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Subject: Science Fiction
Publisher: Big Engine (UK)
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Edition |
Our Price inc. p&p |
Status |
| trade paperback, 209pp p/b, ISBN 1903468000, 2001
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N/A
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out of print
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I'd rank this book alongside Michael Frayn's The Tin Men, another neglected classic. I've wanted for years to see it back in print. It is one of those books you end up buying several copies of, because you just have to lend it to friends. It's very funny. It's very real.
from the introduction by Terry Pratchett |
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The plotting and scheming and relentless deepening of Tappen's personal Shit Creek is outlined with all the compassion of a kindly torturer, as Langford tightens his fluffy thumbscrews on his protagonist and extracts all the dark comedy he can from the mess he has stumbled into ... The Leaky Establishment is a bemused comedy of the blasT, the misguided, the incompetent, the blundering ... it is a comedy of human nature.
Infinity Plus |
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A splendid send-up.
Daily Mail, London |
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Langford's 1984 comedy classic, not at all based on the author's work at a nuclear establishment nowhere near Newbury, with a brand new introduction by Terry Pratchett. Black comedy overtakes the unfortunate defence-scientist hero Roy Tappen when a "harmless" theft of office furniture lands him with his very own doomsday nuclear stockpile at home. Chain reactions of insanely comic escapades follow, with disaster piled on disaster, leading the increasingly desperate Tappen to the borders of science fiction as he seeks a way out of the mess.
The Leaky Establishment was first published in 1984 to great reviews, and has lost none of its charm since. Terry Pratchett has written a new introduction to take it into a new century.
The author
David Langford is a luminary of the British Science Fiction community and editor of the regular Hugo-winning newsletter Ansible. He lives in Reading, which thanks to Ansible has more Hugos per capita than any other town in the UK.
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