David Langford

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1 July 2026 And now the July issue: Ansible 468. I hope there won’t soon be a disruption to our online presence when (we weren’t given any choice in the matter) BT turns off our landline phone/internet service on 3 July and replaces it with a fibre connection. Various mysterious boxes have already arrived by post.

26 June 2026 Weird sighting outside our house. Hazel was worried that an indeterminate flattish furry thing on top of next door’s wheelie bin might be a dead cat that had been run over (we live on the A4, after all), a prospect she did not relish. I investigated and found that my Heinlein-based knowledge of flat cats didn’t need to be called into play. It was a monkey – either a fake-fur toy that had lost its stuffing or a party costume for a small child. Even close up it looked pretty disconcerting. I would post a photo, but the thing has since vanished. • Of course if this were an M.R. James story the horror would repeatedly manifest, briefly but each time more monstrously furry, closer and closer to the old (1878 we think) house at 94 London Road that conceals so many terrible secrets, until at last the editor of Ansible is found in a dreadful state with the only recorded last word "Ook!" Sorry, the hot weather is getting to me again.

6 June 2026 Today is the SFWA Nebula Awards presentation, something I never thought would concern me personally; but this year (to my utter astonisment when the SFWA President Kate Ristau told me back in February) they chose me for the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for general services to the SF community – largely the SF Encyclopedia but also a little bit for Ansible. Gay Haldeman, also honoured on the same occasion, kindly accepted for me and read out the following (which I’m also including in the July Ansible):

“There’s a famous story about a perpetual motion machine exhibited to awestruck crowds in New York in 1813. Unfortunately, one visitor was an engineer who noticed that the great wheel that turned forever seemed a little bit jerky in its motion. He started removing bits of woodwork, to reveal that the miracle of science was driven by an endless belt leading to a back attic, where an old man with a long beard was found turning a crank. Speaking as the cranky old guy in the back room of the SF Encyclopedia, I must say I’m thrilled to be exposed and outed like this. It’s a huge and unexpected honour to join the ranks of past Solstice winners. I even have connections with a few of them. My small press has published lots of uncollected criticism by Algis Budrys, who was remembered in this award’s first year. I was beta reader for many Discworld novels by my friend Terry Pratchett. Another old friend, John Clute, is co-editor of the Encyclopedia and patiently puts up with the jerky motions of the crank in the back room. Thank you all very much!”

1 June 2026 The paralysing (by wimpish UK standards) heat has left me feeling deeply uncreative, which may or may not be self-evident from this month’s Ansible 467. • Today is also publication day for a just-for-the-hell-of-it reissue of Charles Platt’s humorous Micromania: The Whole Truth about Home Computer (1984), as adapted by me for UK readers. Now with additional corrections andc larifi ations (though not updates), a new foreword by Charles and a new afterword by myself. Free ebook download plus trade paperback with all proceeds to TAFF. [Later: both authors were pleased and surprised by 500 downloads in the first few days.]

1 May 2026 Onward with the May Day issue: Ansible 466.

1 April 2026 And now here’s the April issue of Ansible. Considering the date, I suspect many readers will laugh sardonically at the obvious foolery of the Solstice Award item (see below).

31 March 2026 I thought my award-winning days were safely over, but (gulp) here is the announcement of the SFWA Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. I’m still finding this hard to believe.

2 March 2026 Here we go again with the March issue of Ansible.

2 February 2026 I suspect that Ansible is becoming less cheerful as time goes by, because the traditional task of scanning online news for offbeat and comic stories has been poisoned by the ever increasing flood of depressing, rage-inducing and despair-compelling reports. Readers are urged to help by sending funny items and contributions to Thog’s Masterclass. I hope there are still a few such bits in Ansible 463 for February 2026.

24 January 2026 Another era ends. Goodness knows how many Ansibles I’ve fed into this traditional red pillar-box, the nearest to our house and the only one in quite some distance that was emptied at 5pm rather than some stupid time like 9am only.

2 January 2026 To adapt a bit of doggerel from a very old Private Eye:

The New Year dawns! The gurgling babe

Is ushered in with bells;

The old man with his astrolabe

Now hears his tolling knells.

So welcome 2026,

From all who still survive,

And hope that through some magic fix

It will not be as bad as 2025.

Meanwhile here’s Ansible 462.

25 December 2025 Well, here we are again. The "mystery triffid" image from November became our 2025 Christmas e-card: click here to see it. Actual physical cards went out with a "What We Did in 2025" note (nothing as grand as an actual newsletter), a version of which is lazily copied below. Sorry about some repetition of material already posted here.

It’s been a complicated year at Ansible HQ for all sorts of reasons, mainly house and garden renovations. The garden work started as a simple plan for some kind of paving on the front path, which was at best muddy and at its worst combined cedar needles and smelly bird droppings into a powerful organic glue with a special affinity for carpets. Unfortunately the early investigations revealed that our 125-foot cedar was not only a needle-shedding nuisance but actively dangerous. In the next major storm it might all too easily drop a big branch on some passing car or pedestrian, and (gulp) it leaned slightly towards the house.

Having a tree that huge removed is a long, fraught and noisy business. Our nerves suffered for weeks. But we were glad not to have waited any longer: as bit by bit the cedar was taken down, the sight of the rot-filled internal split in its trunk was pretty terrifying. The eventual result was a half-paved front garden ("Can you make it look like this?" said Hazel, producing a rough sketch, and they made it look like that.) with new front and side walls, a parking space for the first time in the history of this house, and no cedar needles any more. And so we lived happily ever after, watching strange plants emerge from the new topsoil – including one that turned out to be a poisonous thorn apple, to be removed with caution and thick gloves – until the frequently repaired roof over the front bay window started to leak again, and a new cycle of builders’ visits began. You would not believe the amount of coffee they can drink.

Everything seems fine at present, but we’ve had a reclusive 2025, mostly not going anywhere and not seeing anyone except for builders and a couple of visits from brother Jon the rock star.

All best for Christmas and the New Year!

1 December 2025 The first window of the Advent calendar opens to reveal the seasonal delight of ... oh bloody hell, it’s just boring old Ansible 461. Must try harder. • This is also publication day for Rob Hansen’s British SF Conventions Volume 4: 1958-1965.

7 November 2025 The mystery triffid in the front garden has been identified (thank you, fandom) as a thorn apple. Hazel decided not to keep it.

31 October 2025 It is the season of skulls, bats, demonic pumpkins, giant spiders, eldritch intimations and Ansible 460.

21 October 2025 A recent Inquisitor crossword (I’m an addict and need my Inquisitor fix every weekend) had for its theme a "humorous quatrain" whose first two lines were all too familiar, but with an alternative ending by Father Ronald Knox:

The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart,
And we are left with large supplies
Of cold blancmange and rhubarb tart.

1 October 2025 Sorry to be too busy (and, alas, depressed) to post anything here but boring old announcements of things like Ansible 459.

1 September 2025 Onward into Autumn with Ansible 458.

1 August 2025 Onward into August with Ansible 457.

4 July 2025 Something I would have liked to share with Chris Priest. We recently received the following via the SF Encyclopedia feedback form: “While reading an article on John Wyndham, I noticed a typo: there should be a space between his given name and his surname.” That seemed like an easy fix, but examining all instances in a long entry of every surname used by the many-named Wyndham takes a while, and I couldn’t find that typo anywhere. I begged for clarification and humbly learned that “his given name and his surname” here referred to another author mentioned in that entry, Christopher Priest. Oh what a silly person I am.

1 July 2025 It’s still too paralysingly hot at Ansible HQ for any witty remarks about the July issue: Ansible 456.

30 May 2025 The June issue, Ansible 455, comes early for the usual reasons. You know my methods, Watson.

1 May 2025 Here we go again with Ansible 454.

11 April 2025 At last, our nerve-jangling front garden building works are coming to an end! New walls, new parking space, new gatepost, new bankruptcy. There are even trees again – a beech sapling rescued from the former wilderness, a bay that outgrew its huge pot round the back, and NO CEDAR THIS TIME.

5 April 2025 And a happy Last Day of the UK Tax Year to all our readers. Things have been a bit fraught at Ansible HQ, with three weeks to date of extensive and noisy demolition and construction work in the front garden – beginning with the laborious taking-down of a 125-foot cedar condemned as dangerously liable to drop branches at random on passing cars and pedestrians. Jittery displacement activity in the form of decluttering efforts has led to various discoveries, mostly too boring to mention. One small surprise was finding carbon copies of my reader’s reports on the early Discworld novels Sourcery and Wyrd Sisters (digital text lost in the Great Floppy Disk Disaster of the late 1980s), which have now joined Equal Rites and Mort in the ebook below.

1 April 2025 Guaranteed no April Foolery in today’s Ansible 453. This is also publication day for the second ebook edition of the TAFF Trip Report Anthology, a showcase of unfinished or abandoned reports since 1963 – first released in 2017 and now updated.

28 February 2025 Here we go again with the March issue of Ansible. Also two more free ebooks published in aid of the fan funds: Watto’s Wisdom by Ian Watson, a very substantial collection of his writing for fanzines and convention publications (also available as a trade paperback with all proceeds to TAFF), and The Incomplete GUFF Chronicles, collecting the published parts of unfinished trip reports by winners of that fund. • Later: Rob Hansen’s THEN Again: A UK Fanhistory Reader 1930-1979 (2019) was also released this month as a trade paperback, again with all proceeds to TAFF.

26 February 2025 A derelict shop near us has re-opened as UNIQUE BEAUTY HOUSE and put a brochure through our letter box. Items for GENTLEMEN include CHEEKS WAX, FOREHEAD, NOSE WAX and EAR WAX (the last a commodity in which I thought I was self-sufficient), all costing £3 or £5 more if served HOT. It may be very wrong of the Langfords to react to such solemn affairs with persistent giggling.

31 January 2025 It would seem to be time for Ansible 451, officially dated February.

2 January 2025 Accompanied by slightly belated Happy New Year sentiments, here is the slightly belated Ansible 450. New Year’s Day was largely spent doing all the Ansible Editions royalty statements and sending them out with payments (the largest being to the TransAtlantic Fan Fund for six months of TAFF-benefit paperback sales).