Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Robyn Gossett is an entertaining writer who has dug up a positive treasure trove of odd sightings and
strange occurrences. Did a claimant to the throne of Scotland live and die on Campbell Island? Read the
book and find out.
A book that never fails to put a lump in my throat is Helene Hanff's 84 Charing Cross Road -- a
compendium of letters from Helene (in New York) to a book dealer in London. I guess my Biblioholism
has something to do with my fondness for the book, but I'm not alone in admiring it. Consequently,
when I recently came across another book of essays by Ms Hanff I fell on it with glad cries of glee.
Letters from New York consists of a series of small essays about life in New York which were
originally broadcast in England on the BBC radio programme Woman's Hour. When I lived in England I
used to listen to this programme avidly. Despite its rather unfortunate title, it is most definitely not the
radio equivalent of a cheap women's magazine. It always broadcast interesting articles of surprising
depth about an enormous variety of subjects. The Helene Hanff articles date from the 1980s which was
long after I had left England so all the material was new to me. Needless to say I loved the book. New
York has had an unfortunate press -- far too many people think of it as dirty, violent, dangerous and
frightening. To an extent it is all these things (I've been there). But it is more as well, and Helene Hanff's
little essays give the place a whole new perspective. They are by turns humorous, sad, enlightening and
always fascinating. Everyday life in a great city has never been so well described.
The occasionally otherwise named Iain Banks has a new Culture novel on the stands. Excession is a
positive tour de force. The novel is 450 pages long and almost nothing at all happens and yet the
fascination and tension and enjoyment never flag. It is a completely brilliant book. The Excession of the
title is a mysterious alien artefact. It sits silently, resisting all efforts to contact it. The ships of the Culture
see the Excession as an opportunity to advance themselves. Conspiracies and counter conspiracies
abound. A minor war breaks out and ends again. The Excession goes away.
The real heroes and most fascinating characters in the book are the ships themselves. Banks' ships
have always had a curious life all of their own and now for the first time we get a close look at the culture
of their Culture as embodied in the paranoia with which many of the ships live their lives. The human
(and alien) characters are of little importance compared to this. I simply couldn't put it down and I read it
in a sitting. I've never been very impressed with Banks' SF in the past (though I love his mainstream
work). But this one is just magnificent. Words almost fail me.
I have a degree in chemistry which doesn't mean much in itself but in studying for it I came to absorb a
philosophy of science and an idea of just what "doing science" is all about. This makes me less than
sympathetic to the mystics and new agers and children of the Age of Aquarius who seem to me to be
too locked into their certainties, too unwilling to examine evidence, too dogmatic and often too
imprecise. If I have a belief it is in Karl Popper's paradigm of disprovability -- the only ideas worth
discussing are those which contain the seeds of their own destruction. If we have no way of challenging
a theoretical structure, we can make the most outrageous statements about it. For instance I could say
that I believe the universe sprang into being two minutes ago and all my memories of the past and all of
the historical record were created by whatever it was that created the universe two minutes ago. You
can't disprove that -- it is an irrefutable statement. And therefore it is completely worthless.
What has this to do with what I read on my holidays? Well one of the books I read was Facing the
Future by Michael Allaby and it is a collection of essays that addresses just these points. Allaby takes on
the cranks and mystics, the cultists of the age of neo-barbarism. And they come off very badly. This is
an important book, and an exciting book. Read it.
Stephen King is up to number 5 of The Green Mile and there is only one more to go. I CAN'T WAIT!!!
But I'll have to.
Gardner Dozois
The Year's Best Science Fiction
Thirteenth Annual Collection
St. Martins
Mike Resnick The Widowmaker Bantam
Richard Matheson Now You See It Tor