Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Connections
Phoenixine Eighty-Six, November 1996
Back in the 1960s a science fiction trilogy was published. That was nowhere near as common then as it
is now but even though all the world's bookshelves currently groan under the weight of all the dead
trees that have been turned into trilogies since that time, I doubt if there has ever been a trilogy as odd
as this particular one. Each book had a different author and all three authors appeared as characters in
the books.
The first of the books was The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson and I've owned that one for
donkey's years. In it the three authors defeat an alien invasion of Greenwich Village with the aid of many
good drugs (this was the 1960s after all).
The second book is The Unicorn Girl by Michael Kurland which I've just found after years of hunting. It
concerns the events that transpire after the alien invasion. The characters are (sort of) kidnapped by
trans-universal travellers, and a lot goes down when the BLIP hits the cosmic fan. Both books are very
tongue in cheek and very funny indeed, poking merciless fun at what even then were SF clichés. Each
book also has a fine old time insulting the two authors who didn't write it. Highly recommended.
The third book in the trilogy is called The Probability Pad by T. A. Waters and I don't own it, I have
never read it, and if anyone knows where I can get hold of a copy I will name my first born after you.
In keeping with this oddly-authored theme, I was delighted to notice the simultaneous publication of The
Regulators by Richard Bachman and Desperation by Stephen King; and initially at least I was
expecting more of the same. However as all the world knows, one of these writers is merely a
pseudonym of the other and so the situation is actually quite different from that of
Anderson/Kurland/Waters who really were different people.
The King and Bachman books are very closely related to each other. Both have the same set of
characters (or at least, people with the same names -- their ages and motivations and the parts they
play do sometimes differ between the books) and both have almost exactly the same underlying theme
despite some small cosmetic plot differences. Tak!
Desperation is a small town in Nevada. Several travellers are hijacked into the town by the local cop. The
rest of the book details the murders, tortures and mutilations which the cop commits and chronicles
their growing awareness that ALL IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS. Tak!
In The Regulators, the similarly named characters live in Wentworth, Ohio. Soon the killing will begin
(quite graphic killing at that) as the Regulators come to town. Is it merely coincidence that Audry Wyler's
nephew is recently returned from Desperation where his parents died horrifically? Tak!
I read Desperation first and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is as taut a horror-thriller as anything King has
done, but I found The Regulators almost impossible to read. I had to struggle my way through it. It
echoed so much of the first book that for me it contained no real surprises. It lacked the frisson that a
good horror tale requires.
The one book acted as a spoiler for the other. It gave away too many secrets and the other was stale
and dry as a result. I don't think it really matters which book you read first, but don't read the second
one immediately after it.
While we are on the subject of connected books, Michael Moorcock has now completed the trilogy
begun with Blood and continued with Fabulous Harbours. The War among the Angels concerns
one Rose Von Bek who travels London's byways, living strange lives in the multiverse. She is friend and
companion to highwaymen, followers of the High Toby. Dick Turpin, Jack Karaquazian and Captain
Quelch. Only Moorcock could get away with this. He is re-living and re-writing his youth (and yours and
mine). I read the Fleetway Library penny dreadfuls that he wrote in the 1950s and Dick Turpin was my