Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

Bob Shaw (1931–1996)
Phlogiston Forty-Five, 1996
Bob Shaw's initial involvement in science fiction was as a fan. He obtained his first copy of Astounding at
the age of twelve, read it, and was hooked for life. In an essay the fanzine Hyphen, he remarked:
...for the next five years [I] never gave a single serious thought to anything but science fiction.
This monomania gave me a lot of personal pleasure and satisfaction -- in fact I was deliriously
happy for those five years -- but it had an unfortunate drawback in that by the time I was old
enough to start work I was virtually unemployable... I cared for nothing but science fiction, knew
nothing but science fiction, was bone lazy and utterly without ambition. Into the bargain I was
tremendously proud -- I was the only SF reader I knew and really reckoned myself one of the
star-begotten.
However his solitary state was not to last long and eventually he met up with other fans, most notable
among these being Walt Willis and James White (who later became famous as the author of the Sector
General stories). In 1954 in collaboration with Willis, Bob Shaw published his first "book", a slim fan
publication called The Enchanted Duplicator. This allegory of SF fans and fan related activities is
written in a mock-heroic style and details the fantasy adventures of Jophan as he scales the Mountains
of Inertia and journeys through many perils to reach the paradise of Trufandom. Along the way he must
contend with the Hekto Swamp and the Torrent of Overdrinking. He must fight his way past the
Hucksters and avoid the Glades of Gafia. And so on, but you get the idea. This little allegory seemed to
strike a chord, and almost uniquely among fan publications, continues to be regularly republished. My
copy is dated 1983 and is the eighth edition. Heaven knows how many more there have been since then.
Jophan's Quest has itself entered the fannish folklore (and New Zealandfan Bruce Bern once published a
board game based around Jophan's adventures).
Even after Bob began to make a full time living as a professional SF writer, he never lost his love of
fandom and things fannish and in 1979 and 1980 he won Hugo awards for his fannish writings, awards
of which he was fiercely proud.
In the 1950s he published quite a lot of short stories in the professional magazines, but then fell silent
for several years. He returned to writing in the mid 1960s and the short story Light of Other Days
(1966) gained him a Nebula nomination and a reputation as a writer of remarkable ingenuity. The story
revolves around a genuinely original SF notion -- slow glass is a substance through which light takes
years to travel. Hence it can absorb images of (say) a beautiful view and give up these images decades
later after it has been installed as a window in (say) an industrial office block in a grimy suburb. The view
that it shows is a view of the past, and historical events may be viewed in real time (if the glass had been
properly positioned to view them all those years ago). This story was later incorporated into the fix up
novel Other Days, Other Eyes.
Bob once told me that he carried the notion of slow glass around in his head for years, waiting for the
right story to use it in. He said that it was too glorious a notion to waste on a trivial story. It needed the
right plot to illuminate the idea properly. He compared the plot to a jeweller's setting which, if properly
designed, would show off a diamond brilliantly, but which if shoddily designed would detract from the
beauty of the diamond set in it. He thought of and discarded dozens of plots before he found one that
he felt would set the idea properly.
Bob became a full time writer in 1975 and over the years published almost thirty books -- novels and
story collections. All were well received and all were ingenious and entertaining. He took great delight in
exploring odd notions and he played the game of "what if" most convincingly. What if there really were a
proper Dyson Sphere discovered? (Orbitsville). What if there existed two planets which orbited each
other and shared a common atmosphere? Could explorers travel between them by balloon? (The
Wooden Spaceships). What if there existed an anti-neutrino world orbiting inside the Earth? (A
Wreath of Stars). He also explored many of the classical SF themes and wrote what could be
considered the definitive treatment of some of them. Immortality (One Million Tomorrows), parallel