Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

didn't do it that way) are far too rigid. This inflexibility becomes the colonists worst enemy, for their
society (like all societies) attempts to evolve and change to meet the challenges of life. But change is not
permitted and the conflict between the two requirements ends up destroying the very thing that the
rigidity of the rules was designed to protect.
There are universal messages here for all cultural conservatives -- the comatose intellectual savants
from the academie francaise, or religious fundamentalists of any persuasion at all, or Irish nationalists
still seeking revenge for the ancient excesses of Oliver Cromwell, or Maori traditionalists trapped in a
time warp a hundred and fifty or more years old. This book isn't really about the Kikuyu at all. It talks in
universal symbols and that is the reason for its greatness.
Resnick has no answer for this paradox, of course for there is no answer; it is the way of the world.
Instead he asks questions and gives warnings, as every great artist should. And along the way he tells a
story that will wrench your heart strings.
Michael Flynn first came to my attention with a superb novel called Firestar which I discussed in an
earlier article. Now a sequel to that novel has appeared. It is called Rogue Star and it is as wonderful as
its predecessor. The last book ended with an expedition being sent to investigate an asteroid. The new
book opens in the ship, the crew well on their way. However the bulk of the book takes place on Earth
as Mariesa Van Huyten continues the political manipulations that add up to project Prometheus -- her
master plan to protect the Earth from a collision with a rogue asteroid, and almost as a side effect to aid
greatly with the social and scientific progress of the world as a whole. Few know her secret agenda -but
she has made a lot of friends and not a few enemies.
Interspersed between the dramatic events on Earth are vignettes that take place aboard the space ship
as the crew approach the asteroid, land on it, explore it (and make some startling discoveries) and
return to Earth. The book ends as it began -- with the spaceship, though this time at the end of its
journey rather than the beginning.
The microcosm of the exploration of the asteroid is skilfully echoed in the macrocosm of Mariesa van
Huyten's manoeuvrings. The parallels are quite overt. One of the spaceship crew remarks at the end of
the book that "We aren't the same men that left [the Earth]". Similarly, Mariesa at the end is not the
Mariesa of the beginning. There have been huge upheavals in her life, her career and the direction of
project Prometheus...
Like far too many second books in a series, this one is partly a scene setter for the prefigured
denouement that will be the third book. Certainly it does not stand alone. If you haven't read Firestar it
probably won't mean much to you. But if you have read the earlier novel, this one will hold you
enthralled.
On the strength of Flynn's two novels, I also indulged in a collection of his short stories. Like so many of
these things they proved to be a mixed bunch. The title story (and by far the longest in the book) was a
brilliant tale that gripped my imagination. It is set in an alternate world in which America is a balkanised
continent -- a land mass of small warring countries. Pennsylvania remains German speaking and largely
isolated from its neighbours, though bitterly at war with them. A Pennsylvanian scout, returning from an
expedition comes across a stranger in the forest; a man carrying much odd looking scientific equipment.
The man is a time traveller from a future (and very different) America. But not only has he travelled
through time, he has also travelled across the stream of history to (it transpires) several parallel worlds,
this one being only the latest of many. He is hopelessly lost. All he wants is to return home, but he will
never be able to do so.
The story is a poignant one. The misery of the lost traveller on the one hand and the realisation of what
might have been on the other. Both the traveller and the Pennsylvanians have room for regret over lost
opportunities, some large and some small. It is a brilliant and most moving tale.
The remaining stories in the book are all quite competent but they never really caught fire for me.
For my sins, I work with computers and for much of my career I have been a programmer. Steve