CAPTAIN FLASHBACK A fanzine composed for the 407th distribution of the A Shining Vandal on a Hill: Turbo-Charged Party-Animal Amateur Press A Saga of Barbarian Adventure Association, from the joint membership of Andy Hooper and Carrie Root, residing at 11032 30th Ave. In the bad old days when history was largely NE Seattle, WA 98125. E-mail Andy at interpreted as a series of military and dynastic [email protected], and you may reach Carrie at struggles, certain dates acquired a totemic [email protected]. This is a Drag Bunt Press significance. They helped summarize complex Production, completed on 5/18/2020. and ongoing events and fixed them to a moment which every school child was expected to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK is devoted to old remember. Most of us still recall a few of these – fanzines, Attila’s Empire, the Justinian Reconquest the year fourteen hundred and ninety-two, when and other fascinating phenomena of the 5th Century. Columbus sailed the ocean blue, for example. All material by Andy Hooper unless indicated. Depending on where you grow up, dates like Contents of Issue #18: July 4th, 1776, or Easter Sunday, 1916, have a Page 1: A Shining Vandal on a Hill: significance that most find easy to remember. A Saga of Barbarian Adventure Page 2: A Key to Interlineations in Issue #17 Writers speculating on historical alternatives Page 18: Comments on Turbo-Apa #406 find such dates convenient points of reference, Page 22: Fanmail from some Flounder: since even a reader largely ignorant of history Letters to CAPTAIN FLASHBACK will recognize turning points like the Battle of Page 24: I Remember Entropy Department: Gettysburg or the French Revolution. “The Feast of Calabashes” by Randy Byers, Alternatives such as a victorious Confederacy, a from GLOSS #1, May 2000. French Empire which survives Napoleon or a North America colonized by Sung Dynasty treasure ships, present differences so striking that any reader is likely to notice them. Staving off the fall of Rome is another close contender for favorite alt. history premise, and it lacks some of the odious political implications of promoting a Southron victory in the American Civil war. Atheists and other radicals are always beguiled by the possibility that the emperor Constantine might never have embraced Christianity or acted to protect it during his reign. Others look at his decision to establish a new seat of Imperial government at Byzantium as the beginning of the end. But rather than trying to restore the pagan splendors of the Republic, most speculative writers have tried to prop up the later Christian Empire against the Barbarian tides and prevent the advent of what Silver Siliqua of Gaeseric (389 – 477 AD) we glibly referred to as the “Dark Ages.” Greatest of Vandal kings [Continued Next Page] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Issue #18, May 2020 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Key to Linos published in April in CAPTAIN FLASHBACK #17: Page 3: “Something in the wind has learned my name.” Lyric, “Top of the World,” Richard Carpenter and John Bettis, 1972 Page 4: “We had to come down in this flea-bitten border town.” & Page 5: “And you would drag me to this dive. This un-upholstered sewer.” Litany of low-budget misery offered by Doreen Culberson (Paula Hill), Mesa of Lost Women (1953) Page 6: “A crisis can serve to expand our moral imagination.” Senator Cory Booker, March 24th, 2020 Page 7: “Some get spiritual ‘cause they see the light, and some ‘cause they feel the heat.” Lyric from the 1999 song “Conversation with the Devil,” Ray Wylie Hubbard Page 8: “What am I going to do in a submarine” Lyric from the 1978 song “In the Navy” by the Village People Page 9: “Why do you drive on parkways and park on driveways?” Attributed to pitcher Larry Anderson by broadcaster Tim McCarver, Game 1, 1995 World Series. Page 10: “Why, we could dance if there wasn’t so much blood around.” Martha Ritchie (Pat Delany) comments on her husband’s Venusian décor, Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966). Page 11: “How do you think I communicated with Venus in the first place, Curt?” Dr. Keith Ritchie (Tony Huston) talk ham radio lore, Zontar, the Thing from Venus (1966). Page 12: “What kind of a man are you anyway? Makes love to my wife and doesn’t even talk to me?” Montressor (Peter Lorre) Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962). Page 12: “Well, there’s a lot to clean up, but it’s not like there’s a big mess.” Kitchen evaluation, Carrie Root, 2-25-2020 Page 13: “Of course it’s fresh, it’s still frozen.” Reported by Hal O’Brien, 4-18-2020 Page 14: “For some reason, when you said that all I could think of were the words “orthopedic dildo.” Gene Perkins, as quoted by Loren MacGregor in TALKING STOCK #11, June 1973 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Shining Vandal on a Hill time, including the printing press, brandy [continued from page 1] distilling and double-entry book-keeping. He co- opts the cashiered Belisarius into leading the L. Sprague de Camp, who largely invented Gothic forces, and the adventure ends on plans alternate history with his 1939 novel Lest to build ships to reach the Americas. Darkness Fall, immediately turned the classic premise on its head by proposing that the It is a delicious re-imagination of Twain’s Empire might not have been the most ideal “Connecticut Yankee,” and a fascinating effort stewards of civilization available. His time- to jump straight from late antiquity to the travelling protagonist lands in Gothic Italy in industrial revolution. But the world in which De 535 AD, and immediately starts trying to save Camp’s Professor Padway finds himself has “Western Civilization” through the medium of already seen the “end” of the Roman Empire in the Ostrogothic rulers of the peninsula. He the West. The Goths are one of several reasons that the many victories won by the “Barbarian” peoples occupying territory Byzantine General Belisarius would only paint a controlled by Rome a century or so before, brittle patina of Eastern Orthodox hegemony including the Franks, Vandals, Alemanni, Suebi, over the Western Mediterranean, which would Alans, Gepids, and Lombards. be easily shattered by the expansion of Islam The migration of these people from their into North Africa and Europe in the 8th Century. supposed points of origin in Scandinavia and the The Ostrogoths appealed to him as tough, but Baltic countries took centuries to accomplish, fair; they allowed their subjects religious but there is one of those memorable dates that freedom and generally maintained the Roman summarizes their journey, and has by tradition legal and civil codes. He works to prop up their been called the year that the Roman Empire tottering kingdom, by bringing many “fell.” In January of 406 AD, large parties of innovations into the world centuries before their those Barbarian peoples crossed the Rhine River 2 near the city of Mainz and began a rapid made the crossing on the last day of 405 or 406; expansion into Roman Gaul. Rome’s armies had and we’re not quite sure who was involved in been concentrated in the Italian Peninsula to face the expedition, or just where they went after the an invasion by the Ostrogoths, and there was no first few locations to the west of Mainz. Saint way to stop the mass migration into the West. In Jerome of Stridon (347-420) was a witness of Britain, Roman troops mutinied, and would the gathering barbarian horde as it massed in the follow a series of local pretenders and usurpers. northern reaches of the Roman province of Pannonia, and wrote a letter describing the tribal The migrants did not cooperate in their efforts groups that composed it. But he included some and frequently fought one another for possession historical people like the Quadi and the of notable cities. Some of them – two branches Sarmatians, who had mostly disappeared by the of the Vandals, one of the Alans, and the Suebi, beginning of the fifth Century. Jerome probably later called “Swabians” – crossed the Pyrenees had trouble telling a Burgundian from a Saxon, in 409 and set up new kingdoms in the provinces but his meaning remains clear: this was the all- of Roman Hispania. Some of these kingdoms time barbarian jamboree. would thrive and expand, eventually conquering the coast of North Africa as far east as Tunisia. There had been piecemeal migrations across the The Roman effort to save Italy was also Roman limites for hundreds of years; the overwhelmed, and the Ostrogothic King Alaric Romans had traditionally responded by paying would actually take and plunder the city of the strongest group to guard the frontier against Rome in 410 AD. the others. But in 406, every tribe between the mouth of the Danube River and the lower Do the Funky Gibbon reaches of the Rhine were in motion at the same And so, 406 AD has long been one of those time. The obvious reason for this sense of memorable dates, after which the hog was out of urgency was that most of these people were the tunnel, the genie released from the bottle, being chased out of their previous homes by the and “the Empire” shifted irrevocably from a Asiatic Huns. The Alans, an Iranian people like Latin-speaking state to one that spoke Greek. Of the Sarmatians, arrived in Europe a few decades course, virtually from the moment I first heard before the Huns and started the dominoes falling or read the date, someone has been trying to sell by moving into the steppes north of the Black alternate interpretations of events.