Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

ut when she puts her mind to it she can compete with the best. Every one of these stories is a gem.
They range in mood from the grim to the (relatively) light hearted and not a word is wasted.
One of the things that Tony was particularly good at was standing in front of a room full of people and
talking to them. No matter what the subject he spoke authoritatively, persuasively and amusingly. He
always spoke off the cuff, there were never any notes or pre-prepared bits. Tony always maintained that
if he prepared beforehand, giving the talk would be boring since he would be going over the ideas for a
second time. And if he was bored, the audience would be bored, and that would never do.
One of his more persuasive talking sessions convinced the United Nations that environmentally harmful
chemicals were a pressing problem (and likely to become more so) and that one of the ways the UN
could help would be to maintain a database of such chemicals, noting their effects and any alleviating
treatment that might be applied. This database would be contributed to by all member states and would
be available to all member states in the event of an emergency. (The idea later proved its worth when a
big dioxin leak from a factory in Italy caused major environmental damage and much suffering.
Information from the database was used in the clean up campaign).
And so in the mid 1970s I found myself in Geneva working on the design and implementation of this
database. Those lunch time programming sessions were being put to very good use...
Stephen Bury is better known as Neal Stephenson, but whichever incarnation you find him in you are
guaranteed an enjoyable time. The Cobweb is set during the events leading up to the Gulf War of 1991.
Clyde Banks is a deputy sheriff investigating a murder in a small Iowa town near a university. The
murdered man is an Arab who was working at the university. It seems that rather a lot of Arabs work at
the university. And in the surrounding towns. And they are not always friendly towards each other.
Meanwhile in Washington politics and expediency threaten to undermine world peace as well as destroy
careers at both the top and the bottom of the tree. Only Hennessy who once worked for the CIA but
now works for the FBI and is therefore cordially hated by both seems to know what is going on, but he
is constrained by political machinations and when the crisis comes he must depend on Clyde Banks.
Could Saddam Hussein really have a biological weapons factory in an American university?
The book succeeds on every level. It is a thriller, a comedy, a serious examination of political motivations
and a thoroughly entertaining read.
And so is Lunatics, Bradley Denton's mad new novel. Jack is in love with Lily, a goddess from the moon.
She insists that he meet her naked by moonlight and when Jack is arrested for indecent exposure his
friends all gather round to help. And so does Lily
This is a delightful novel about love and the things that make a relationship work. It is much lighter than
Denton's earlier books and is much more approachable as a result.
I have lived in New Zealand for nearly seventeen years. For much of that time I worked as a
programmer. For the last few years I have been teaching my skills to other people. I have had to be a
good programmer and I have had to be a good and persuasive and entertaining speaker. All of these
things I learned from Tony, both directly from the horse's mouth and indirectly by watching and
mimicking what I saw. A day seldom passes without something that Tony taught me proving useful.
Tony Kent died on October 11 th 1997. He was my friend and I miss him.
Postscript.
Following Tony Kent's death in October 1977, a group of his friends contributed to an annual award to
be called The Tony Kent Strix Award, to be presented each year by the Institute of Information Scientists
in recognition of outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval. The
first award (in 1998) was to Professor Stephen Robertson of the Department of Information Science of
City University.