Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Anacrites Chief spy at the palace and no friend of our boy
Footsie the Midget and the Man on the Barrel Members of Anacrites staff
A prison rat Ditto, probably
Severina Zotica A professional bride
Chloe Her feminist parrot
Thalia
A curious snake
A dancer who does curious things with snakes
Gaius Cerinthus
Somebody the parrot knows, suspiciously absent from
the scene
I simply couldn't resist, which was annoying because there are currently six books in the series and
that's a lot of money. But I dug deep into my pocket and bought and read them all and I certainly didn't
regret it. I can't remember when I last enjoyed a series more.
When I got home, I took a bit of a rest from detective novels and picked up a non-fiction book called
Nothing to Declare by someone rejoicing in the name of "Taki". Apparently he is an upper crust gossip
columnist for the London papers. In 1984, while passing through Heathrow airport, he was discovered
to be in possession of cocaine and was sentenced to three months in prison. The book is his account of
his life behind bars. I bought it because the blurb on the back says "...easily the best book to emerge
from a stint in one of Her Majesty's jails since Oscar Wilde's De Profundis nearly a century ago". Well I
should have known better than to believe the blurb. It's an appallingly bad book. Taki is an unutterable
snob and very little of the book has anything at all to say about life inside. Virtually all of it concerns the
name-dropping exploits of his fast crowd of chinless wonders and Sloane Rangers. Don't bother with it.
By now it was convention time, and I hopped on an aeroplane to Christchurch to visit Constellation, New
Zealand's 17th annual SF convention. About ten minutes after the plane took off from Auckland it landed
back at Auckland suffering from "a minor mechanical malfunction", to quote the pilot. Fortunately it
turned out that it really was a minor problem and after sitting on the tarmac for about an hour listening
to engineers thump things with big hammers we took off again. This time the flight south was uneventful
and I passed the time by reading The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman. This sequel to Anno
Dracula is set during the first world war. Dracula, having been driven out of Englandat the end of the
previous book, has used the intervening years to make alliances with various of the royal houses of
Europe and he plays them off, one against the other. Soon the continent is embroiled in a bloody war to
end all wars. One of the heroes of the German offensive is the vampire air ace Manfred Von Richtofen.
(whose biography is being written by Edgar Allan Poe). Opposing him are a small cadre of dedicated
British air aces under the command of Edward Winthrop. They include Albert Ball, the shadowy figure of
Kent Allard, and a certain James Bigglesworth and his pals Ginger, Bertie and Algy. Several other famous
people also appear. Lady Chatterley's gamekeeper Mellors has a pivotal part to play in the affair and the
spy Ashenden, fresh from his exploits in Switzerland, has a walk on part. Newman has enormous fun
with these little touches, but behind the references and jokes there is a tense and exciting tale, brilliantly
told. Anno Dracula was one the highlights of my reading last year. The Bloody Red Baron is one of
the highlights of this year. And there may be more to come...
One of the events of the convention was the launch of a collection of short stories by members of the
Phoenix SF Society. The book, edited by Phillip Mann, is called Tales from The Out of Time Cafe. The
stories, each of which describes an aspect of the Cafe's existence, are uniformly excellent. Phoenix and
its writers deserve to feel very proud of themselves -- there isn't a weak one in the bunch. The book
demonstrates highly professional writing skills and it can hold its head up proudly in any company. I
thoroughly enjoyed reading it. And I also enjoyed meeting Amelia Earhart, Elvis, Bob the duty manager
(an inspired invention -- she is a brilliant character, brilliantly characterised) and all other people and
things who drift in and out of the Cafe. One the great strengths of the stories is that the characters
learn from their experiences and change and develop as the stories continue. This gives them an added
dimension that brings them alive and makes the reader care. These aren't ciphers going through the
motions (as are so many science fiction "characters"). So when we learn of Manny's ultimate fate, for