Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Oh Frabjous Day
Phoenixine Eighty-Nine, January 1997
It being Christmas, what better book to discuss than the new Terry Pratchett novel -- Hogfather. It
would appear that every Hogwatchnight, the Hogfather journeys the Discworld in a sleigh drawn by
grossly overweight pigs. He travels the length and breadth of the world, delivering presents to the good
children (he knows if you've been good or bad). Unfortunately, this year the Hogfather has gone missing
and as a stand in, Death leaves something to be desired. Particularly since Albert will keep drinking the
sherry that has been left out for the Hogfather. But Death must do his duty. If the Hogfather does not
deliver the presents, the sun won't rise the next day.
That's about it, as far as plot goes. The rest is just Terry having his usual fun with the Discworld. We find
out where the tooth fairy takes all those teeth (and why she carries a pair of pliers). We meet the
verruca gnome and the cheerful fairy. The wizards at Unseen University have a computer called Hex
which is powered by ants. In other words, it has Anthill Inside.
Lots of good groans in this book, but really it is just more of the same. I hate to say it, but I think the
Discworld is getting stale in the same way that the Stainless Steel Rat is getting rusty.
I read The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell, but really I shouldn't have bothered. The books are now
so formulaic that I suspect Harrison could write them in his sleep. In fact I'd be willing to bet that he did
write this one in his sleep.
On Hogwatch morning in the Robson house, it was champagne and smoked salmon for breakfast, and
the opening of the presents. The Hogfather brought me a CD rack with a Buck Rogers spaceship on it, a
carving of a sleepy cat and some plastic insects that glow in the dark. The cats treated their catnip mice
with total disdain, and refused to scratch their new scratching post -- the furniture and the carpet still
being preferred. Perhaps, from their point of view, it would have been better to have given them the
smoked salmon and left the catnip mice for me.
Charles Sheffield popped up with a couple of good books this month. The Ganymede Club is a sort of
a prequel to Cold As Ice (but is completely stand alone -- neither book depends upon the other). It is
set in a solar system ravaged by the after effects of the great war. Lola Belman, although she doesn't
know it yet, has fallen foul of the Ganymede Club of the title. The club was formed in secret by the
survivors of the first expedition to Saturn in order to protect and use what found them there. (No
there's nothing wrong with that last sentence). Lola Belman is a haldane, a sort of super psychiatrist,
and one of her patients is on the run from the Ganymede club...
The novel is just a space opera; lots of slam-bang adventure, but there's nothing wrong with that and I
thoroughly enjoyed it. I enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow as well, though it is a much deeper book. It
opens in the late twentieth century. Drake Martin's wife Anastasia is dying of an incurable disease. Drake
has her frozen, to be revived when the disease can be cured. And because he cannot bear to live
without her, he follows her into the cryowomb to journey with her into the future. He is awoken several
times on his long journey into time, but for Anastasia there is no cure and each time he wakens alone.
Millions of years in the future, he learns that there is hope that she will live again, at the eschaton, the
omega point where the universe collapses in on itself, merging past and present.
This is obviously an idea whose time has come. Sheffield's novel is the second I have read recently which
uses this theme (the first was Frederik Pohl's The Other End of Time). The idea of the eschaton and
what it means is taken from a rather quirky book called The Physics of Immortality by Frank Tipler.
The physics may be dubious, but that makes it perfect for SF and both Sheffield and Pohl have done
Tipler proud.
Another good space opera is Patton's Spaceships by John Barnes. It turns out to be the first of a
series (damn!) but that minor fault aside, it is a rollicking good yarn. The closers (whoever they might be)
are waging a war of extermination among a million parallel earths. Opposing them are the Crux Ops