Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

novel with a lot of libertarian preaching and paeans in favour of how it is every person's right to go
around armed to the teeth and blow away anybody who gives you offence (Smith is big in the gun
lobby). Despite all that I actually enjoyed the book a lot -- unlike many people with an ideological axe to
grind, Smith can write reasonably well and he tells an exciting tale. The broach of the title is a gate
between alternate realities and the narrator of the story accidentally stumbles through from our world to
a libertarian paradise on the other side. The hero is a homicide detective and the book is a gritty policeprocedural
which never fails to entertain.
My only gripe is that the alternate world on the other side of the broach is an alternate America which
has arisen because of some changes in events that took place during and shortly after the American
revolution. Presumably all American children learn this history at school, but I didn't and the historical
minutiae discussed by the characters meant nothing to me. Smith made too many assumptions about
the nature of his audience here.
Full Spectrum 5 is the latest and least in what has been a distinguished anthology series. The
enormously fat book (593 pages) contains only two stories of merit. Jonathan Lethem's The Insipid
Profession of Jonathan Hornebom and Gene Wolfe's The Ziggurat. Lethem's story is a deeply felt
(and funny) homage to Heinlein's The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag and if you haven't
read it, much of Lethem's story will pass you by. Wolfe's story is ... a story by Gene Wolfe.
Now that Robert Harris has made a name for himself as a best selling novelist, his earlier non-fiction
works are starting to reappear on the bookshelves. Selling Hitler is the story of the Hitler diaries, one
of the more notorious literary forgeries of modern times (it even eclipsed Clifford Irving's biography of
Howard Hughes in notoriety). The story of how the diaries came into being is a fascinating story of
greed and desperation. A journalist on Stern Magazine was a collector of Nazi memorabilia. He bought
Hermann Goering's yacht when it came up for auction and rapidly went head over heels into debt trying
to maintain and repair it and also populate it with Nazi paraphernalia. One thing lead to another. It is a
story of greed and naivety. The only astonishing thing is that so many people were taken in for so long.
A lot of distinguished people ended up with egg on their faces. That's what makes the story so
fascinating. It isn't really about the Hitler Diaries -- it is much more a study of human frailties and our
almost infinite capacity for believing what we want to believe despite the evidence to the contrary.
As I drive around feeling cool with the air conditioning on, demonstrating how to make a yo-yo sleep,
pointing at things and indulging in interesting computing, I am occasionally asked what books to
recommend to those who express an interest in SF but don't know what to read next. I have several
stock answers, but now that I have read Jack McDevitt's Ancient Shores I have another book to add to
the list. Tom Lasker, ploughing his wheat fields, digs up the remains of a yacht. Thousands of years ago,
during the last ice age, his wheat fields had been on the shoreline of an ancient sea. When the yacht
turns out to be made of strange materials, and when subsequent excavation unearths an igloo-like
structure with possible portals to other worlds, the truth has to be faced. We have been visited by
aliens. The ideas of the book are common coin to us old, jaded SF fans. But seldom have they been
handled as convincingly as they are here. This is the sort of thing that got us hooked in the first place
and the magic still works.
I started with a horror novel, so I'll end with one. Dean Koontz is incredibly prolific and his books tend
towards a sameness of plot and character. I can seldom remember which I have read and which I have
not and therefore I have mostly stopped buying them just in case I duplicate something already on my
shelves. But Ticktock received glowing reviews which claimed that it was that most difficult of things, a
screamingly funny horror novel. Well who could resist? Certainly not me. So I bought it and read it and I
must admit that while I would not go as far in my praise as other reviewers, I did enjoy it. It is neither as
funny nor as horrible as the reviews suggested, but it is certainly light-hearted. Tommy Phan, a
Vietnamese national who has adopted America as his preferred homeland but who cannot escape the
effects of his Vietnamese inheritance (and his Vietnamese family), finds a rag doll on his doorstep. Its
thread eyes unravel and a demon with green eyes stares out at him. The chase is on! Tommy has until
dawn to escape from a supernatural entity that grows larger and more fearsome as the night
progresses.