Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

amazingly detailed fantasy world with unnerving resonances with our own. I particularly enjoyed Jane's
university career where she studied for a degree in alchemy. Remembering my own studies for a degree
in chemistry, I sympathised with her when her experiments failed to work (though I never resorted to
the somewhat drastic methods that she has to invoke).
The novel is unclassifiable. Sort of like Gormenghast crossed with Disney and flavoured with a soupçon
of Salvador Dali. Charles Dickens on steroids. I thoroughly enjoyed it and finished it wanting more. This is
always a test of a good book.
By now I was facing a crisis. It was time to fly home and I had run out books. What to do? At the airport
I bought two more, hoping to use them to while away the hours between (and during) flights. The first
was Age and Guile -- Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut, a collection of twenty five years
of journalism by P. J. O'Rourke. Not science fiction, but who said I had to read SF all the time?
I like P. J. O'Rourke. If it makes sense to describe him as a right-wing Hunter Thompson you may get a
rough idea of where he fits in to the pantheon of journalists. In his introduction, he points out that he
starts out his career making fun of a second rate American president (Nixon) and winds up twenty five
years later making fun of a second rate American president (Clinton). This causes him to wonder about
the progress of his career. O'Rourke's ability to make fun of himself as well as of the society he reports
on rescues so many of these pieces from the polemics they could so easily have turned into (the ones
that were polemics he mocks from the perspective of later years and puts them in a new light). If you
want to know what the ‘60s and ‘70s were really like you could do worse than read this book for its
historical perspective. You may even get an insight into the ‘80s and ‘90s. You will definitely get a lot of
laughs.
As the aeroplane landed at Auckland at 1:30am I was deep into Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean
Koontz. A large book which I judged to be just right for a journey that ended (as do all journeys, it would
seem) at an uncivilised hour. The story is a sort of a chase movie. The hero (Spencer Grant, though that
may not be his real name) is hunting for a girl he met once and fell in love with. Meanwhile, both he and
the girl are being hunted by an unnamed secret (and highly unofficial and extra-legal) organisation. There
are lots of murders, lots of high technology, satellites, computers and such. As a high tech thriller it is
enormous fun (though I found the computer sections somewhat naively written even though the ideas
they deal with are spot on and anything but naive). It is a sort of proto-SF I suppose and the computer
technology and what is done with it makes the book almost cyberpunk. It is very trendy, full of networks
and hackers. An enormous timewaster, but thoroughly entertaining.
Now that I am fully recovered from jet lag and have to buy my own drinks, I am reading Pipes of
Orpheus by Jane Lindskold. But I'll tell you about that next time.
Greg Egan Permutation City Harper
Christopher Priest The Prestige Touchstone
Charles de Lint Memory and Dream Tor
Michael Swanwick The Iron Dragon's Daughter Millenium
P. J. O'Rourke Age and Guile -- Beat, Youth and a Bad Haircut Picador
Dean Koontz Dark Rivers of the Heart Headline