Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

The spares are clones of the super rich. They represent the ultimate health insurance -- if you lose a limb
in an accident, no problem; just have one grafted on from your spare. Since the spares are genetic
clones there is no chance of tissue rejection. A cure is guaranteed. You will be back to normal before you
know it. Pity about the limbless clone.
By convoluted means and for reasons unknown the spares are stolen from Randall and when he goes
looking for them he stumbles into mystery, murder and mayhem.
The plot of the book is reasonably routine and when examined with a jaundiced eye it has little original to
say. The attraction of the book lies in the brilliantly controlled use of language and the juxtaposition of
the real and surreal. Sometimes achingly funny, sometimes bleakly depressing, this is a book that pulls
no punches.
In the snobby higher levels of New Richmond, Jack Randall passes "... a shrubbery so refined that it was
probably eligible to vote." The whole book is full of lines like that. How can you fail to enjoy it?
With Lifehouse, Spider Robinson has written a deeply self-indulgent book. June Bellamy goes for a walk
in the park and returns with missing memories. Soon she is on the run from evil super-humans. Ho
hum. The book is filled with self-referential SF in-jokes. Nobody but a rabid fan could like it and even they
will probably find as dull and predictable as I did.
Being an enormous tower block, the Brisbane office has lifts and like many modern lifts they are wont to
talk to you, advising you of the floor you have reached and on occasional loquacious moments informing
you about the outside weather and temperature ("Sunny" and "Hot"; this is Brisbane after all).
I've always been suspicious of lifts ever since I discovered that the headquarters of the Otis Elevator
Company in Wellington was a two storey building with no lifts in it. This suspicion was reinforced when
my boss entered a lift in our Auckland offices. She spent the next couple of hours happily travelling up
and down as the lift point blank refused to bother itself with the boring necessity of stopping
somewhere and opening the doors.
The best graffito I've ever seen was scrawled on the side of a lift. It said: "This Otis Regrets It's Unable To
Lift Today, Madam."
The second volume of Mike Resnick's Widowmaker trilogy sees another clone of Jefferson Nighthawk
sent out to the frontier to wreak derring do and rescue fair maidens. All is not as it seems (of course)
and in a thrilling chase of cross and double-cross, fighting against odds of a million to one, the
Widowmaker and his companions (both alien and human) attempt to remove a corrupt politician and
steal a fortune to protect what remains of the life of the original Jefferson Nighthawk as he dreams in his
cold-sleep, waiting for science to discover a cure for the disease that is destroying him. Like its
predecessor, it is a rollicking good yarn and I had a rollicking good time reading it.
Jane Lindskold's new novel is a quest for the source of magic. A generation ago magic was in common
use throughout the world. But then for no readily discernible reason the magic went away and is now
but a myth. Slowly the world is recovering but hardships are many. Hulhc, a farmer, has spent a lifetime
poring over his father's books of magic and he is convinced that magic still exists in the mountains of
the North. He persuades a travelling circus to journey with him to the mountains in search of the magic
and the book is the tale of their journeyings.
The book feels unfinished, all surface and little depth, and towards the end it becomes very rushed as if
the author was hurrying to meet a deadline. In fact it reads more like a first draft than a finished piece
and I was very disappointed with it. In her previous books Jane Lindskold has displayed a consistently
high standard of writing and world-building. Read them instead of this one.
Not all graffiti is verbal. Sometimes the pictorial ones are even better. When I lived in England I worked
on the campus of Nottingham University. The toilets that we used were just across the way, and one
day I trotted over there with a copy of New Scientist as was my invariable habit when I intended to be
there for some time. However that day the magazine remained unread because the most magnificent