“Advances in card manipulation tend to be incremental rather than revolutionary.” -- Karl Fulves

Unlike Richard’s Almanac or The Magic Menu, for example, Epilogue, published sporadically from 1967 to 1976 for a total of 29 issues, did not favor richly detailed, performance-oriented routines. Indeed, Karl Fulves states in Issue One, “A large part of [the material] – particularly some of my own manuscripts – will be theoretical and of no value to the commercial magician.”

This is true, unless you find yourself at a gig where you want to do eight straddle faros to locate a selected card, or a trick wherein “four Kings representing the long arm of the law set out to capture a trio of lady Mah-Jongg hustlers,” or a puzzle involving circles drawn a strip of paper where the “climax” is a gag about binary numbers (indeed, Mr. Fulves actually writes, “When working the stunt for those who may be unfamiliar with binary notation, it is best to have a small chart made up showing the pertinent decimal to binary equivalents. The spectator can refer to this at the end of the stunt for verification.”... Now THAT’S entertainment!).

But published alongside myriad tidbits of use and interest to only the smallest subset of magicdom are some genuinely original and (yes!) entertaining effects.

• Larry Jennings’s “L.J. Collectors” is still one of the cleanest handlings for Roy Walton’s wonderful Collectors plot.
  
• Karl Fulves’s “Illusion Aces” is a very magical and unexpected change of four Aces into four Kings.
  
• Dai Vernon & Bruce Cervon’s “Devil’s Elevator” is one of the most engaging impromptu packet tricks I’ve read in years.
  
• Wesley James’s “LSD Aces” is a terrific ace assembly that’s completely impromptu and requires only nominal sleight-of-hand.
  
• The two Derek Dingle Issues are full of interesting tricks and techniques, although those of you who have read The Complete Works of Derek Dingle (Kaufman, 1982) will be familiar with some of them.
  
• Similarly, the J.K. Hartman issue, the Ken Krenzel issue and the Larry Jennings issues all have plenty of worthwhile material, but again, some of the work has since appeared in other books.
  

In addition, there are some now-classic moves and routines that were introduced in Epilogue, such as Piet Forton’s “Ace Popper,” Jack Avis’s “Siva Count” and Sam Schwartz’s “Backflip.” I should also mention, if you’ve bought the book and find yourself trudging through the first thirty or forty pages, the contents become significantly (and consistently) more interesting around Issue Six.

So where does that leave us? Well, as I mentioned earlier, if you’re looking for a collection of complete routines by multiple contributors, my advice is to start with Richard Kaufman’s excellent, The Collected Almanac.

If your interest is more geared towards reading a variety of principles and ideas, along with mostly theoretical applications, then Epilogue is well worth your attention.

David Acer