Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

master of a colony of vampires living in New York City. By and large they keep themselves to themselves
and live as best they can, stealing blood from hospital blood banks. But every so often comes the time
of the feasting when they really must hunt their human prey and feast on the live, warm blood. At such
times the vampires are barely in control of themselves as the raging beast that is their appetite demands
to be appeased. Paradoxically they also then become more vulnerable to attack, because they become
more visible to those who would hunt them. Renquist is facing a rebellion by some of the younger
members of his colony who regard humans as cattle and themselves as indestructible. Renquist knows
better, but since when did anyone pay attention to older, wiser heads? The grue is gruesome and
Farren's old cynicism is still there. This is a good one.
Damon Knight has not been prolific and has made more of an impact on the field as an editor and critic
than as a novelist. But his few novels have generally been worth waiting for and his new satire Humpty
Dumpty -- An Oval bids fair to be his magnum opus. In itself it is no big deal. A tourist on holiday in
Italy is shot in the head in a restaurant. The bullet that has entered his skull has also cracked open
another layer of reality for him and he begins to hear voices foretelling his doom. He encounters a cabal
of dentists and an extraterrestrial shoe salesman. Giant craters open across the face of North America.
This is prime Philip K. Dick territory and yet Knight handles it beautifully. There is more than just a surreal
story here (and in themselves these 'plot' things are actually not very important). Dick used this sort of
thing mainly to ask questions about the nature of reality, Knight uses it more satirically to highlight the
absurdities of reality, so I suppose the spin is different. But either way, it's a great book.
A project is currently under way to publish all the material Theodore Sturgeon wrote at less than novel
length. It is envisaged that when complete it will comprise ten very substantial books. Three have
currently been published and they follow Sturgeon's writings (published and unpublished) from 1938
through to 1946. I first became aware of these books (and their importance) when the Phoenix Pres.
showed me a copy of one of them that she had found in the remainder bin at London Books for a cost
of next to nothing. It was a beautifully made book with scholarly forewords and afterwords and story
notes and while there were many stories I recognised, there were equally as many that I did not. I was
immediately consumed with an enormous jealousy and the next day I hied me hence to London Books
but there were no copies left and I was distraught because I knew exactly what that meant. It meant
that I would have to buy them all at full price, and so I did to the great pain of my credit card.
There are some wonderful stories here. Even in these very early years, Sturgeon showed the promise of
what was to come and even the least of the stories (and some of them are VERY slight) are beautifully
written. But I was absolutely astonished to find that brilliant Sturgeon classics such as Bianca's Hands
and It and Mewhu's Jet dated from these early years. I had thought them to be much later works.
The Sturgeon project is an important one and I hope the money lasts and that they do manage to
publish all ten volumes.
I have known John Brosnan on and off for several years. Many a pint have we drunk together in many a
bar. I was with him when a fan presented a book to be autographed (one of Brosnan's excellent books
of film criticism). John was thoroughly bemused -- nobody had ever asked him for an autograph before.
But he rose magnificently to the occasion and signed the autograph with a flourish. I was proud of him,
and bought him another pint. Over the years, under a variety of pseudonyms, John has made a nice
living from hack writing (and he would not be insulted by that description -- he has no illusions about
what he does). Occasionally he has published novels under his own name, and two of the latest are
Damned and Fancy and its sequel Have Demon will Travel, which are billed as humorous fantasy,
for that is exactly what they are.
John is Australian (though he has lived in England for lo! these many years) so it should come as no
surprise that the books are full of fart jokes (and quite good ones, too). Also there are lots of in jokes -there
is a beautifully libellous description of the horror writer Harry Adam Knight. I will leave it as an
exercise for the student to guess at least one of John's pseudonyms. And it isn't Leroy Kettle, though
that's close. There's nothing outstanding about either of the books and the plots are terribly routine. But
they are enormous fun -- absolutely perfect books to waste an hour or two with at a bar with a pint. Just
like John himself, really...