The Reluctant Famulus 105 The Reluctant Famulus 105 May/June2015 Thomas D. Sadler, Editor/Publisher, etc. 305 Gill Branch Road, Owenton, KY 40359 Phone: 502-484-3766 E-mail: [email protected] Contents Introduction, Editor 1 Rat Stew, Gene Stewart 4 Alternate History, Alfred D. Byrd 12 Brian Lewis, Eric Barraclough 18 The Crotchety Critic, Michaele Jordan 24 A Book Review, John Purcell 27 NewAncient Earthlings, Gayle Perry 30 Degeneration Gap, Walt Wentz 40 Letters of Comment 42 Artwork/Photos A. B. Kynock Front & Back covers, 44, 48, 52 Brad Foster 17, 29, 31, 53 Brian Lewis 18 through 23 Spore & Toetoe Hodges 26, 30, 34 Gene Stewart 7, 8, 20 Internet 26,27, 41 top Unknown 23, upper right photo of Brian Lewis The Reluctant Famulus is a product of Strange Dwarf Publications. Many of the comments expressed herein are solely those of the Editor/Publisher and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of any sane, rational persons who know what they are doing and have carefully thought out beforehand what they wanted to say. Material not written or produced by the Editor/Publisher is printed by permission of the various writers and artists and is copyright by them and remains their sole property and reverts to them after publication. TRF maybe obtained for The Usual but especially in return for written material and artwork, postage costs, The Meaning of Life, and Editorial Whim. The Reluctant Famulus Introduction: Past, Present and Outer Space Preface: It seems that Ms. Andronicos recently Regarding this current issue: I realize no wrote a play, To Tread Among Serpents, one will believe me but I spell-checked the which won Jacksonville State University’s entire contents, including this preface (and Southern Playwrights Competition in 2014. added words to the program’s dictionary). I The play was produced April 9-12 of this then, line by line, proofread my introduction year. The play is loosely based on the ac- four times, all the articles twice each and the count of Viola Hyatt’s murder and dis- locs twice. I even even to the extent of memberment of two brothers. I say loosely enlarging the page sizes in the hope of easily because, in the play, Ms. Andronicos’ catching all the typos. I have gone over this character killer was caught up in an illegal issue as slowly carefully as I can but I’m sure liquor racket which involved some powerful somehow there will still be some typos. That people. In Andronicos’s play the killer is typos will still show up anyway is very called Violet Haight. (Some big change there: frustrating and aggravating for me. It looks as Viola to Violet and Hyatt to Haight. That if one of my many flaws is that I trust the really distances the play. She couldn’t come loccers to do their own proofreading. That’s up with something like Susan Jones?) obviously a big mistake and I know I need to Andronicos says, “But, like Faulkner, there’s break myself of that habit. I spent over eight something oddly funny about it all. The hours doing all this in the hope I have play’s a dark comedy, if it’s a comedy at all.” eliminated all the typos but I’m fearful that (With all the blood and body parts . a dark there will still be some no matter how much comedy?” It doesn't sound like one to me.) time I spend trying to catch and correct them. But that’s not all. There was also an It may be a Sisyphean endeavor. I hope not. accompanying article by H. Brandt Ayers of That’s enough on the subject of typos. The Anniston Star. Ayers, who, as a cub Now, on to the Introduction. reporter for The Anniston Star in 1960, was First off, a follow-up of sorts to last assigned to do a jailhouse interview with issue’s Introduction. I don’t know if it was Viola Hyatt. Fortunately for you readers I’m serendipity or plain old dumb luck but while not including the interview. Mainly because randomly searching the internet I came upon it wasn’t much of an interview. But what a recent news article in the Anniston Star follows are some interesting bits that didn’t which related to the account of the Axe appear in the account in the Introduction to murderess. Basically, what what I found is TRF 104 or Elton Camp’s version. Initially, this: Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos, works as at the time, regarding the finding of body the director of diversity for the Center for parts, The Associated Press said, “We Science of Information at Purdue University. speculated that they were “gangland” When she was a little girl growing up in Ball murders, possibly the result of an underworld Play, in Etowah County, which is adjacent to civil war between the Alabama hill-based Calhoun County, she used to play with white-whiskey ring and the Tennessee red- friends in Arm and Leg Creek, which wasn’t whiskey ring.” That speculation ended when far from her home on Young’s Chapel Road. the brothers Emmett and Lee hadn’t appeared 1 for work for several days and Viola Hyatt empty of planets within Mercury’s orbit. became implicated in the murders.” They posit that Jupiter may be to blame for Then, regarding her motive for the this strange “gaping hole”. murders, Viola said, “They done me wrong.” From their research they suggest that the It seems she was alleged to have been in the gas giant acted “like a wrecking ball” in the midst of a dual sexual encounter with the early solar system, obliterating several big, brothers. Her business with one concluded, rocky “super Earths”. something was said and the other brother In a written statement. Dr. Konstantin covered himself with a handkerchief in a Batygin, assistant professor of planetary manner she found insulting. science at Caltech and one of the researchers The punishment she exacted for that responsible for the new finding, said “It ap- insult hardly seems equal to the offense. pears that the solar system today is not the She stole into their trailer at night with a common representative of the galactic shotgun and emptied a chamber into each planetary census. But there is no reason to brother’s face, then dragged the bodies think that the dominant mode of planet outside. In order to fit the bodies to the formation throughout the galaxy should not dimensions of a wooden wheelbarrow, she have occurred here. It is more likely that cut off their arms and legs with a double-bit subsequent changes have altered its original ax. She made several trips placing the parts makeup.” on a tarpaulin in the back seat of the family Batygin and his colleague Dr. Gregory car. She drove through the night on a journey Laughlin, a professor of astronomy and that touched several northeast Alabama astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, conducted a counties, throwing an arm out here, a leg out series of simulations based on a theory first there, rolling out the two torsos elsewhere. put forward by astronomers in 2011. The After her arrest she took sheriff’s dep- “Grand Tack” theory” asserts that Jupiter uties on a ghastly treasure hunt to relocate the became trapped in a disk of gas and dust. pieces, and the deputies stated as fact that Jupiter was pulled inward toward the Sun, she kept more private “treasure” in the before Saturn formed, and pulled it back out freezer. Lorena Bobbitt never attained such a again. rank as a folk villain. I leave it to anyone The simulations suggest that as Jupiter who’s reading this to determine what the migrated inward, its gravity disordered the “treasure” might have been. orbits of asteroids and planetary building You who might have read last issue’s blocks, called planetismals, in the inner solar Intro, know the rest. system. They think this probably triggered a Now, leaving Viola Hyatt for good, cascade of collisions which violently broke That doggone trouble-maker Jupiter our solar system’s first generation of planets In the 1990s, when astronomers began apart and drove them into the sun. studying other solar systems in the Milky Dr. Laughlin wrote, in a statement Way galaxy they noticed something that fromUC Santa Cruz, “It’s the same thing we looked peculiar. Most of these systems have worry about if satellites were to be destroyed big planets that circle their host stars in tight in low-Earth orbit. Their fragments would orbits. It was a finding that makes our solar start smashing into other satellites and you’d system somewhat of a cosmic oddball. Re- risk a chain reaction of collisions. Our work cently, researchers at Caltech and the indicates that Jupiter would have created University of California, Santa Cruz, claim such a collisional cascade in the inner solar they’ve figured out why our solar system is system.” The debris left over from the col- 2 lisions ultimately blended into our solar populations. In other words, we are much system’s familiar inner planets, Mercury, more likely to find ourselves to be the ants Venus, Earth, and Mars. among intelligent species.” I’d have thought Jupiter might have had As Newsweek explained Simpson’s argu- something to do with creating the asteroid ment, “... there are probably more planets belt too. But what do I know? I’m certainly with relatively small animals than planets no astronomer of astrophysicist. with relatively large animals. It makes sense An article describing the findings was published to assume that Earth is in the former online March 24 in the journal Proceedings of the category, so we can assume that humans are National Academy of Sciences probably among the smaller intelligent beings.