Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

they came out and his new one is just out in paperback. It is called Running Away and concerns a man
with a mid life crisis who runs away from it. It sounds unpromising material but in Thomas' hands it
becomes a work of art. By turns funny and sad, poignant and moving, it is a book that tells a lot of
truths as well as several very funny dirty jokes. I loved the one that begins with an old lady coming up to
an old man in the pensioners home where they both live. She invites him up to her room where she says
she will give him a cup of tea and hold his willie...
If you want to know the punch line, read the book. You won't be disappointed.
I finally got round to reading The Nano Flower, Peter F. Hamilton's sequel to Mindstar Rising and A
Quantum Murder. Of the three, I think The Nano Flower is the strongest. I enjoyed the first two
books, but this one stands head and shoulders above them. I particularly like the way that the hero,
Greg Mandel, changes from book to book as he grows older and absorbs experience. The Greg of The
Nano Flower is in his fifties -- it is probably twenty or thirty years after the events of the first novel.
And Greg has grown and matured to match his age. Far too many lesser writers never allow their
characters to change, to mature -- yes, damnit, to grow up. That Hamilton can do this marks him as a
skilfull writer, a man to watch. The Nano Flower is excellent.
In between reading these books and repairing my house and cooking experimental meals, I spent far
more time and money than is good for me playing with the world on the Internet. One of the hot things
on the Internet is something called the World Wide Web. In somewhat oversimplified terms, the web can
be thought of as one humungous document, full of lots and lots and lots of pictures, movies, sound and
text. As you look at one of the pages in this document on a computer somewhere in the world you
might see a reference to something that tickles your fancy. Click on it with your mouse and suddenly
you are on another computer elsewhere in the world looking at something new. You can follow the links
like these to your hearts content, jumping from computer to computer, country to country, continent to
continent, world without end.
The programs that let you do this are referred to as web browsers and the pages of information they
display are written in a special language called HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). I recently acquired
a browser called Mosaic, and I decided to learn a bit about it so I bought myself two books. The first of
these, The Mosaic Handbook let me explore the complexities of the program, and the second The
HTML Source-book taught me how to write documents that programs such as Mosaic can access (it
turns out to be surprisingly easy).
One reason why I feel constrained to mention these books is because they are both very thin. I get
depressed over how enormously huge and fat many computer books are. It is a positive disincentive to
look through them. They make you think that there is just too much to learn, so why bother? Well I have
read a lot of these books, and believe me ninety nine percent of them are absolute junk. But computer
books are trendy, so we'll continue to see them on the shelves for a while yet.
My advice is to ignore them. Go for the smaller, thinner books that you will find lurking between the
behemoths. They are generally much better value, much less frightening and with a lot more solid
information in them than the overwritten and oversold dinosaurs that surround them.
The two that I mentioned above are perfect examples of good computer books. If you feel the need to
learn about either Mosaic or HTML, I recommend them highly.
And now my holiday is over and hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go.
Sir Henry Rider Haggard Marie Cassell
Child of Storm Macdonald
Finished
Isaac Asimov Magic Harper Prism
Maureen F. McHugh Half the Day is Night Tor
Stephen Baxter The Time Ships Harper Collins