David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953)[1] is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field.

He publishes the science-fiction fanzine and newsletter Ansible and holds the all-time record for most Hugo Awards, with a total of 29 wins.

[2] David Langford was born and grew up in Newport, Wales, before studying for a degree in Physics at Brasenose College, Oxford,[3] where he first became involved in science fiction fandom.

A collection of short stories, parodying various science fiction, fantasy fiction and detective story writers, has been published as He Do the Time Police in Different Voices (2003), incorporating the earlier and much shorter 1988 parody collection The Dragonhiker's Guide to Battlefield Covenant at Dune's Edge: Odyssey Two.

[9] This has led some UFOlogists to believe the story is genuine, including the US author Whitley Strieber, who referred to the 1871 incident in his novel Majestic.

[14][15] The first of these stories was "BLIT" (Interzone, 1988); others include "What Happened at Cambridge IV" (Digital Dreams, 1990); "comp.basilisk FAQ",[16] and the Hugo-winning[17] "Different Kinds of Darkness" (F&SF, 2000).

The idea has appeared elsewhere; in one of his novels, Ken MacLeod has characters explicitly mention (and worry about encountering) the "Langford Visual Hack".

The eponymous Snow Crash of Neal Stephenson's novel is a combination mental/computer virus capable of infecting the minds of hackers via their visual cortex.

The roleplaying game Eclipse Phase has so-called "Basilisk hacks", sensory or linguistic attacks on cognitive processes.

Langford has won numerous Hugo Awards[19] for his activities as a fan journalist on his free newsletter Ansible, which he has described as "The SF Private Eye".

[22] Ansible has for many years advertised that paper copies are available for various unlikely items[23] such as "SAE, Fwai-chi shags or Rhune Books of Deeds".

War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology, published in 1979, and The Third Millennium: A History of the World AD 2000-3000 (1985), jointly written with fellow science fiction author Brian Stableford, are two examples.

Within the broader field of popular non-fiction, Langford co-wrote Facts and Fallacies: a Book of Definitive Mistakes and Misguided Predictions (1984) with Chris Morgan.

With Christopher Priest, Langford also set up Ansible E-ditions (now Ansible Editions) which publishes other print-on-demand collections of short stories by Sladek and David I. Masson; essays and review columns by Brian Aldiss, Algis Budrys, Peter Nicholls and again Sladek; and ebooks of historical interest to science fiction fandom, downloadable at no charge from the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund site.