David Langford’s fans get to unwrap a gift early this year – his new collection Beachcombing and Other Oddments is officially released today. Inside they’ll find 78,000 words of his fanzine-published essays, and speeches and silliness.

The contents include the much-acclaimed convention talks “Live Thog’s Masterclass”, “The Secret History of Ansible” and “Twenty Years of Uproar” (a ramble through favourite fanzine humour); offbeat pop-science articles for Fortean Times and elsewhere, on such subjects as perpetual motion, violet-ray healing machines, St Hildegard of Bingen, and how to detect the Number of the Beast in practically any name you choose; a handful of recipes and another handful of Drabbles; several introductions to SF books; and many instalments of unreliable autobiography.

It’s Langford’s first collection of this kind since the Hugo-nominated The Silence of the Langford (1996).

Buy the trade paperback from Lulu for $13.50, or as an Ansible Editions Ebook (in all the leading formats) for £5.00.