Ebook edition published February 2015 • Ebook sales page
Read the reviews
|
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.
|
- Introduction
- Part 1: The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at
Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two
- Introduction (includes parodic material from Asimov book review in Paperback Inferno, 1979, and article "Play It Again, Frodo", White Dwarf, 1986
- Guest Introduction by H*rl*n Ell*s*n
- "Xanthopsia" by P**rs Anth*ny (original to this collection)
- "Tales of the Black Scriveners" by Is**c As*m*v (original to this collection)
- "Look At It This Way" by L*w*s C*rr*ll (verse, Amazing SF, 1985)
- "The Distressing Damsel" by The Br*th*rs Gr*mm (generic fairytale pastiche, Amazing SF, 1984)
- "Duel of Words" by Fr*nk H*rb*rt (SFinx, 1983)
- "The Thing in the Bedroom" by W*ll**m H*pe H*dgson (Knave, 1984) -- introducing Dagon Smythe, Psychic Investigator
- "The Gutting" by A.N. Horrorauthor (adapted extract from the then unpublished Guts, 2001)
- "The Mad Gods' Omelette" by M*ch**l M**rc*ck (White Dwarf, 1984)
- "Jellyfish" by D*m*n R*ny*n (Knave, 1985)
- "Lost Event Horizon" by E.E. Sm*th, attrib. (generic space opera pastiche, Imagine, 1984)
- "The Spawn of Non-Q" by A.E. v*n V*gt (original to this collection)
- "Outbreak" by J*m*s Wh*te -- The Last Sector General Story (A Novacon Garland, Birmingham SF Group, 1985)
- Part 2: 2
- Author's Note
- "The Last Robot Story" by Is**c As*m*v (3SF, 2002)
- "The Net of Babel" by J*rge L**s B*rg*s (Interzone, 1995)
- "The Spear of the Sun" by G.K. Ch*st*rt*n (Interzone, 1996)
- "Christmas Games" by Ag*tha Chr*st*e (Christmas Forever, 1993)
- "The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech" by S*r Arth*r C*n*n D*yle (The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, 1997)
- "Out of Space, Out of Time" by H.P. L*v*cr*ft (Science Fiction Age, 1998)
- The Return of Dagon Smythe
- "The Case of Jack the Clipper" (Interzone, 1997)
- "Not Ours To See" (The Fortune Teller, 1997)
- "The Case That Never Was" (Weird Tales, 2001)
- [Added in ebook edition only:] "The Pocklington Poltergeist" (Fables from the Fountain, 2011)
- "Sex Pirates of the Blood Asteroid" by E.E. Sm*th (Aries 1, 1979)
- "The Thing From Inner Space" by E.E. Sm*th (Matrix, 1976)
- "If Looks Could Kill" by R*x St**t (Eurotemps, 1992)
- Acknowledgements
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)