Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

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Do you speak English? Phlogiston Thirty-Seven, 1994 Word processors are wonderful devices. I'm using one as I write this article and I wouldn't be without it. I can incorporate second thoughts, move things around, interpolate sentences, rewrite whole chunks, and it is all so incredibly easy. What a relief it is not to have to retype a dozen pages for the sake of one new paragraph as I used to have to do all too many times in the past when using my little Olivetti portable typewriter. Unfortunately the temptation to do all of that neat stuff is sometimes too overwhelming to resist. The ease with which words can be processed leads inexorably to lots of words banged out at an enormous rate and accounts in large part for the proliferation of so many large books and never ending series. Two perpetrators of this literary fecundity are Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman and it seems to me that they embody many of the sins that word processors must be held responsible for. Like their food counterparts, if word processors are wrongly used they produce tasteless, easily digestible pap. Serpent Mage and The Hand of Chaos by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman are published by Bantam. They are two novels in the Death Gate cycle. They are also enormously large books which appear to have been written and published within days of each other, so rapidly did they appear on the shelves. The books are typical fantasies -- event driven rather than character driven since the characters are so wooden and dull that they couldn't drive anything! There are no surprises in the plots. Weiss and Hickman have found a money spinning formula and they never vary it at all. The books aim at a captive market (nobody is going to buy these books unless they have bought the previous ones since they are virtually incomprehensible if you have not read the earlier books in the series). This is a common sin of modern publishing and I have fulminated about it before. However the ease with which words can be spun together and the fact that so much writing in this area is formula writing anyway makes it very tempting simply to bang out any old rubbish as fast as possible (and let the sense, such as it is, go hang). I strongly suspect that these books are made up of largely unrevised first draft material. What else is one to make of this sort of saccharine writing: My lamb fell asleep almost immediately. I was puttering about the room, sorting her dear ribbons and laying out her dress for the morrow when a strange feeling came over me. My hands and arms felt heavy, my tongue dry and swollen. It was all I could do to stagger to my bed. I fell instantly into a strange state. I was asleep, yet I wasn't. I could see things, hear things, and yet I could not respond. And thus I saw them. Why the old fashioned phrase "the morrow"? What is wrong with the simple word "tomorrow"? The books are riddled with unnecessary footnotes referring to the history and customs of the races involved in the story. The footnotes define and describe the "unusual" words used in the text. On one occasion, a footnote defines the word "duenna" and I think it is a measure of the contempt that Weiss and Hickman have for their audience that they feel it necessary to define this perfectly ordinary word. (Nevertheless, footnotes are also very trendy things to have in novels these days and Weiss and Hickman are nothing if not dedicated followers of fashion.) The trend towards rapidly processed words can be seen even more clearly in Ghost Legion by Margaret Weiss, again published by Bantam. Here Margaret Weiss deserts her long time partner Tracy Hickman to produce a solo novel. It concerns Dion Starfire, the ruler of a galaxy. After years of war an uneasy peace reigns. Dion is in love with a woman who is not his queen and the alliances that rest on his marriage are threatened. The illegitimate son of the dead king leads a revolt against Dion. Can Dion preserve his throne and keep peace in the galaxy? Despite the futuristic trappings and pseudo-scientific speculations that litter the text this is not a science fiction book. This is a clichéd historical romance, a medieval costume drama with ray guns. The social set
up is laughable (feudalism across the light years -- good grief!) and the characterisation non-existent. It would not be out of place if it was shelved with the other bodice-rippers which are at least honest enough to proclaim themselves for what they are instead of hiding behind a glossy facade. The evidence of automatic writing with little or no revision applied to the text is even stronger in this book. Consider this passage: She was breath taking. Xris would have taken off his cloak -- had he owned a cloak -- thrown it in the mud at her feet. Hell, he would have thrown himself into the mud at her feet, begged her to walk with him. But he reminded himself sternly that business was business and he'd better keep this on a business footing -- which meant standing on his own two. This passage has four sentences and contains three grammatical errors, one ambiguity, one arguably bad grammatical habit, one misuse of punctuation and two biological impossibilities. That is not bad going for four sentences. "Xris would have taken off his cloak -- had he owned a cloak -- thrown it at her feet." Ignoring the parenthetical clause indicated by the hyphens, the sentence reads: "Xris would have taken off his cloak thrown it at her feet." We should always be able to remove parenthetical phrases or clauses without altering the major meaning of the sentence. If we do this here, we discover that the sentence has no meaning since there is no conjunction joining "…taken off his cloak" to "thrown it at her feet." and running them together turns the whole thing into nonsense. Probably the best way of joining them would be with "and" though a semi-colon might just be acceptable. The structure of the sentence suggests that the parenthetical clause is an afterthought interpolated into the flow. A better structure which removes the interpolation would be: "If Xris had owned a cloak, he would have taken it off and thrown it at her feet." Even this is not ideal since merely owning a cloak does not necessarily mean that one is wearing it. A much better phrasing is: "If Xris had been wearing a cloak, he would have taken it off and thrown it at her feet." This removes all the errors and also the ambiguity. "Hell, he would have thrown himself into the mud at her feet, begged her to walk with him." A similar mistake can be noted here. Again we have a missing conjunction between the elements of the sentence. A comma is used to suggest it, but that is not correct. A semi-colon would be marginally acceptable. Again though the word "and" is a much better choice. Thus we would end up with: "Hell, he would have thrown himself into the mud at her feet and begged her to walk with him." This ignores the physical impossibility of a person walking when lying in mud (or even speaking if one is face down), but it is still better than the original. "But he reminded himself sternly that business was business and he'd better keep this on a business footing -- which meant standing on his own two." Starting a sentence with "But" is generally frowned on. It can sometimes be an effective technique for adding extra emphasis (provided it is not overdone -- it is a habit I often catch myself indulging in; but that does not make it any more correct). It does seems a little out of place here. However, that possible error pales into insignificance when we examine the end of the sentence. If we parse the sentence strictly, we see that the word "two" is used as a noun. Since Xris is standing on his "own two", I am tempted to ask just which part of the body a "two" is! Obviously the writer meant to say "standing on his own two feet." However she omitted the word "feet" because she mistakenly assumed that "two" could be qualified by the previous word "footing". Since the context in which "footing" is used is actually unconnected with the person's own feet, this is simply not the case. Other passages from these and other books make it perfectly obvious that Weiss and Hickman are not as illiterate as these extracts might suggest. They do know the elementary rules of English grammar. It is just that sometimes, in the heat of the moment, they make mistakes. A little revision (or, since they are using a computerised system, perhaps the application of one of the many grammar checking programs that abound) would improve the prose immeasurably. I'm not sure what to do about the puerile plots out of the stock cupboard, but that is a different problem. Of course, the fact that such elementary mistakes still exist in the published book also raises the question of exactly what Bantam's copy editors do all day long, but that too is a different problem.
Page 3 and 4: Trimmings From The Triffid's Beard
Page 5 and 6: Foreword Unlike most holics, (if, a
Page 7: Buster Keaton and the lateral mind
Page 11 and 12: Movie Go Round Phlogiston Thirty-Fi
Page 13 and 14: crisps and a most revolting orange
Page 16 and 17: Lingua Frankly Phlogiston Thirty-Si
Page 18 and 19: tranquil islands of San Serif as th
Page 20: linguistic analysis. It is a theme
Page 25 and 26: perhaps over six feet." or "The per
Page 28 and 29: A Dozen Drabbles Phlogiston Thirty-
Page 30: This sort of thing had been going o
Page 33 and 34: In the story Jack Connie Willis cho
Page 35 and 36: (assuming the author describes them
Page 37 and 38: You should also consider whether or
Page 40 and 41: The Lesser Spotted Science Fiction
Page 42 and 43: . . . She peered at the cracked man
Page 44 and 45: stick. He hit the bed, and it was s
Page 47 and 48: Funny Business Phlogiston Forty-One
Page 49 and 50: ...A large bottle. And in the bottl
Page 51 and 52: His wit and wisdom are highly prais
Page 53: 16 novels, a Companion and a Mappe,
Page 56 and 57: weekends, many fine fictional works
Page 58 and 59: Zelazny brought Corwin's struggle t
Page 60: ordinary). He has also written some
Page 63 and 64: using them. Such ideas are reinforc
Page 65: that is quite frightening in the ra
Page 69 and 70: (v = velocity of aeroplane, c = spe
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press in recent years about people
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John Kilian Houston Brunner (1934-1
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In the Beginning Phoenixine Seventy
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It's Only Words Phoenixine Seventy-
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Alan Dean Foster Montezuma Strip As
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Drachenfels is absolutely brilliant
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There's a Pigeon in the Hole Phlogi
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detective story. Currently, under t
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Shock -- The unofficial Iain M Bank
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worlds (The Two Timers), interstell
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that were published in the Azazel c
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they came out and his new one is ju
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To Be Continued Phoenixine Seventy-
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searching out and nullifying sabote
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various acquaintances. Most of the
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The Mixture As Before Phoenixine Ei
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Paul J. McAuley's new novel Fairyla
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John Barnes Kaleidoscope Century Mi
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and move hastily on. It is also qui
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outside of these areas it is corres
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Bushell of the Royal American Mount
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Genre? Phoenixine Eighty-Two, July
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example, it is genuinely moving. On
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ody, and the game is afoot. The res
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Living in an SF Novel Phoenixine Ei
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Robyn Gossett is an entertaining wr
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Youthful Vices Phoenixine Eighty-Fi
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story is ever continued, I will be
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Connections Phoenixine Eighty-Six,
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have worried. She is on the top of
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New Things Phoenixine Eighty-Eight,
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novel with a lot of libertarian pre
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Oh Frabjous Day Phoenixine Eighty-N
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Falco, the detective in Vespasian's
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autobiography and several smaller a
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anyone to be proud of. But Malafren
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It sounded good and I dived into it
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Real Hols Phoenixine Ninety-One, Ma
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few months ago and complained that
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I Can't Lift up My Book Phoenixine
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There was a time, many years ago, w
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Moronicity Phoenixine Ninety-Three,
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my body opening in anticipation of
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Cats Phoenixine Ninety-Four, June 1
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With Higher Education, Sheffield an
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Food Phoenixine Ninety-Five, July 1
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through. His books pull you up with
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Snot Phoenixine Ninety-Six, August
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I have no hesitation in recommendin
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Tower Blocks and Graffiti Phoenixin
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picture had appeared on the wall an
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As I collected my luggage, the clou
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the Kay Scarpetta stories. Other th
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Ah -- so now I was having earthquak
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went back to the dentist. "Oh yes,
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Tony Phoenixine One-Hundred, Decemb
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ut when she puts her mind to it she
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Bouncy Phoenixine One-Hundred and O
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slammed shut as the wind screamed p
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A series of bizarre murders is shak
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The Universe Hates Me Phoenixine On
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humour with which this farrago of n
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Diatribe on Language Phoenixine One
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unless your school principle says s
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with large gaps in his memory and a
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Toilets Phoenixine One-Hundred and
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wall rather than recessed into it.
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Richard Matheson I am Legend Orb Ro
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almost a reprise of the war of 1812
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McConnell's book Code Complete proc
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Fiji Phoenixine One-Hundred and Six
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Every night the resident trio of mu
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The next day I flew home and the vi
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Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

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