Reinstituted Review: The Leaky Establishment, by David Langford

This is another review I did for SF Site, and thus am recovering after that wonderful pioneering website went dark. As ever, I note that it's about a quarter century old, and I haven't updated the references within the review -- so I note for example that the "new English small press" Big Engine has, alas, long been defunct -- it was a brave effort (led by Ben Jeapes) but it's cruel world out there for small publishers.

Reinstituted Review: The Leaky Establishment, by David Langford

a review by Rich Horton

David Langford is justly famous in the SF world for his critical writing and his fan writing, much of the latter done for his fanzine Ansible. Both Ansible and Langford have won multiple Hugos in the fan categories. But an odd side-effect of Langford's many fan writing awards is that people often seem unaware that he is a very accomplished "pro" writer. He has published several novels and quite a number of short stories, many of them very good, like his wonderful G. K. Chesterton pastiche of a few years ago, "The Spear of the Sun". But we can't say any more that Langford's pro writing goes unnoticed, for he won the 2001 Hugo for Best Short Story for "Different Kinds of Darkness".

Some time ago I decided to rectify my own failings in appreciating Mr. Langford's fiction-writing side by searching out one of his novels, and the first one I chose was The Leaky Establishment. This novel intrigued me because I've worked my whole life in places which have points of resemblance with the nuclear research center where the novel is set. (Especially over college summers, when I worked at both Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory.) At the time it was out of print, and in fact I got my copy directly from the author, but happily it has been made available in a nice new edition from Big Engine, a new English small press which has begun a rather intriguing line of SF, some reprints and some new novels and story collections. [The novel was first published by Frederick Muller in the UK in 1984, and reprinted in 1985 by Sphere (that's the copy I have), and after Big Engine went under in 2003 it was reprinted again by Cosmos Books.]

This novel, it should be mentioned, is not strictly speaking SF, though it is fiction about science. It is more generally in the comic tradition of Kingsley Amis, to name just one writer. The novel features Roy Tappen, a cynical scientist at NUTC, a fictional British nuclear center. By mistake, he manages to smuggle a warhead out of the place, and takes it home. When he finds it he realizes he needs to take it back, but security has been tightened, and he can't just waltz back in with it.

The story follows his constantly foiled attempts to sneak it back in, unwillingly abetted by his computer programmer friend, annoyed by his wife walking out (not too pleased at sleeping in the same house with a nuclear warhead), by a suspicious but stupid security officer, by his nutty neighbor, an active anti-Nuclear campaigner and alternative energy enthusiast, by a moronic newsman who keeps swallowing his hoax stories whole, and of course by a parade of silly bosses. Page by page the book is hilarious: almost too densely so, in that as a novel it loses momentum. Still, it's neatly plotted, with a particularly nice resolution. And the bureaucratic tics of a government facility, exacerbated by nuclear security requirements, ring very true indeed.

Langford's writing is very fine in general, and this particular novel is a delightful example of his abilities with fiction. Definitely recommended.