Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

story is ever continued, I will be first in line to buy the book. I never can resist ERB; even when his
stories are written by other people.
One of my most treasured memories is of sitting on the deck of a Mississippi riverboat watching an
eclipse of the moon. It was my first ever eclipse, my first ever Mississippi riverboat and my first (and so
far only) time in New Orleans, the city Poppy Z. Brite has claimed for her own in her stunning horror
novels. To be sure, much of the action of Drawing Blood takes place outside of New Orleans (in the
North Carolina town of Missing Mile, to be exact) but the spirit of that haunted and eerie city pervades
the whole book.
Robert McGee, an underground comic artist who is losing his ability to draw, moves to Missing Mile with
his family. He spirals down in a gloomy and all too predictable descent into drugs and drink which
culminates with him murdering his wife and young son and then hanging himself. But for unknown
reasons he spares one of his children. The boy Trevor, who seems to have inherited Robert's artistic
skills, wakes in the morning to discover a house full of bloody corpses.
Twenty years pass, and on the anniversary of the murders Trevor returns to Missing Mile. Meanwhile
Zach, an erstwhile computer hacker who has attracted the unwelcome attentions of the FBI takes it on
the lam from New Orleans and also ends up in Missing Mile. He and Trevor meet and fall in love and
together dig deeper into the gruesome reasons behind Trevor's survival. What they discover is, to say
the least, disturbing.
I have never read a book which sustains its atmosphere so convincingly. It sucks you in and chums
your emotions and won't let go. It contains some of the most gruesome images I have ever come
across, some of the most erotic homosexual love scenes I have ever read. I am unreservedly
heterosexual, but even I was turned on by them. The emotionally wrenching climax of the book is a
psilocybin-induced (perhaps) hallucination of disturbing and almost traumatic intensity.
This novel is not for the faint hearted -- it pulls no punches and leaves the reader emotionally drained. By
no means can it be described as "entertaining"; but by God it is powerful and dramatic. If you like horror
novels you will love this one, though be warned, you may find it offensive.
While we are on the subject of offensive books, consider Anno Domini by Barnaby Williams, a book
that is guaranteed to offend every Christian in the world (no mean feat). The novel tells the story of an
early Christian sect (portrayed as the heroes) and their battle against what eventually turned into the
Catholic church, an organisation determined to stamp out heresy. In many ways it is a true story (where
are the Albigensians today?), but its shock value comes in the fictional assumptions, the most extreme
of which is that the leader of the sect is Jesus himself (who did not die on the cross). His most bitter
enemy is Peter who is portrayed as a psychopathic killer known as The Fisherman. The dichotomous
Saul/Paul is beautifully painted as a Roman secret agent. Other saints and martyrs are also shown in a
less than saintly light with all their human foibles exposed. If you are at all attached to your religious
beliefs don't even open this book.
Sir Peter Medawar was a Nobel prize winning scientist and a thoughtful essayist. Most of the essays
collected in The Strange Case of the Spotted Micepick away at the philosophical boundaries of
what we mean by 'science'. They make wonderfully complementary companions to shelves of science
fiction books, but they are not easy reading. The points he makes are subtle but are illuminated with
candour and enormous wit, particularly when he turns his mind to debunking some of the more extreme
nonsenses that masquerade under the name of science. He does a wonderful hatchet job on Teilhard de
Chardin and even Arthur Koestler comes in for some stick. Were Medawar alive today I am sure he
would be greatly saddened by modern society's wholesale acceptance of some of the more lunatic
fringes. But he isn't and we are all the poorer because of it. We need more of this kind of sense and
sensibility.
Larry McMurtry Cadillac Jack
Pocket
Books
Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold Chronomaster Proteus