If you had come up to me twelve years ago and asked me to spend the next twelve years writing a continuing series of essays I would have laughed in your face. How on earth could I have twelve years worth of essay ideas? It simply wasn’t possible.

Well…

These essays began life in Warp, the magazine of New Zealand’s National Association for Science Fiction (NASF), and they migrated from there to Alex Heatley’s Phlogiston. It is largely due to Alex’s persistence, cajolery, persuasion, pleading and bullying that they have continued for so long. Once he sent me a dummy issue of Phlogiston. It consisted of fifteen pages, all blank but for the legend:

We regret the absence of The Bearded Triffid in this issue of Phlogiston.

I can take a hint. He got his article.

One of the articles in this collection appeared in the eponymous Killer Kung Fu Enema Nurses on Crack, a magazine published by Peter Hassall of Wellington. He asked me to write the article for the first issue and my immediate reaction was to refuse. How could anybody write an article around a title like that? But then I realised that I could, and so I did, and I remain very proud of the result. It has nothing to do with science fiction, but I hope you enjoy it.

Looking through creased and faded and smudged carbon copies (for the early articles) and dusty disk files buried in long forgotten directories (for the later ones) was a nostalgic exercise. I confess I had forgotten much of what I said and thought over the years. I find that the Alan Robson of today does not always agree with the opinions of the Bearded Triffid of yesterday. It is a humbling experience to disagree with yourself. However I have resisted the urge to tinker and apart from correcting a few errors of fact I have let the essays appear as originally written.

I meant these things at the time that I wrote them, so let them stand. They represent a triffid growing up.

In one case, though, I have added some value. Herein you will find the text of a speech I gave as the fan guest of honour at Windycon, a SF convention held in Wellington in 1987. Almost two years after the event, I woke up at 3am laughing hysterically because I had just thought of a new joke for the speech. Then I remembered I had already given it and the joke had come too late. I fell into a slough of despondency and went back to sleep. When I awoke next morning, I remembered the joke, and it was still funny and I’ve been dying to tell it to somebody ever since. So now you can read it in all its glory.

I hope you enjoy these essays. They were written to entertain just as much as to promulgate my opinions.