, and several other genres beloved of Anglophiles in his very amusing "Christmas Games" ...

Elizabeth Barrette, Tangent Online, on "Out of Space, Out of Time"

... a gruesome cautionary tale.... In classic Lovecraftian tradition, this horror story of the Cthulhu Mythos features the drowned city of R'lyeh, the infamous Necronomicon, and a thoughtful exploration of how nuclear weapons came about.... Anyone interested in particle physics, mathematics, or four-dimensional studies will simply love this story; I'm not a Mythos fan but I found this one thoroughly gripping.

See also reviews of The Dragonhiker's Guide ... (incorporated into this volume)