Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Luxury! Luxury!
Phoenixine Seventy-Nine, April 1996
Many of the books I'll be telling you about this time were read on a business trip to Melbourne. It's a
three hour flight and I spent some frequent flyer points and got an upgrade to business class which is
very luxurious with infinite legroom and mouth-watering menus that turn out to conceal ordinary
aeroplane food. I felt I needed a special book to read on the aeroplane and so I took Richter 10, the
new novel by Arthur C. Clarke and Mike McQuay. In point of fact, it is really by Mike McQuay. Clarke didn't
write a single word of it. Inspired by the news of the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Clarke wrote an 850
word outline which he faxed to his agent and forgot all about. Mike McQuay wrote the novel from the
outline without any consultation with Clarke whatsoever. Indeed, when Clarke received the manuscript
he read it with enormous enjoyment and stopped work on all other projects because he wanted to find
out what happened next!
The story concerns Lewis Crane who lived through the 1994 earthquake (though his family died). He
grew up with an obsession and as the body of the novel opens he is a world famous seismologist who
can seemingly predict earthquakes. Not only can he predict them, he claims to know how to stop them,
and as the largest quake the world has ever experienced seems imminent, people had better start to
listen.
Mike McQuay died of a heart attack shortly before the novel was published. In a moving epilogue, Arthur
C. Clarke pays tribute to the great skill with which he wrote what turned out to be his last book.
Talking of Arthur C. Clarke, I recently came into possession of a slim booklet called Four Heads in the
Air by Fred Clarke, Arthur's brother. It is a delightful collection of anecdotes about growing up on a farm
between the wars. Arthur has his place in these, of course (generally finding ingenious ways to continue
reading while performing his chores) but the book is primarily about other members of the Clarke family
-- mainly their mother who had the job of raising all four Clarke children after her husband died from
injuries received on active service in World War I. It is a warm and delightful book, full of humour and
love.
Melbourne had a Grand Prix while I was there and the streets were blocked off and the trams were
diverted and there was a waiting list for taxis and all day long you heard nothing but rrrrrr -- ooooo -wwwwwww
-- eeeeeeee -- oooooooo as the cars sprinted around the practice circuits. The hotel was full
of racing groupies (of all ages and sexes) from all over the world and the police were kept busy
removing protesters who objected to all the above. It was enormous fun. I'm only sorry I didn't get to
see the race itself, but that was the day after I left, so I missed out.
I told you a couple of months ago that I'd heard rumours of a prequel to Larry McMurtry's Lonesome
Dove. Well it really does exist and it's called Dead Man's Walk. It is not quite as brilliant as the Pulitzer
Prize winner itself, but is very good nonetheless. It concerns the younger days of Woodrow Call and
Gus McRae. They are about twenty as the book opens and have just met. The story tells of their first two
expeditions as Texas Rangers. If you like, they are learning their trade -- and what they mainly learn is
how badly organised and inefficient the men they admire turn out to be. Perhaps it is a rite of passage
book? Anyway, it is by turns amusing, thoughtful, beautiful, crude and awesomely violent. It has one of
the most vividly described torture scenes it has ever been my pleasure to read. The Commanche horse
thief Kicking Wolf captures a scalp hunter and tortures him to death over several gruesome days. The
book pulls no punches and tells it like I'm certain it was. If you even vaguely like stories about pioneering
and exploration then this is for you. It is 477 pages long and I read it in two evenings.
I also read the new Hunter Thompson book in about an evening and a half but that was because it was
thin and lacking in substance, not because it was any good. Entitled Better than Sex it purports to be
about the 1992 American presidential campaign. Thompson is a self confessed political junkie who has
written what is probably the definitive book about presidential politics (Fear and Loathing on the
Campaign Trail -- 1972). I think he knew he would never beat that, and he didn't even try. At least half
the book consists of barely legible photocopies of pages from his notebook and scribbled faxes to