TTThTT hhheeee RRReReeelllluuuuccccttttaaaannnntttt FFFaFaaammmmuuuulllluuuussss 999222 Alien of the Year

Friznik 24C4NO1 The Reluctant Famulus # 92 March/April 2013 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 6 A Mystery 1 9 A Tribute, David Rowe 10 Bluegrass Beginnings, Al Byrd 12 Hawaiian Novel, Matt Howard 18 The Crotchety Critic, Michaele Jordan 24 Don't You Rock Me, Eric Barraclough 26 Letters 29 Mystery 2 45 Conclusion, Editor 46

Artwork

Spore/Totoe Hodges & TDS Front cover, Al Byrd 12, 13, 17 Brad Foster 11, 31, 35, 39 Alexis Gilliland 9, 29, 33, 37, 41 Internet 1-4, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20-23, 25, 50 A. B. Kynock Back cover Gene Stewart 43 Periophone 28, left column Radio Times 28 (upper) Rose, Morris Co. Ltd. 28 (bottom) Unknown 26 (lower), 27 (both) Womans Magazine 26 (upper)

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. Permission is granted to any persons who wish to reprint material presented herein, provided proper and due credit is given both to the author/artist who produced the material and to the origi- nal publication in which it appeared. TRF maybe obtained for The Usual but especially in return for written materi- al and artwork, postage costs, The Meaning of Life, , and Editorial Whim. TTTTThhhhheeeee RRRRReeeeellllluuuuuccccctttttaaaaannnnnttttt FFFFFaaaaammmmmuuuuullllluuuuusssss Introduction: Strange and Curious

First off, I just discovered (shows how image was taken by the left Navigation cam- careful—not!—I am.) that I forgot to re- era (Navcam). To me it’s an unusual shape or check the contents page and so neglected to a brick and it’s apparently the only one; there remove Sheryl’s name from the articles are no others in the vicinity. One brick, out in list—as I’m certain you sharp-eyed readers the open, all by itself? noticed. Sorry about that. It’s obvious now that no matter how careful I think I’ve been I’m forever doomed not to produce issues with no mistakes at all. I’m sure this issue, too, will have something I failed to catch and correct. And so it goes. Sigh. Onward to the rest of the Introduction. NASA’s Mars rover, Curiosity, seems to be a very busy little explorer, turning up much information about the red planet. In doing so, Mars is becoming an even more interesting and unusual planet as the rover Curiosity continues in its exploration. That is, if the following photos of unexpected dis- coveries can be believed. The photos (presumably) are real and taken by the rover. Whether or not they are accurately interpret- ed is another matter. I’ll let you readers judge for yourselves. Real or, perhaps, Photo- shopped?

On January 30, 2013 Curiosity encoun- tered what appears to be exposed metal on Mars. Which is amazing because the planet is covered in rust. Any long-exposed metal should be rusted. But it could actually be a piece of a meteorite. Meteorites composed of iron ore are fairly common. An iron mete- orite on Mars wouldn’t be too much of a sur- prise, although one without rust would be . Or the metal (if that’s what it is) might have been shed from the Curiosity’s landing A brick on Mars. Could it have been part system and embedded itself in the ground, of an ancient alien building? Curiosity (Sept. but there seems to be no evidence of a recent 19, 2012) came upon a rock about 8 feet. The disturbance. rock is about 10 and 16 inches wide. The NASA scientists have also hypothesized 1 that it could be a chunk of exposed iron ore, which might or might not be what the caption native to the planet. But why is it the only says. And if it isn’t, what is it? piece of exposed metal NASA has observed in the better part of a decade of roving the sur- face of Mars? An expert studied the image and conjectures the chunk could possibly be up to a foot long underneath the surface. And then there is the photo of a skull on Mars. Or so it has been claimed. To me it looks more like an odd-shaped rock and not all that much like a skull of any kind.

Then there’s something called Mars snake (or, to me, the ghost of a snake--if snakes have ghosts.

And a photo of something nicknamed a Martian flower (probably just a mineral A photo, allegedly taken perhaps a centu- deposit). ry ago, location unknown. Real? Or faked? [

What can I say about the picture above? It is strange, and unexplained. Looking at the bike, and the coloring of the picture, it might have been taken sometime in the early 20th century. But what is that being riding the And a photo of a bizarre something bike?. A lost ET?

2 Throughout the day a number of separate Here is photo of what looks like an astro- encounters were reported in the Brazilian naut on a pillar of Salamanca Cathedral press, currently 100-200 eyewitnesses are Church, which was started in the 1600’s and still living in Varginha. Most of the reports finished in the 1800’s. It does look like an claimed sightings of an alien with a large astronaut. But if it isn’t an image of an astro- head and very thin body, with V-shaped feet, naut, what could it be actually be carved into brown skin, and large red eyes. this pillar? Or is it another of those doctored images, a hoax?

The case could have been called urban legend, if it weren’t for the following evi- dence. NORAD warning of a UFO going down Around midnight between January 19-20 NORAD (North American Air Defense Com- mand) contacted their Brazilian counterpart, CINDACTA (I Centro INtegrado de Defesa Aerea e Controle de Trafego Aereo or Inter- grated Center on Air Defense and Air Traffic As if that weren’t enough, here’s another Control ) and warned them of a UFO coming account which sounds too good to be true . . . down over southern parts of Minas Gerais State. This was witnessed and leaked by both Varginha, Brazil a Brazilian Air Force man and an employee at the radar facility at Air Force Base VI Back in 1996 in a Varginha it was report- Comar, who recived the information, all this ed that a number of living space aliens were according to John Carpenter and Ricardo captured after a UFO crash. The local resi- Varela Correa. On January 20, after mid- dents claimed the aliens were roaming the ninght, at approximately 1:30 AM the farm- streets of the town in the early hours of Jan- workers, Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues were uary 20. A number of the aliens were round- wakened by the sounds of the cows and ed up and escorted away swiftly by the sheep. When they looked out the window to armed forces, aided by local firemen. Rumors see what was going on they saw the animals suggest not all the aliens were captured and running from one side to the other. When some escaped to the nearby jungle. they looked up at the sky the saw a silent Reports suggest there was a total of 8 UFO without lights. aliens: 1 dead, 2 injured (1 of the injured lat- John Carpenter gives us an image of the er died); 5 unhurt and living, not captured. UFO: It was a submarine-shaped “mini-bus”

3 that was trembling like a curtain and emitting As TV newscasters like to say, “This just in.” smoke or fog as it descended to at least 5 or “Late Breaking news.” meters above the ground. A military witness “NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has photo- now admits that it crashed and he was part of graphed a shiny, metallic-looking object that bears the debris retrieval. Material was twisted and a passing resemblance to a door handle or a hood lightweight. (source: AJ Gevaerd video)” ornament. The Rodrigues couple’s farm is in a cof- The Curiosity rover has not stumbled onto evi- fee district located 10 kilometers (6 miles) dence of an ancient civilization that took the family northwest from the town of Varginha, mid- van to Olympus Mons for vacation, however. The way between Varginha and Tres Coracoes. object is simply a rock that the wind has sculpted The house sits at the edge of the road. The into an interesting shape, scientists said. UFO is believed to have crashed between ”The shiny surface suggests that this rock has 1:30 AM and 5:00 AM that night. An Ameri- a fine grain and is relatively hard,“ Curiosity scien- can civilian was present when the cigar- tists wrote Monday (Feb. 11) in an explainer blurb shaped UFO was loaded aboard a flatbed accompanying the image, which was taken on Jan. 30. ”Hard, fine-grained rocks can be polished by truck in the early morning of January 20, a the wind to form very smooth surfaces.“ Saturday, according to Brazil’s UFO Maga- Similar ”ventifacted“ (wind-eroded) rocks can zine. Between the alleged crash site and the be found here on Earth, notably on the dry, gusty outskirts of park Jardim Andere, where the plains of Antarctica, they added. The newfound EBE later on was first spotted and captured, rock is not the first shiny object Curiosity has pho- lies a forest. A probable scenario is that a tographed on the Red Planet. number of EBE’s outlived the crash and went In October, the car-size rover paused its first by foot (?) through the woods and ended up soil-scooping activities to investigate a bright sliver in the park of Jardim Andere 6 miles south- lying on the ground nearby. Scientists think the east. Local people immediately associated scrap is a piece of plastic debris that shook loose this spaceship with the EBE’s who appeared during the robot's dramatic sky-crane landing on 7 hours later. There has also surfaced state- the night of Aug. 5. ments by a military source that a farmer (not Later in October, Curiosity spotted bright Rodrigues) shot one of the EBE’s that flecks in one of the holes it dug out while scoop- crawled out of the crashed cigar-shaped ing. That material appears to be some sort of UFO. native Martian mineral, as does the so-called Finally, this cryptic plaque (source and “Mars flower” which garnered a lot of attention origin unknown) forecasting the day space after Curiosity photographed it in December. aliens arrive on Earth. 28 days after my birth- While such finds may be be interesting to lay- day. By the time this issue comes out we people and researchers alike, Curiosity has bigger should know for certain whether or not the fish to fry. The rover's main task is to determine prediction was correct. Me, I’m not holding whether its landing site—a huge crater called Gale my breath. —could ever have supported microbial life. Curiosity carries 10 different scientific instru- ments and 17 cameras to aid in the quest, along with other tools such as a rock-boring drill. Curios- ity used this drill to collect samples for the first time over the weekend, boring 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) into a Red Planet rock in a move that had never been done before on another planet.” So the shiny rock wasn’t so mysterious after all. 4 In past issues I’ve mentioned my family which will convene the first Monday in July. genealogy researches and how disappointed I Wheeler was only recently paroled by the was not to have found any noteworthy ances- Governor, charged with some misdemeanor.” tors, not even a horse thief. Recently, I turned up a close match. He may not have “NEWSPAPER issue of Thursday, August 3, been a big time, hardened criminal but he 1916 didn’t seem to have been a choir boy sort Dutch Wheeler who was given a prelimi- either. His name was Newton O. “Dutch” nary hearing before Judge A.H. Glasgow in Wheeler, a native of Borden Springs, Cle- county court a few weeks ago, charged with burne County, Alabama. The following news- the offense of shooting at Joseph Roberts Jr., paper accounts show what he was up to had made bond and allowed to return to his approximately a century ago. home at Borden Springs. The bond was fixed at $1,000. NEWSPAPER NOTICES FROM “THE CLE- BURNE NEW ERA”, Heflin, Cleburne Coun- NEWSPAPER Issue of Thursday, September ty, Alabama for SEPTEMBER 1908 21, 1916 NEWSPAPER issue of Saturday, September The following prisoners were carried to 12, 1908 Flat Top mines on Tuesday to serve sen- tences: Joe Crow three years, Dutch Wheeler “CRIMINAL CASES SET FOR TRIAL FOR 11 months, Dewey Walton four and a half SEPT. TERM OF CIRCUIT COURT 1908 years, a negro boy, name not obtained three Monday, September 14th years, Hop Garrison, seven months.” Dutch Wheeler was tried here Wednes- day for the killing of Frank Goodwin which “GOVERNOR HENDERSON REVOKES occurred last March at Borden Springs, and PAROLE FOR DUTCH WHEELER was acquitted. Borden Springs has a peculiar Governor Henderson on Saturday after- history. Two murder cases have been tried at noon revoked the parole of Dutch Wheeler of this term of Circuit Court which occurred this county, and has ordered him to return to there since the 1st of last March. It is said the state penitentiary to complete a two year that five men have been murdered during the sentence for assault with intent to murder. past two years within a two mile radius of Wheeler was paroled by the Governor April Borden Springs.” 4th of this year but recently it was shown that he had not met the conditions of his parole, “NEWSPAPER ABSTRACTS FROM ”THE and that his behavior had not been good.” CLEBURNE NEWS“, Heflin, Cleburne According to an entry on him in the Cle- County, Alabama : burne County prisoner log book, he was an accessory to murder. NEWSPAPER Issue of Thursday, June 22, Fortunately, ours is not a close relation- 1916 ship but somewhere in-between. According DUTCH WHEELER TAKES POT to the genealogy software I use we are/were SHOT AT JOE ROBERTS, JR. Dutch Wheel- (he was born in 1882 and died in 1941, five er was arrested Monday at his home in the years before I was born) first cousins twice upper part of the county charged with taking removed. For those of you who are non- a pot-shot at Joe Roberts Jr., on Sunday and genealogy folks, we’re first cousins but two was brought to Heflin and placed in the coun- generations apart. And, apparently, he never ty jail to await a hearing before Judge of Pro- married. Gee . . . I wonder why. bate Glasgow at the next term of that court, Now, on with the rest of the issue.

5 Rat Stew a column by Gene Stewart

Nothing hidden is lost. Nothing found is us now. new. To reveal is to re-veil what is found, to We saw a seven-mile long pod of dol- put it into a new guise. Reality is a solid, eter- phins sweep past San Diego, California in a nal amidst the flicker of firelight and thought. panic, fleeing from some as-yet unknown threat. Was it an underwater volcano, a tec- -- Frater Aujen Tetari, erro scholasticus, Ach- tonic place the size of a continent beginning ene Lux Æterna* , Tenshin Abbatia Mystica. to tilt or slip, or was it radiation from the /// Fukushima meltdown? Was Godzilla or a [* Translation: Seeds of Light Eternal] Megalodon released by fracking or is there a This past week we saw a Pope first tsunami racing to wipe off the Pacific Rim renounce his papacy, then ask the President cities? Bradbury sounds his “Foghorn” per- of Italy to grant him immunity from prosecu- haps. tion as an indictment on child molestation Yes, it was a week of wonders, but sure- charges is being filed, presumably by Ger- ly the major news must be that DC Comics many. Turns out he chose to abdicate after has hired Orson Scott Card to write a Super- receiving word of the looming indictment on man adventure. child molestation charges. A rule of law Fond memories of Ender’s Game must chased this corrupt emperor from his throne. have influenced the DC Comics gang, along We saw an asteroid whiz past Earth with possible ignorance of Card’s harsh, hate- inside geosynchronous orbit, coming within ful stance against LGBTQ readers. He has 17,000 miles of earth, (a shorter distance been particularly vociferous against what is than driving home stoned after a heavy metal characterized in the corporate media as “gay concert), and all people could talk about was marriage”. which Hollywood movie solution would save Fen reacted in a typical faanish spectrum us from the Killer. (A nod to Jerry Lee of hyperbole and attempted one-upsmanship, Lewis, Shari Lewis, Jerry Lewis, and the Isle topping each other to display preening toler- of Lewis, in no particular order.) ance or hardcore refusal of the very notion, We saw a meteorite striking Russia, with every stance in between well represent- reminding everyone of the 1908 C.E. Tungus- ed. ka event that obliterated a huge butterfly of Should a known hater be subsidized? the Russian Taiga; was this a small fleck of Should his work be patronized? Should art the big one that passed us by, or just one of and artist remain forever unacquainted, dis- its comrades traveling in a cloud we haven’t connected, and never mentioned in the same identified yet? breath? Is there a way to buy Superman com- Science tells us the Russian meteorite, ic books written by Card without both enrich- and the one seen from San Francisco to ing Card and tacitly supporting his belittling, Gilroy in California were related neither to spiteful, and definitely unfannish exclusivity? each other nor to the asteroid. Seems Earth is passing through the Chapel Perilous again Fen are notoriously inclusive. Conven- and random omens and portents are manifest- tions offer comfortable space for such a wide ing. Shades of Asimov’s “Nightfall” shadow range of humanoid (and other) lifestyle and 6 self-expression that it seems inconceivable a fearful hates and writing instead more accu- slight variant such as mere homosexuality rately, more factually, and more openly about would ever become a bone of contention genuine cultures? among them. Several years ago I was in on the ground Card, Dan Simmons, and a few others floor of the Rede Paralieteraria, a group would beg to differ, however. At first this founded to bring SFF from outside the USA hackneyed hockey team of haters seemed to to USA’s readership. Roberto de Sousa-Cau- fit in. They played along, kept their sticks so and Bruce Sterling were pivotal in its low, and all was copacetic. Then came right inception and since then it has made almost wing politics, with categorical thinking substi- no dent whatsoever in raising American tuting for actual rationality, intolerance and appreciation for the diversity, depth, and hate venting core fears, and a host of zero- delight of what other cultures are creating in sum attacks on anything and everything our field. So perhaps this right wing strain of STAR TREK ever stood for. Well, except wall-building isolationists who seek to keep blasting anyone who looked different from the different out of science fiction and fanta- the rich white corporate fascist at the helm. sy are the norm after all. Cramming tetrahedrons into square boxes I hope not. with Procrustean verve, this lot of louts man- When James Tiptree, Jr.’s stories began aged, perhaps via covert TED-type talks at appearing, praise crackled like fireworks. secret rallies, to Nugent otherwise seemingly Who was this wonderful new writer? When sane SFF writers into nasty cranks bent on the collection of Tiptree stories Warm spewing bile and stirring up ire. Worlds and Otherwise appeared from Ballan- Cooler heads, such as John Shirley, have tine, Robert Silverberg wrote a now-notori- advocated focusing only on the work and ous introduction to the volume. His analysis ignoring these writers’ personal views. This of the mysterious author demonstrated to his set of 1D blinkers, however, chooses willful satisfaction that those stories simply must ignorance over the obvious fact that private have been written by a man, because no wom- views influence what a writer writes. Norman an could possibly blah blah blah. Spinrad’s The Iron Dream comes to mind as Bigotry, rampant. an ironic, trenchant example; imagine what Of course we all know Tiptree was Dr. variation on The Turner Diaries Hitler would Alice B. Sheldon, a remarkable polymathic have scribbled. Lovecraft’s denizens of Inns- woman with a varied, adventurous life. Back mouth stunt-doubling for his detestation of then, the haters feared such crazy notions as “filthy teeming immigrant hordes” is another women in SFF, so much that it was unthink- example of private views directly influencing able to many, such as Silverbob, who should the fiction written. Racism, as with any other have known better. irrational categorical hate, is based on fear Now it seems the LGBTQ are to be tar- and will out. Ask ERB how come Tarzan geted for ugly bullshit. The fecal fling from killed any and all blacks he encountered as the right wingers is intense, risible, and con- he strutted in his superior whiteness through sistent: It is always wrong, every single time. Africa if you won’t believe The Shadow, They hate education, they hate women, they who knows all about the Yellow Peril and the hate children, they hate having a black Presi- menace of Dr. Fu Manchu. Eh, Charlie dent, they hate liberals, they... fear. That is Chan? the key, as Eric Ambler once opined. Long traditions aside, are we not of a If fear is the key, hate is the door more civilized mindscape these days? Do we through which some people choose to enter not benefit from seething through encoded our field. It’s a small, battered door none can

7 walk tall through. It must be crawled through Just today on Facebook someone posted in a craven crouch through thick, stinking an admission to enjoying DOWNTON muck. Those who enter our field via this low ABBEY, today’s UPSTAIRS, DOWN- portal are indelibly stained and the miasma STAIRS equivalent. At once an angry, lingers on what they contribute. As men- aggrieved snarl arose from one of the posters tioned, Burroughs, Lovecraft, and many oth- who was outraged that anyone would er writers of the past left work that is hob- “romanticize such a barbaric time”. As if any bled, malformed, and broken by the categori- time were better. As if romance doesn’t cal thinking, the prejudices, and the bigotries always help us cope. that prevail in it. Here is a moron applying today’s stan- Work that rises above and beyond such dards to yesterday’s experiences, one who petty resentment is what shines and lasts. would deny fiction the chance to play with Sure, ERB and HPL and their ilk of limping what ever toys it wishes as if certain things mongrels continue to be read – more impor- are hopelessly tainted and must not be men- tantly, to sell – but to the most simplistic read- tioned, let alone played with. ers only. Once noticed, the ugly stuff encod- He’s angry about privilege of course. ed into all of them spoils the savor of exotic Chip on his shoulder big enough to surf an adventure or eldritch dread. If one can com- elephant on. (Remember pachyderms?) partmentalize such things, perhaps one can Reminds me of those thuggish mouth-readers read and enjoy such work. Many criticize who attack Steampunk because it doesn’t Steampunk for ignoring the Raj’s boot on the write from an angry Socialist Firebrand view- throat of dark-skinned masses. point about the exploited underclasses being It is a telling critique, one that needs to oppressed by those jaunty rich white scien- be addressed. As is the militant right wing tists so dense on the Steampunk ground. bloody-mindedness of, say, Ender’s Game, So basically he’s yelling about the lack or the blatant proselytizing of the Alvin Mak- of preaching in a sub-genre of fantasy that er Mormon myth retellings. Narnia is forever exists largely for escapism and fun. Hello, crap to me because I did not read it at an Puritans. uncritical age and, when older, saw through And this brings us back to Card. Were the glaringly obvious Christian apologetics. I he to leave his personal grudges and barbaric like fantasy, not lecture. I like adventure, not world views, bigotries, prejudices, and contu- racism or hate, no matter how encoded. mely out of his fiction we might advise keep- It boils down to a choice. Do you wish ing art and artist separate. Because he insists to support, with your attention, time, and upon not allowing them to be separated, how- money, work coming from a place of hate, ever, a boycott of his work, even that done intolerance, and bigotry? Do you wish to sup- for as noble a white racist übermensch like port a fearful hater? Super Duper Man himself. Most who buy the Superman comics writ- After all, was not Superman rooted in ten by Mr. Card will have no idea of his Nietzsche? Was not Nietzsche, along with tirades against gays and won’t care about his Richard Wagner, the Nazi’s core philosopher strident religion-based right wing politics. of all things white and conformist? And did They’ll see only Superman’s latest adven- not Superman’s teenaged creators take a rudi- ture. mentary literalist interpretation of Niet- Only later will more informed readers zsche’s Man And Superman, as the Nazis see the inevitable patterns underlying what did, to cobble up their incredibly lucrative ever stories are told, both by what is included (for others) cartoon character, one that and what is not there. played perfectly into America’s self-congratu

8 latory view of itself as a big white impervi- ous bully no one could stand up to? It is telling that DC went to a literally Ghost Ship of the Frozen North, 1931 raving Mormon hater to ask for scripts for a character with such an American Exceptional- The Baychimo, a 1,322 ton steam ship ist background. Clark Kent’s KKK. owned by the Hudson Bay Trading Compa- My choice is to ignore Card’s work. ny, regularly traveled to Alaska and British Yes, including the ENDER’S GAME movie Columbia transporting goods and passengers Summit Entertainment is making, not just the and fur trading with the Inuit who lived along Superman thing. I don’t need more hate, no the Beaufort Sea. matter how subtle or cleverly-packaged. I On October 1, 1931, Baychimo was mak- work and fight against the ugly bigotry Card ing a return trip to Vancouver. She’d complet- stands for and embraces, and I find his work ed a run to Victoria Island, and her hold was over-rated anyhow; it is preachy, it is deriva- stuffed with furs. Unfortunately for captain tive, it is exploitative, and it is ugly. So I'll John Cornwell and the crew, winter arrived gladly boycott his crap, and work and spend sooner than expected with freezing tempera- to counter his revolting views. tures, strong winds, and the threat of bliz- /// /// /// zards. Baychimo became stuck fast in the pack-ice, and the crew were helpless to do anything except wait. Luck seemed to be on the captain’s side since two days later, the ice shifted and Bay- chimo broke free, but Dame Fortune was fick- le. The ship continued to be trapped, then released by the thickening ice. By October 15, the Hudson Bay Company sent airplanes to rescue twenty-two of the crew, but the cap- tain and fourteen other crew members stayed behind, building a shelter on the ice. Imagine their surprise when they awoke on November 25, the morning after a terrible blizzard, to find Baychimo gone. A few days later, a seal hunter told Corn- well he’d spotted the ship adrift about forty- four miles (71 km) southwest. As time passed, the company continued to receive reports from eyewitnesses who had seen the drifting ghost ship. By 1939, scores of sight- ings were reported. However, no one was able to catch up to Baychimo, which contin- ued to uncannily elude pursuit. The last sight- ing occurred in 1969. Despite recent search- es, the ship’s ultimate fate remains unknown.

9 Keith Armstrong-Bridges Dave Rowe

Keith died on Friday January 11th, this year. Last September he went into hospital for a heart operation but it left him extremely weak and sleepy. And he contracted “pump head” or Postperfusion syndrome “in spades.” Postperfusion syn- drome is a constellation of neu- rocognitive impairments attributed to cardiopulmonary bypass during cardiac surgery. Keith was always a jovial person but when he was conscious with pump head he became “as daft as a barrel load of monkeys.” Then in December, it was found that although his new heart valve was working perfectly, the tissue round it was dying and the right side of his heart was failing. The family thought it best not to tell him. Rightfully so. In that condition he could die months ahead or that very day. When he was strong enough he would come home. He came home, tired but happy, on January 10th. To know Keith Bridges was to love him. A large, rotund fellow, in an aubergine sort of way, he was always smiling and a laugh was never far from him. Back in the Sixties and early Seventies, Keith and his wife, Jilli, were usually some of the first to arrive at The Globe for the monthly London SF meets. That meant that he normally sat just by the door so he was often the one to meet and greet first-timers. And with his warm smile and hearty, outgoing personali- ty he was just the one to do it. Keith wasn’t well known outside of Britain. He only ever produced one fanzine, a one shot entitled One Shot. But the fannish histories will show he was responsible for starting The Tolkien Society. At the start-up meeting at Loncon in 1970 he didn't decree 'this is what the society is going to do,' instead he asked those present what sort of society they wanted? What did they want it to do? That was typical of Keith. He was also the first person without a degree to sit on the council of the British Computer Society. As Jilli said “He did make it to the top of his chosen career.” Economics were not a strong point with Keith. He once (and only once) gambled away his whole weeks wages at a Friday lunch-time card game. We always thought his name change from Bridges to Armstrong-Bridges was probably to get around some bankruptcy laws (or the like) but being British we were far too polite to ask. It turns out that Armstrong was his grannie‘s name, he took it because of Neil Armstrong. Keith was so proud to be in the same clan as the first man on the moon. As for the bankruptcy, it was typical of a bureaucratic Catch-22 that the Inland Revenue owed Keith more than he owed them but they had the “right” not to pay him until after he’d paid them! Later on, Clarissa Dickson Wright of BBC’s Two Fat Ladies got that idiocy changed, although it was far too late to help the Armstrong-Bridges.

10 But the great memories are of the once-a-month get-togethers at the Bridges' home in Welwyn Garden City. Just talking, eating and playing strategy & board games overnight. Those get-togethers were also open to those too young to attend the pub meets and so secured several people who might otherwise have never entered fandom. Beautiful friendships, all accommodated by Keith and Jilli. The tales about Keith abound. Back in the Sixties he bought a second-hand Armstrong- Siddley (before they became collectors’ items). That was the type of car, said Keith, “that Aus- tralian sheep farmers tied dead sheep on to its running boards.” When he bought it, it had no windscreen and on the way home he picked up Arthur Cruttenden who was amazed by all the knobs and buttons on the dashboard. “What’s this button for?” asked Arthur and pressed it. It was the windscreen washer. Before going to the 1969 Eastercon, Keith painted himself purple to enter the fancy dress as a Harry Harrison’s Vegan Garbage Collector. On the way there, he and Jilli collected Mary Reed who was at her sister’s house. Her nephews and nieces came running up to their mother chanting “Mummy! Mummy! There’s a purple man at the door!” Mummy didn’t believe them. And on one occasion, two young Mormon missionaries knocked at the Bridges’ door. Keith invited them in and drew the conversation into ‘how can you be against alcoholic drinks if you’ve never so much as tasted one.’ Later on, the Mormons were arrested in the next city, driving a stolen motorcycle, while under the influence. If Mitt Romney had missionaried in Welwyn Garden City instead of Paris, we would nev- er have heard of him.

11 BLUEGRASS BEGINNINGS

Dark and Bloody Ground: Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park

Hostilities between Indians Rogers Clark, but later by other of the Northwest Territory and Alfred D. Byrd colorful figures. As settlers Americans of Kentucky poured into central didn’t end with the Rev- Kentucky, rapidly olutionary War. Better changing from a put, the Treaty of Paris wilderness of forest didn’t end the war on and canebrakes into the frontier. That docu- the open, rolling imita- ment left enough ambi- tion of English coun- guity about borders that tryside that it is today, it was worth the Indian they provided greater nations’ and the numbers for a better- Crown’s while to re- armed militia, as well tain, if not regain, as as a body of voters much land as they who could demand could, and the settlers’ that the governments to push boundaries as in Philadelphia and far as they could go. then in New York City Thus, in Kentucky, war went on from send out regular armies to deal with “the Indi- 1783 until 1794. It was not a past conflict’s an threat” once and for all. dying flickers, but a full-blooded (if you’ll Big battles, a big massacre, and a high- excuse my using such a word in this context) profile kidnaping—such events marked Ken- conflict in its own right. Cherokee Chief tucky’s transition from frontier to “back Dragging Canoe, who’d given rise to the no- East.” tion of Kentucky as “dark and bloody ***** ground,” would prove himself prophet. Where shall we start our tour of “dark On one side of the conflict were Ohio’s and bloody ground”? Let’s go to Nelson Seven Nations, generally led by the Shaw- County, between the Green River and the nees and sometimes aided by a militant fac- Ohio River, west of Lexington and south of tion of the Cherokees from the South. The Louisville. There, in the summer of 1787, Indian nations got advice and aid, both gener- Mr. and Mrs. Neville were enjoying a quiet ally surreptitious, from the British, holding day at home when Mr. Neville went to his on to a chain of forts in what’s now Michigan door to learn why the family’s dog was bark- to control maritime traffic from Sault Ste. ing. When he opened the door, gunfire broke Marie at Lake Superior’s eastern end and an arm and a leg. That was the cost, I guess, through the lower Great Lakes to the St. of keeping a dog on the frontier. Lawrence River. For the British, Ohio’s Indi- His wife barred the door, but attacking an nations formed a useful buffer against Indians chopped a hole in it. The lady of the American expansionism. house proceeded to some chopping of her On the conflict’s other side were the set- own as she took an ax to four men who tried tlers, led at first by the redoubtable George to break in. All four were killed or wounded. 12 Next, attackers, undeterred by a blaze in cide. the house’s hearth, tried to come down its In 1779, a Pennsylvania woman named chimney. Mrs. Neville, tearing open her feath- Virginia “Jenny” Sellards had married a man erbed, flung its contents onto the fire. named Thomas Wiley. By 1789, they’d Choked and blinded by smoke from burning moved to Bland County, Virginia, in the feathers, two attackers tumbled onto the heart of Appalachia. There, on October 1, hearth. There, they go —dare I say it?—the while Tom was away on business, Jenny’s lit- ax. tle brother called out to his sister that Indians Surviving Indians broke off their attack were coming. Pregnant Jenny delayed run- and returned to their villages north of the ning off to finish housework. Ohio. There, the bellicose Mrs. Neville She, her brother, and her four children became a legend that grew in the telling. She were caught indoors when a party of eleven suffered no further disturbance during the rogue Indians, forming a mixture of Shaw- war. nees, allied Ohio Indians, and Cherokees, ***** burst in to the Wiley home. The marauders The Nevilles were killed Jenny’s brother lucky by the time’s stan- and three of her chil- dards. Settlers at the dren, and then took Jen- Falls of the Ohio (pres- ny off as property of a ent-day Louisville) and Shawnee chieftain. The in the central Bluegrass marauders let her take found safety in num- along the youngest of bers, but settlers in out- her children, still a lying areas were vulner- baby, but killed this, able to raiding parties along with her newborn from north or from son, when the infants south. In fierce combats slowed down the party. in isolated clearings, set- The kidnappers tlers and Indians died tried to take Jenny and died. Judge Harry Wiley across the Ohio Innes, an early expert into Shawnee lands, but on Kentucky history, estimated that, between were held back by a flood. For several 1783 and 1890, fifteen hundred whites died months, she was dragged from camp to camp in Indian warfare. No estimate of Indian casu- in what are now Carter, Lawrence, and John- alties is available, but they were clearly also son Counties in eastern Kentucky. In this high. rugged terrain of sharp, forested ridges, the The most celebrated frontier combat be- Indians were safe from detection by white set- gan in Virginia and ended in Kentucky. This tlers. From having driven through this region, combat involved the most famous of the inci- I can imagine that such a party might be safe dents of Indian marauders’ kidnapping a there today. white woman. These incidents, as I men- A virtual slave, Jenny Wiley had to work tioned in an earlier installment where I in the camps and plant a crop of corn in the described Mary Ingles’s remarkable adven- fields. It was the party’s practice to tie her up tures, have been romanticized in a genre that with rawhide bonds while its members went librarians call “lusty busties” or “bodice-rip- hunting. Once, however, in rain, she was able pers.” Whether the account that I’m about to to stretch her bonds and get loose, fleeing retell holds anything romantic, you can de- through the woods. Nine months after her

13 capture, she reached safety at a fortified sta- ***** tion just ahead of pursuit by her kidnappers. Things began to change when the Arti- Unlike Mary Ingles, who never returned cles of Confederation gave way to the Consti- to the frontier, Jenny Wiley rejoined her hus- tution, and a toothless congress in Philadel- band, Tom, moved with him to where she’d phia handed over power to a president in been held captive, and bore with him five New York City. All right, George Washing- more children. She lives on today in Jenny ton was toothless, too, physically, but he did Wiley State Resort Park in eastern Kentucky, have teeth politically. When beleaguered set- where, each year, a troupe of actors stages an tlers on the frontier appealed to him, he’d outdoor drama based on her adventures. answer them with action. Unfortunately, Washington’s first at- ***** tempt to pacify the Northwest Territory’s The settlers didn’t take the Indian raids Indian nations made Clark look like Wonder lying down. For a while, however, they had Boy beside him. In 1790, General Arthur St. to deal with raids on their own. For the first Clair, governor of the Northwest Territories, several years of American independence, the and General Josiah Harmar, a Federal Indian new nation was under the Articles of Confed- agent, decided on Washington’s authority to eration. While these were in effect, so to attack the homelands of nations that, in their speak, the government in Philadelphia might view, had broken treaties. St. Clair and Har- as well have been on the lunar farside as far mar summoned to their standard what troops as Kentucky was concerned. The Confedera- were available, Kentucky militiamen under tion Congress did put the Indian lands into frontiersman Colonel John Hardin. the Northwest Territory, but sending out Fed- The militiamen were green and stayed eral troops to police this land—fugged- so. Neither Hardin nor Harmar succeeded in aboutit! instilling discipline into them. In Ohio’s Such security as Kentucky had lay at woods, lack of discipline was deadly. In two first in a private militia organized by the ever- isolated skirmishes along the Great Miami adventuresome George Rogers Clark. As River, militiamen were routed by Indians, he’d been during the Revolutionary War, so and the whole command was nearly lost. An he was still ever ready to lead men on a puni- expedition to Indiana along the Wabash Riv- tive expedition into the wilds of what are er fared no better than the expedition into now Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. It was his Ohio. Strike One for the Federal Govern- leading delegates to a statehood convention ment. against the Shawnees and the Wabash that This followed a time-honored principle cost Kentucky a shot at statehood in 1786. of American politics: when things go wrong, Clark’s punitive expeditions entered a point fingers. General Harmar and Colonel cycle of futility. After a particularly shocking Hardin were court-martialed. Luckily for series of Indian raids, he’d lead his militia them, they were acquitted, maybe on the prin- across the Ohio against the site of a known ciple that, when life hands you lemons, some- Indian village. As he neared it, its inhabitants times all that you get is lemon purée. would flee onto heavily wooded bluffs above their village and watch the American in- ***** vaders pillage and burn it. The Indians would In the aftermath of the first Federal fail- then avoid a pitched battle, but raid the ure, President Washington instituted another flanks of the expedition as it marched home. time-honored tradition of American politics: After a time, a new series of raids would when things go wrong, appoint a commis- start. Cue Clark… sion. Led by Kentucky’s first governor, Isaac

14 Shelby, this comprised four other prominent umn, which dwindled mile by mile from ill- Kentuckians: Charles Scott, Harold Innes, ness and desertion. John Brown, and Benjamin Logan. Of these On the evening of November 3, a shrunk- men, only Innes and Brown wouldn’t have en army set up camp along the banks of a counties named after them. Of course, given small tributary of the Wabash. In the time- how many counties Kentucky has, even pio- honored tradition of wilderness explorers, St. neer dogs have counties named after them. Clair mistook this as the St. Mary’s River, (“That’s a yolk, son.”) which flows between Michigan and Ontario Meeting in January 1791, the commis- at Sault Ste. Marie. Don’t ask me how he sion recommended a new offensive combin- made that mistake! Still, misidentifying a ing Western recruits with regular Federal sol- stream wouldn’t be his only mistake: he diers. Washington accepted the commission’s decided to put off building breastworks for recommendation, but, over its his camp until the next morn- vociferous objections, ap- ing. Maybe, he thought that pointed General St. Clair the letting his troops get some offensive’s head. St. Clair early shuteye would restore had seen better days. Portly him to their good graces. and afflicted with gout, he Sadly, he neglected to had to be lifted onto and off let the Indians in on his plan. of horseback. Often, he chose The next day, before dawn, to ride in a litter—hardly a they, along with some friend- conveyance to ennoble one in ly Canadians, attacked the the eyes of horse-loving Ken- camp. They struck St. Clair’s tuckians. draftee militiamen first. Kentucky’s levies were These gave way at once and, led by General Charles Scott fleeing, broke up the regu- and by a surprising choice of lars’ ranks. The Indians came President Washington’s—General James Wil- on with unprecedented discipline and fury. kinson. Yes, the trickster who’d tried to sell What had begun as a Federal retreat became Kentucky to Spain was back to save the com- a rout. St. Clair’s force suffered over six hun- monwealth! The American Republic’s early dred casualties, along with the loss of much days were forgiving, I gather. of its artillery and supplies. Sadly, it didn’t Both Scott and Wilkinson held up their lose St. Clair. end of the expedition. In May 1791, Scott, Outside of the unmitigated disasters of leading seven hundred mounted men, de- the Second Seminole War, St. Clair’s Defeat stroyed the Miami village of Ouiatanon. In ranks as the great Indian victory. Strike Two August 1791, Wilkinson, leading over five for President Washington. In Kentucky, hundred on foot, ravaged Indian sites along James Wilkinson’s deal with Spain was start- the Wabash. So far, so good. ing to look good. It fell to General St. Clair to bungle mat- ters beyond belief. He received two thousand ***** Federal soldiers, but alienated them so badly President Washington turned now to one that he had to institute a draft in Kentucky to of the most colorful characters of the Indian raise a further thousand men. Not until Octo- Wars, General “Mad” Anthony Wayne. He, ber 1, 1791, did he leave Fort Washington, as too, has a county named after him in Ken- Cincinnati was then known, for points north. tucky, as well as counties in several other St. Clair failed to install discipline in his col- states. I suspect that I was born in a county

15 named after him—Wayne By the way, Fort Miami County, Michigan. should not be confused with “Mad Anthony” had Miami Fort, a Hopewell Cul- gotten his nickname be- ture site on the Great Miami cause of his draconian dis- River near Cincinnati. Don- cipline and daring attacks cha just love Ohio? during the Revolutionary But to our tale. Fort Mia- War. Given command of mi had been built, and was the Northwest Territory, manned, by the British on soil however, he became “Cau- that the Treaty of Paris had tious Anthony,” spending clearly denoted as American. two years on raising and The Indians and Canadians training troops and amass- expected the British to come ing supplies for a long cam- to their aid. Certainly, the Indi- paign. Wayne’s methodi- ans and their allies were well cal approach to warfare sat dug in behind breastworks as ill with Kentuckians used Wayne’s army neared them. to impromptu militia jaunts and gave scope These breastworks, made from chopped- for James Wilkinson, who never met a con- down trees, would give the looming battle its spiracy that he didn’t like, to intrigue for name, “Fallen Timbers.” Things looked good Wayne’s position. for St. Clair’s Defeat to be followed by While Wayne prepared, Indians struck, Wayne’s Defeat. and settlers struck back. The focus of Indian There was, as it turned out, method to raids was now the Wilderness Road, along Wayne’s madness. His troops fought as Indi- which settlers seeking the Bluegrass headed ans had never seen frontier troops fight. northeast from Cumberland Gap. Governor While well-disciplined Federal regulars exe- Shelby stationed militia along the road to pre- cuted a textbook bayonet charge on the vent Indian raids, but raiding parties got breastworks, well-disciplined Kentucky caval- through the militia’s screen and did damage, rymen struck the Indians’ right flank. Taken including wiping out a whole party of pio- from the front and in the flank, the Indian- neers on the site of what’s now Levi Jackson Canadian line crumbled within an hour. Wilderness Road State Park. The pioneers’ While the British in the fort looked on, their massacre was followed by a deadly clash allies were routed. between militia and raiders along the Rolling The British looked on because, unbe- Fork of the Salt River. knownst to their allies, they’d gotten orders Kentucky bled while Wayne planned. At not to bring on a second British-American last, in July 1794, he was ready for action. war while the Crown was negotiating with He commanded a thousand Federal regulars John Jay over the frontier’s status. The Indi- along with fifteen hundred mounted Ken- ans, feeling betrayed by the British and see- tucky riflemen under General Charles Scott ing “Mad Anthony” as the wave of the and General Thomas Barbee. Heading north, future, sat down at Fort Greenville and negoti- Wayne’s column met thirteen hundred Indi- ated a treaty opening the Northwest Territory ans from the Seven Nations, reinforced by to American settlement. The British, mean- Canadians. The combined Indian-Canadian while, had signed the Jay Treaty, which ced- force awaited Wayne outside Fort Miami on ed frontier forts to America. In the Battle of the Maumee River, the site of present-day Fallen Timbers, Wayne had won the whole Toledo, Ohio. bag of marbles.

16 For Kentucky, the Treaty of Fort days of high humidity. That is to say, just Greenville and the Jay Treaty brought an end about all of the time in southern Kentucky. If to Indian raids. Never again would Kentuck- you’ve got mold allergies, make sure of your ians fight in Indian wars— coming on a hot, dry day. —until Tecumseh’s War and the War of Still, the museum’s attendants are friend- 1812. Those, however, are stories for another ly, the woods are dark and deep, and the old day. mill is as picturesque as any place that you ***** could hope to see. At Levi Jackson Wilder- ness Road State Park, you’ll learn why pio- neers from Daniel Boone to Levi Jackson passed through Cumberland Gap in search of new homes.

The last stop on our tour of Kentucky state parks is Levi Jackson Wilderness Road State Park. These days, you can reach it from Lexington, Kentucky, by a non-wilderness path: take Interstate 75 south to the inter- change for US 25 (Laurel Road) in London, Kentucky; then take US 25 to the right (south) until you see Levi Jackson Road on the left. And now you’re home. The park holds a range of Kentucky his- tory. You can walk on a section of the Boone Trace, a pioneer trail blazed by—oh, who was that guy? You can visit where twenty- four settlers died in the McNitt Massacre. You can visit an outdoor museum comprising a whole early Nineteenth-Century settlement founded by the eponymous Levi Jackson. (Why can’t I ever be eponymous? Life ain’t fair!) Finally, you can visit a restored pioneer grist mill with an impressive display of grind- stones. Caveat visitor! The geese at the millpond are clearly used to getting their own way. Also, the museum buildings, made of logs, tend to be overpoweringly musty on

17 Mark Twain’s Hawai’ian *ovel

Matt Howard

Mark Twain loved Hawaii. It helped make his pen name known guy by the name of Mr. Brown and throughout the States. Even before that also of the politics and the peoples of had happened he was expressing his the islands he loved. All that, despite total enchantment with the archipelago suffering badly from saddle boils. and thereafter often soliloquized about But on the June 15, a longboat his planned Hawaiian novel. In 1884 sailed into the waters of the Big Is- he announced he had completed it. land. The boat carried fifteen men, all But only seventeen pages of that novel has ever too weak to even walk. They had been in that been found amongst his voluminous papers. Yet open boat for forty-three days. The disaster had some scholars believe the novel was published. started on the American clipper Hornet when a Twain (Mr. Samuel L. Clemens) arrived at mate was idiotic enough to enter the booby-hatch Hawaii (the Sandwich Islands) on the March 11, with an open light (i.e. an open flame). Under nor- 1866, having been dispatched there by the Sacra- mal circumstances the fire would have spread fast mento Union to write descriptive letters for the enough to be deadly but as the Hornet was loaded S.U.’s weekly and daily editions. He stayed there, with 6,200 boxes of candles and 2,400 cases of traveling around the islands, for four months. kerosene the ship quickly became totally Now this was not the old curmudgeon Mark enveloped in flames. Before the total conflagration, Twain with a haystack of white hair and a thick yet three long boats had been put to sea in haste but somewhat stringy white moustache. This was a with just ten days of provisions. Only one made the young thirty year old Mark Twain with a near journey of over 4,000 miles through blistering, unruly head of red hair and a thick yet somewhat dehydrating, tropical heat. By the 13th day at sea, stringy red moustache. food was down to crumbs and a ham bone. By the 39th day, all provisions were gone, the crew got to talking of mutiny and cannibalism. But four days later, by some miracle, the longboat made it through the only gap, a 35 mile reef; even so, two Hawaiians had to swim out to commandeer the boat to ensure its safe arrival. It just so happened that at that time His Excel- lency Anson Burlingame was in Hawaii on his way to resume his post of U.S. minister resident to China and that turned out to be most fortunate for Twain. Burlingame had been one of the founders of the Republican Party and had served as their congressman from Massachusetts from 1855 to 1861. He had an up and at it attitude and Twain described him as acting “in the broad interest of the world, instead of selfishly seeking to acquire advantages for his own country alone.” His letters were mainly humorous, telling of His Excellency’s up and at it attitude included his misadventures in the company of a fictional fall- immediately going to the hospital to interview the 18 survivors and having Twain, boils and all, transport- same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its ed to the hospital on a stretcher (what undignified summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its posture Twain had to assume on the stretcher is surf-beats is in my ears; I can see its garlanded unrecorded) so that M.T. could transcribe the in- crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drows- terviews and use them as the basis for a lengthy ing by the shore, its remote summits floating like report on the horrors the crew had to survive. islands above the cloud rack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.” So where is the Hawaiian novel? The seventeen surviving pages of the novel are held at the Mark Twain Collection at the University of California Library at Berkeley. The first nine have been described as “a rather ornate descrip- tion of the islands.” Of two other fragments, one is a conversation between the Hawaiian King and the brother of a girl threatened with death; however, she is released. The second has “obvious humor, reports an incident in which the king’s spit- toon has been stolen to the consternation of the Where as other reporters simply sent a brief priests and the people generally.” outline, Twain was up all night writing a full As for the rest, there is a paper trail: On Octo- report, only to arrive at the wharf and find the ber 7, 1884, Twain sent a letter to his good friend schooner Milton Badger (his intended transporta- William Dean Howells, saying he was writing his tion for the missive) was free forward and casting Hawaiian novel. This, in part, is what Twain wrote, off her stern line. “My fat envelope was thrown by a strong hand,” the batch flew over the intervening water and landed with a thump on the Milton Bad- ger’s deck, “My victory was a safe thing.” On July 19, the Sacramento Daily Union ran it as a front page story. It was a sensation. Other newspapers picked it up and the name of Mark Twain was carried with it. The next year in May, readers and critics took note when that name ap- peared as the author of a collection of short sto- ries entitled The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calav- eras County and Other Sketches. Although that was not an immediate success, even more people took note of Mark Twain. And the rest is literary history. But to give you an idea of how enamored Twain was of Hawaii this is just one quotation from his reminiscences: “No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land “It’s hidden motive will illustrate a but little could so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, considered fact in human nature; that the religious sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime. As folly you are born in you will die in, no matter that one has done. Other things leave me, but it what apparently reasonabler religious folly may abides; other things change, but it remains the seem to have taken its place meantime and abol- 19 ished and obliterated it. I start with Bill Ragsdale thur’s Court, the fantasy which has been described at 12 years of age, and the heroine at 4, in the as Twain’s last major work and his most effective midst of the ancient idolatrous system, with its pic- satire. A satire at the expense of monarchy, the turesque and amazing customs and superstitions, British “ruling class,” and the Roman Catholic 3months before the arrival of the missionaries and Church. the erection of a shallow Christianity upon the ruins of old paganism. Then these two become educated Christians, and highly civilized. “And then I will jump 15 years, and do Bill Ragsdale’s leper business.” Bill Ragsdale is not a fictional character. A Hawaiian, he became a Christian and was an inter- preter for the Hawaiian legislature. Engaged to be married, he found he had leprosy. Rather than hide it, he broke off the engagement and exiled himself to the island of Molokai. The whole island was a horrendous leper colony and off-limits to the rest of Hawaii. Some have suggested that after that Ragsdale reverted to the old pagan beliefs, despite the colony being run by Roman Catholics. Twain, in two letters to his friend Mrs. Fair- banks, said he’d finished the novel and was going to make a “most painstaking revision.” Later corre- spondence shows he sent it to Howell to turn it So here is a Spoiler Alert: to justify such an into a play. outrageous claim it’s necessary to reveal the plot of Connecticut Yankee from beginning to end. The film version is nothing like the book. If you have any plans to read it, you’d be best to switch to TRF’s next article here and now. What is the connection between the temperate climes of Britain and the tropical paradise of Hawaii? Apart from Swallows, Coconut halves and Monty Python? Three connections are a monarchy, a ruling class (priests), and religion. To quote Pro- fessor Fred W. Lorch in the March 1958 issue of American Literature “many of the basic concepts of feudal society and its practices which come under attack in Yankee had their inception on Mark Twain’s early observations of life in the Sand- wich Islands, and particularly in his wide reading of Sandwich Islands history.” Lorch notes that Twain had read James Jack- son Jarves’ History of the Hawaiian or Sandwich Islands which compares the old Hawaiian priests’ And there a paper trail ends. taboo system to the interdict of the Roman Cath- Or does it? olic church and then adds “Mark Twain’s indict- A professor from Iowa University, in 1958, ment of the social, political, and religious practices published a paper claiming the Hawaiian novel in the island is strikingly similar to his indict- was re-written as A Connecticut Yankee in King Ar- ment of these same practices in King Arthur's 20 England. And no less remarkable is the simi- ly make a total re-write of the book. larity between the role of the American mis- sionaries who destroyed the old order in the Sandwich Islands and the role of the Connecti- cut Yankee who sought to free King Arthur’s serfs in much the same way.”

In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Nineteenth Century denizen Hank Morgan was injured in a fight and woke in the Camelot of sixth century England (which had all the aspects of a Fifteenth Century England). There he set forth a Initially Twain glorified the missionaries. In revolution of modernization with himself as “The one of his earliest letters from Hawaii he wrote Boss.” “The missionaries have clothed them (the native Using the old Columbus/Solar Eclipse ploy he Hawaiians), educated them, broken up the tyran- masks himself as a great magician; blowing up nous authority of their chiefs, and given them free- Merlin’s tower with gunpowder further enhanced dom and the right to enjoy whatever their hands his standing with all but Merlin, who was por- and brains produce, with equal laws for all, and trayed as evil (as he was in almost all American punishment for all alike who transgress them. The adaptations of the Arthurian legend until the late contrast is so strong—the benefit conferred upon 1960’s, with the notable exception of T. H. this people by the missionaries is so prominent, so White’s The Once and Future King). palpable, and so unquestionable, that the frankest Morgan established schools and military ac- compliment I could pay them, and the best, is sim- ademies and introduced electricity, factories, com- ply to point to the condition of the Sandwich Isl- pany shares, telephones, the telegraph, paved anders of Captain Cook’s time, and their condi- roads and a patent office to protect his ‘new’ inven- tion to-day. Their work speaks for itself.” Certainly tions. All without the consent of The Church. the early history of American expansionism into He and King Arthur disguised themselves as Hawaii was not from the U.S. government but from peasants and roamed the land, encountering first- missionaries and whalers who opposed each other hand the abuse and mistreatment meted out by the with such venom that more than once un-christian knights, which included being sold as slaves. blows and shots were exchanged. Had the whalers After their rescue by Sir Lancelot, Morgan suc- won, the coastal towns of Hawaii would have cessfully fought Sir Sagramour but his victory only become little more than collections of drinking put him further out of favor with the Knights dives and whore houses. (including Lancelot). Lorch also notes that shortly after completing Morgan then built railways, metal warships the Hawaiian novel Twain read Malory’s Morte d’ (to discover America) and began maneuvering to Arthur which may have inspired Twain to eventual- make England a democratic republic on U.S. lines with separation of Church and State. 21 He married and had a daughter who became part and parcel of his general disdain for the very ill. On the advice of doctors the family took a British. In his Hawai’ian letters alone, Twain por- sea-trip but once they returned Morgan realized it trayed Captain Cook as an ingrate, the first British was all a trick. In his absence The Church had Consul to Hawai’i, Richard Charlton, was “de- demonized and made a taboo of all his inventions vious” and a “pestilent fellow” and Bishop Staley, and issued an Interdict against him. Lancelot had who had committed the double crime of being been manipulating the company shares, and both British and High Church, was condemned in incurred the wrath of the other knights. War had paragraph after paragraph. His greatest sin, in broken out, King Arthur had been slain and The Church had taken over. In effect the country “died” in the religious folly it was born in. Morgan was once again injured in a fight and Merlin put a spell on him to sleep for thirteen hun- dred years, which made Rip Van Winkle look like a light sleeper and conveniently returned Morgan to the Nineteenth Century.

Twain’s eyes, was for reviving the Lu’au. “Mark Twain was always right!” joked documentary direc- tor Ken Burns, but on this occasion Twain couldn’t have been more wrong. Hawai’i without the Lu’au just wouldn’t be Hawai’i. Here is just a small part of the word-lashing The Hawai’ian version starts three months Twain gave Staley in June, 1866. Note the use of before the arrival of the first white missionaries the juxtaposition of the words “knights” and “mis- and would therefore come to contrast the old with sionary: “He (Staley) has shown the temerity of an the new and the changes wrought. In Yankee Hank incautious, inexperienced, and immature judgment Morgan can be seen as a missionary for modern- in rushing in here fresh from the heart and home ization and his ways changed the old. of a high English civilization and throwing down Highlighting the emphasis on the power of the gauntlet of defiance before a band of stern, superstition in Yankee, Lorch suggests that Rags- tenacious, unyielding, tireless, industrious, devoted dale would have mirrored that, and as he became old Puritan knights who have forty years of mis- more deeply ensconced into the horrors of leper sionary service.” colony he would have incrementally embraced the Forty-nine years after Lorch’s article, another old ways. Iowan, professor Jennifer A. O'Neill, wrote a simi- Also, in Twain’s letters from Hawai’i, his lar piece but disagreed with Lorch and emphasized description of the reigning monarch Kamehameha Twain’s views on American imperialism; however, V and his later description of King Arthur in Yan- she did draw many parallels between Hawai’i and kee are very similar. Yankee, noting that when Mark Twain returned Outside of the academic arguments, Twain’s from the islands he called for an American annexa- degrading of a mythological England could also be tion of Hawai’i (some twenty-seven years before it 22 actually happened) but within a year he was chang- denied to him. The yellow flags were up, cholera ing his mind and dropped all references to annexa- had broken out, no one was allowed in or out. tion. So before the writing of Yankee (1889) and Twain’s return was reduced to wistfully viewing the the annexation happened (1893) he was opposing coastline from the deck of the ship as it steamed annexation. In a scathing satirical letter to the New beyond the islands. York Tribune as early as 1873 he wrote: “We must annex these people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street- car pickpockets to municipal robbers and govern- ment defaulters” O’Neill also paints Hank Morgan as an anti- hero who describes the peasants as “more or less tame animals”, “why they were nothing but rabbits,” and himself as “a giant among pygmies, a man among Life can be hard, even for a curmudgeon. children, a ****** master intelli- Sources gence among A. Grove Day (Editor & Introduction) intellectual Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sand- moles.” And raves “I made up my mind to two wich Islands, Mutual Publishing,1990 things: if it was still the nineteenth century and I Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii, Appleton-Centu- was among lunatics and couldn't get away, I would ry, 1966 presently boss that asylum or know the reason James Jackson Jarves, History of the Hawaiian or why; and if on the other hand it was really the Sandwich Islands Tappan & Dennet, 1843 sixth century, all right, I didn’t want any softer Fred W. Lorch, “Hawaiian Feudalism and Mark thing: I would boss the whole countryside inside of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s three months” Court”, American Literature, March 1958 In short, all of Morgan’s reforms were im- Jennifer A. O’Neill, “Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee posed for his own benefit not those of the native in King Arthur’s Court and U.S. Imperialism”, Com- people, c.f. American Imperialism. parative Literature and Culture , September 2007 And one other thing O’Neill points out, the Mark Twain: Autobiography of Mark Twain Vol. 1, first missionaries to Hawai’i came from a group Edited by Harriet Elinor Smith, University of Califor- started in Connecticut! nia Press 2010 Of course, all this academic investigation A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Char- leads to one very pertinent question: Did Twain les L. Webster and Company,1889 ever return to Hawai’i? Following the Equator, American Publishing Com- In 1895, after a wait of nearly 30 years, a pany,1897 gray haired Mark Twain finally returned to Honolu- “Forty-three Days in an Open Boat”, Harper’s Mag- lu aboard the steamer Warrimoo. But the land that azine, December 1866 so longingly and so beseechingly haunted him was Roughing It, American Publishing Company,1872 23 The Crotchety Critic Various and Sundry By Michaele Jordan

For once, I did not have to scramble for only doubled. Mr. Robinson—another popu- a book to review. For the past two months I lar writer—has written another ecologically have not allowed myself to be distracted themed adventure. No surprise, there. He from my beloved SF/F by fat historicals by has been addressing global warming from Philippa Gregory or intriguing manga such as day one. I can only recall one novel of his— Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga. With Nebula nom- the wonderful Years of Rice and Salt (New inations due last month and Hugo nomina- York: Bantam, 2002)—that didn't deal with tions this month, I have allotted many extra this issue. Plus, it has already been selected hours to my reading, and it's all been SF/F. for the Nebula ballot. So again, you don't So now I must decide which of the really care, or need to care, what I thought of SFWA and Locus recommended books I've it. just read to review. The candidates include: Moving along, I find I just don't want to Blueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot talk about The Troupe. It's not that it's a bad (New York: Black Cat [imprint of novel. The problem is that it suffers from Grove/Atlantic], trade paperback, 2012), The some of the most inappropriate marketing I Hydrogen Sonata by Iain M. Banks, (New have ever seen. One cover blurb reads: “A York: Orbit, hard cover, 2012), The Troupe deft amalgam of THRILLER, CEREBRAL by Robert Jackson Bennett (New York: HORROR and AMERICAN GOTHIC”. Orbit, trade paperback, 2012) and 2312 by Another reads: “A cross between Stephen Kim Stanley Robinson (New York: Orbit, King and Thomas Pynchon!”. hard cover, 2012). We all know that cover blurbs are prone Not, I think, The Hydrogen Sonata. to exaggerate. But there are limits. The Why not? The Hydrogen Sonata is the latest Troupe is not a thriller. It is pleasantly offering in the Culture series. That is all creepy, perhaps, but not horror, not even most people need to know before deciding with the 'cerebral' qualifier. I might allow whether or not to read it. Also, Mr. Banks the gothic, since it is set in a traveling circus. and his Culture series are both extremely pop- But it is nothing like Stephen King. ular. Please note: I do NOT use the word The one thing it does not say on the cov- 'popular' as insult. I am a great admirer of er is that it is Young Adult. I try to make Mr. Banks and think his non-SF/F novel Whit allowances. I know the line is fuzzy. But or Isis Among the Unsaved (London: Little this is a coming of age tale—with no sex or Books, 1995) is among the world's most violence—about sixteen year old boy looking delightful novels. But since it is popular, The for his father. It contains one dirty word Hydrogen Sonata will almost certainly be (about which the character agonizes.) It does nominated for a Hugo, which means many of attempt to present itself as 'literary'. Perhaps you will probably read it regardless of my that is why it bills itself as similar to Pyn- review. chon. It is not similar to Pynchon, and it The same argument applies to 2312, probably won't make the Hugo ballot.

24 So that brings us to Blueprints of the Afterlife—which is extremely difficult to describe. Like 2312, it is set in the aftermath of ecological disaster. But the resemblance ends there. 2312 is hard science, and extremely focused. Blueprints of the Afterlife is a mad whirl of whimsical surrealism and funky imagery, as much magic realism as SF/F. It dispenses entirely with science and real world logic, exploring instead the irra- tional nature of the human (and planetary) condition. It finds comedy in cloning and spirituality in the zen of fast-food dishwash- ing. Some books, you wonder if the author will pull off an ending. In this book, you are almost sure he won't. Until he does. I fear it may not make the Hugo ballot either—it may be too weird even for fandom. But I hope it does, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys pure, unadulterated goofiness.

25 Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O Eric Barraclough

Skiffle - The Definitive Inside Story skiffle also meant a rent-party. Chas McDevitt Robson Books, London, U.K., 1997

As Good As it Gets Skiffle AS Good As It Gets Skiffle Vol.2 Disky Communications Europe B.V. DO 250522 & DO 999862 2000

Ain't It A Shame & Singles Compilation The Bob Cort Skiffle Vocalion CDLK 4311 2006

The “British Invasion” of 1964 has its roots in a recording on a 10 inch L.P. re- leased in 1954. The L.P., New Orleans Joys - Chris Bar- ber‘s Jazz Band and Skiffle Group, had a cou- Come 1957, there were an unbelievable ple of tracks with Chris on Bass, his wife 30,000 to 50,000 skiffle groups in Britain but Beryl Bryden on washboard and Lonnie Don- only a handful made commercial recordings. egan on guitar and vocals, making skiffle ver- Amongst the many musicians that didn’t sions of classic blues songs. One of those were Van Morrison, George Harrison, John tracks, Rock Island Line, got so much air- Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. play that it was released as single in 1956 You might have heard of them. just after the rock n’ roll craze started. In Despite never having a hit, Bob Cort was Britain, post World War II teenagers couldn’t a mainstay in the 50's skiffle craze. His voice afford double-basses and drum sets but if lacked a strong delivery, sounding more like they had just one fellow who could play three a yawn or a stifled cough but given a raucous chords on a cheap guitar they could put to- or rowdy number he always rose to the occa- gether some home-made instruments and sion and made it his own. then put together a home-made band and kid themselves they were Elvis Presley and the Jordanaires—and they did. Skiffle is a form of blues (even Jazz) started in America, and first recorded in Chicago in the 1920s, using home-made and cheap instruments such as a washboard, a ceramic jug and a tea chest bass (that’s a wooden tea shipping box with an upright broom-handle and one piece of string The spoiler was Mark White at Decca stretched from handle-top to box-corner). who almost always had Cort cutting cover Having its start amongst the poor blacks, versions of already established hit record 26 ings. Bob Cort “retired” from recording after Cort’s most original was The 6.5 Special about 18 months and went back to his career which was used as the opener for the TV in advertising. Around ten years or so later show of the same name. The recording only he had an “underground hit” with an L.P. of lasted a few weeks until Cort’s opener was barrack-room ballads. As said before, he replaced by a note-for-note cover version by could always make rowdy songs his own. one of the show’s regulars, Don Lang. Nei- As this is may well be the only time the ther were a chart hit with it but Lang’s ver- subject of Skiffle comes up on these pages sion is the one that is remembered by those let's add an extra couple of notes and a who remember the show. favorite story. It’s also fair to add that anyone who was aged between 6 and 26 way back in the late 1950s and had access to a TV remembers The 6.5 Special on Saturday evenings. Even though it only lasted 18 months and that’s something that still surprises those who re- member the show. The 6.5 Special was the Ready, Steady, Go or Bandstand of its time. In an unusual development for its time, it was broadcast (once or twice) live from the Two I’s Coffee Bar on Old Crompton Street, Soho, London.

For those interested in British Skiffle music, there is a history of those times enti- tled Skiffle - The Definitive Inside Story by Chas McDevitt, Robson Books, London, U.K., 1997. That’s Out of Print but you can get copies of the updated 2012 paperback ver- sion directly from the author at www.chas- mcdevitt.com or [email protected] or Chas McDevitt, 1 Eton Sq., Eton, Wind- sor, Berks, SL4 6BG, Great Britain. Chas McDevitt, apart from being a really Cort’s CD itself is made up of a live nice chap, is a real insider as far as skiffle L.P.(that unfortunately edits out all the goes. t was the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group between songs banter which was standard featuring Nancy Whiskey who had the first editing practice for the 50s) and includes all skiffle song to get to Number One in the but one of Cort's singles (A & B sides) British Pop Charts. After that, they kept tour- although the missing single may well be ing and McDevitt ran a skiffle/coffee house tracks from the live L.P. in Soho, London. Cort’s lead guitarist was Ken Sykora As for recordings, there are two great who regularly topped The Melody Maker’s double CD collections, As Good As it Gets Best Guitarist Poll in a time when readers vot- Skiffle and As Good As It Gets Skiffle Vol.2 ed for musicians and not “stars”. (DO 250522 & DO 999862), Disky Commu

27 nications Europe B.V. was Mr. Ego with an innate ability to offend Chas McDevitt’s book's discography his hosts and friends and after spending an lists 170 British Skiffle singles. The two evening irritating all and sundry he got his Disky collections total 121 tracks. Near-com- comeuppance on the next morning when he pletists please take note. announced in surprised and undignified tones that an incontinent monkey had eliminated waste liquid on his head (You will under- stand these were not quite his exact words at the time). Recalling the monkey’s unfriendly actions, Wally Whyton has been known to add “That’s something we’d always wanted to do.”

And now a favorite Skiffle story. Back when Skiffle was king and Soho was the palace, there was one flat (apartment) in Soho where practically any musician could crash for the night. It was run by John Pil- grim and Johnny Martyn and the rest of an ever-changing line-up called The Vipers Skif- fle Group (whose number “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O” became the mantra of any comedian or script-writer stuck for a phrase to use about Skiffle or Rock‘n’Roll). Two other members, Jet Harris and Hank Marvin, went on to form The Shadows and another, Wally Whyton, went on to become Wally Whyton. The flat was also home to a menagerie of small exotic animals who had the free range of every room. One day Lonnie Donegan visited. To his credit Lonnie was a consummate entertainer and it was his recording of Leadbelly’s Rock Island Line, with Chris Barber, had started the whole Skiffle craze in Britain (In 2002, he died touring despite being warned by his doctor that the consequences would be fatal). To his discredit when he was off-stage he

28 And Now the LoCs

From: Lloyd Penney nothing else, the Count 1706-24 Eva Rd. had charisma, which Etobicoke, ON may have gotten him CANADA M9C 2B2 farther than anything January 25, 2013 else, including a myri- ad of stories about his Dear Tom: prowess and abilities. So many other myster- Many thanks for ies puzzle us today, and The Reluctant Famulus too many fall into mys- 90. This is the third tic explanations about time I’ve tried to start this loc; there are times where they come from. I just need to veg out and do nothing, or I try The Secret Life of Fans will fall into to write, and nothing comes to mind. Guess I TMI territory, but we do one thing few others just need to recharge the creative batteries. I do… we indulge ourselves. If we like a partic- am not up to 100%, but I will try again any- ular book, movie or television show, we way. often immerse ourselves into it to enjoy it fur- I wonder what might have caused that ther. Reproductions of costumes, fan fiction, burst of radio frequency you describe in your cosplay…we’re a little less self-conscious introduction. Us SF readers would love to than most, and I think we benefit from it. Of find out it came from an advanced civiliza- course, the press has a field day with us, but tion, but we have our feet on the ground, and this is more a lack of objectivity in the press will wait until there’s a reasonable explana- than anything wrong with us. The general tion. Is there a natural source of such waves, public is starting to embrace what fandom and could it have simply exploded with this does, and (I hate the words) being a geek or a radio burst going in all directions? I can’t see nerd is becoming mainstream. Fun?, yes. it being sent in our direction . . . Laughed at by other parts of the public?, of Time travel was one of my favourite SF course. Has fandom as a whole jumped the themes when I first started reading it. Back or shark? I hope not, but more and more fan- forth, and alternate time streams were fun dom is more and more composed of passive reads. As much as we would like to recog- consumers, and what we might call fannish nize that time is a linear sequential form that fandom is slowly going away. Stop aging, the we’re travelling on, time is more a subjective whole lot of you! That’s an order! experience of sequential events. Don’t you I’ve been a customer of Acorn Media a hate it when fact puts the kybosh on our fic- lot lately…they also produce the Murdoch tion? Mysteries CDs, and I’ve bought them all for I’ve seen television shows about Saint- Yvonne. Just left to buy is the original Germain, and they were sensationalized movies made some years ago, and I am think- beyond any belief. There’s definitely more ing of that as a gift, no occasion required. fiction than fact here, but the Count had mar- I am very much enjoying the old Atom vellous PR that got many people believing. If cartoons you got; most I’ve never seen, 29 although I think there’s one or two I have running dry and having to wait until it filled seen, or seen something similar. Also, a mar- back up. He also claimed to be a lazy writer. vellous Alan Hunter portfolio. Another fan With his output over the years! Lazy?//If that artist I shall miss. mysterious signal ever gets figured out it’ll The nape of the neck is indeed a cat’s most likely end up being something prosaic Achilles’ heel. At one gathering, one of our and disappointing and not from some ad- host’s cats decided to play-attack my leg, and vanced civilization.//Yeah. It’s a major bum- before he could draw blood, I reached down mer when the real and actual prove some and grabbed the nape of the cat’s neck, and cherished beliefs wrong. The only ways to go he relaxed. It’s like an off switch. We petted back in time are through our memories, him to calm him down, but we kept a firm flawed though they may be, and written docu- grip on his nape, and I think that taught him a ments/records and, since its invention, pho- lesson. He doesn’t attack at random any tography.//There does seem to be more fic- more. tion to St. Germaine’s claims. It helped him Comments from Alexis Gilliland: I guess and others like him that, in general, people we’re all going through that end-of-an-era are gullible and often take people at their regret. Who wants it to end? None of us do, word. It seems as if the press’s objectivity but it sure looks that way. My loc: the job has diminished considerably over the years hunt is on once again. I was let go from my and it doesn’t help that it often wasn’t com- newsletter job the first day back from Christ- pletely objective to begin with although there mas holidays. I thought I was doing well. have been those of the press who have tried Many companies will hire and then let go to to be.//If only it were that easy simply to snap get the job done and save money on benefits. one’s fingers and instantly stop aging. I I think I might be the victim of that, not real- damn well haven’t managed it.//Murdoch ly sure. I’ve already had a couple of inter- Mysteries. That sounds interesting.//It would views, and I may have to take something else seem that some employers in Canada are soon to get by, we’ll see. using almost the same sorts of tactics as Giving up on science fiction? Not me. some of those in the U. S.. Rather deplorable, This genre of literature has given me many that.//In spite of what I wrote, I’m not giving years of reading pleasure, and I know what I up on SF entirely. Recently, I read Bowl of like about it, and what I like within it. I think Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry 'iven I will continue to read it as long as I can read (Part 1. I can hardly wait for the 2nd.) and it, and give me the adventures I can’t have Mars Life by Ben Bova. 'ext up, Earthbound through actual travel. by Joe Haldeman and Leviathans of Jupiter I think I am done for this issue…I have a by Ben Bova, among other SF novels.]] few more things to do this morning before I head off for two auditions downtown, one for Cuyler Warnell Brooks Jr a commercial and one for some voicework 4817 Dean Lane for a short film. Take care, and have a great Lilburn Georgia 30047 weekend. February 4, 2012 Yours, Lloyd Penney. Dear Tom,

[['o worries about that. I understand how Thanks for the Reluctant Famulus 91. you feel. I go through the same thing. Samuel Great Steve Stiles cover! Interesting account L. “Mark Twain” Clemens went through the of the name “Mark Twain”. I had never heard same sort of thing only he used the metaphor of Isaiah Sellers. It does seem likely that if he of his writing as like a cistern (or water tank) had used the pen name, it would have been in

30 his diary—unless he some- we have not been looking how thought he was hidden long enough to detect any as the user of it. The New sign of it. For every million Orleans Picayune lasted a planets with life, there long time; in the 1960s or might be only one or two 1970s it had become the with technology. After all, Times-Picayune and the late it has not been even 100 Don Markstein was a years that Earth has had the reporter there. I think it is level of technology that still the daily paper there. could detect anything but There is no mention of starlight from outside the whether anyonetried to find solar system. the “Mark Twain” river Note how “Lottery The- reports in old copies. Copies ory” applies to catastrophes of a New Orleans newspaper like the Newtown massacre. from the 1860s or earlier The US is said to have 300 may well survive; pulp paper million guns in private had not yet been invented hands, and in its 300 mil- then and everything was printed on rag lion citizens, there is inevitably a large num- paper. ber of people who are murderously unhinged I would not be surprised if astronomers and have the idea of gun violence from find a planet circling some other sun that is movies and TV. So such massacres are possi- about the size of Earth, and at a reasonable ble; and because of the large number of possi- distance from the right sort of star. But that is ble “throws of the dice”, the number of just the beginning. Mars and Venus after all events is essentially proportional to the time are fairly close in those parameters. The oth- interval considered. Murphy’s Law, “if any- er things needed are lots of free water (but thing can go wrong, it will”, is always true not so much that electricity will never be dis- for large numbers. covered!), and a strong magnetic field. Of course better mental health diagnosis Earth’s magnetic field not only protects the and treatment, and stricter control of gun surface life from highly energetic charged ownership, will have some effect on the statis- particles, but keeps the solar wind from rip- tics. But no conceivable change in policy or ping the atmosphere away faster than equilib- law will eliminate such catastrophes, any rium could maintain. The magnetic field is more than seat-belts and air-bags and apparently maintained by the rotation of the improved engineering have eliminated auto- liquid iron core. Mars has no liquid core and mobile accident deaths. With automobiles, no magnetic field. my recollection is that such deaths have The logic of the Sim Universe theory dropped from about 50,000/year to about seems flimsy to me. That we are here to 30,000/year, even though the population has notice that our universe won some cosmic lot- increased. tery would only require that there had been Besides your other errata, you managed multiple trials with varying “universal con- to attribute the theory of non-violence to both stants”; no matter how unlikely something is, Gene Sharp and Gene Sharpe. I never heard if it is possible and there are enough trials, it of him, so I don’t know offhand how he will occur. And I don’t know that the Fermi spelled his surname. Aha! On the cover of Paradox is valid at all. It may be that life has the book it’s “Sharp”. I think he is quite occurred elsewhere in the universe but that right: government is a 2-way street that re-

31 quires the consent of the governed to succeed sprung up somewhere in various parts of the for long. And you could hardly advocate non- universe, thrived for a while, and then for violence and still support the death penalty, whatever reason vanished.//Sorry about the whatever the short-range statistical effect on confusion regarding Sharp and Sharpe. I the murder rate. thought my pruff reeding had caught every- I always thought that helmets with horns thing. But, as Murphy’s Law might say . . . were unlikely in battle; the horns would cer- //Staff Wright. Good question. I thought it tainly get knocked off very quickly, and un- was the artist’s real name. But it doesn’t nec- less they were flimsy, this would involve essarily follow that it was.//It may be that excessive torque to the wearer’s neck. someone with little regard for historical accu- Great reprint of the Alan Hunter account racy thought equipping Vikings with horned of the Fantasy Artist Society! But there is no helmets would make them look more fear- mention of how the 1953 calendar came to some and intimidating.]] have a cover by “Staff Wright”! From Dave Rowe 8288 W Shelby State Road 44 Franklin IN 46131-9211 2013-Feb-9 [email protected] http://home.sprynet.com/—nedbrooks/home. Dear Tom, html Re: TRF91

[[That cover was something. Lovecraftian in Really scary movies: Not The Silence Of a way. I wasn’t familiar with Isaiah Sellersei- The Lambs. The high security psycho ward- ther until I began looking into the origin of was ridiculous. With all those bricks jutting the claim. The results of that research are in out of the wall, had an inmate had got loose my Conclusion to this issue. Interestingly, the he would only have to smash a warder's head fan and artist Peggy Ranson also worked for against those bricks to kill him or cause him the Times-Picayune up until the newspaper’s permanent damage. Also the actors looking problems.// As you noted, planets need to fit directly into the camera makes you fully certain human-centered criteria: the correct aware that you’re looking at a screen, not a size, proper distance from its sun, the right person. It still would have worked after a type of core, a sufficiently strong magnetic while as the viewer became inured to Hop- field and rotation speed, and the proper envi- kins and Foster and all staring at them but ronment to allow life to come into existence just before the climax new characters were and flourish. As vast as the universe is sup- introduced staring at the camera and once posed to be and as old, it would seem likely again you were fully aware you were looking there could be other planets fitting those spec- at a screen. ifications. I thought the computer simulation And did you notice on the poster for the was somewhat shaky also but I’m sure those movie that the. “skull” on the Deadhead theorists would say my brain isn’t as highly Moth was made up of naked dead bodies? developed as theirs and I lack their skill and Nowadays just about everyone in the vast knowledge. So it goes. But then how can western world knows the solution to Psycho those theorists be so certain there were multi- but those of us who saw it when it was still ple trials and how could they determine that? new saw a totally different movie because a Personally, I prefer Murphy’s Law to Fer- lot of its suspense was based on disorienta- mi’s Paradox. Life could very possibly have tion. And not just that the heroine is killed 32 off about 20 minutes or so into the movie in schooling for those who passed the “11+ the most violent murder scene in English- exam” no matter what their parents’ income. speaking cinema (up to that time) but then it Those who passed were mainly those whose seems at parents had enough money to afford private first that the murderess is someone who education in the pre-eleven years so with a is severely bed rid- few exceptions it den and then we are was only helping to told she is actually maintain the class dead. Nothing made system. sense but it gripped The questioning you enough to of the Nobel Prize believe it and stay giving brought to with it. mind that Graham Sorry Gene, Greene never won there is no devastat- the prize for Litera- ing last image of the ture, simply because Golden Gate Bridge there was one com- covered in birds at mittee juror from the end of The Birds. It did however contain France who constantly vetoed Greene. Won- in its cast Doodles Weaver from Spike Jones der if that juror was in the pay of the mafia City Slickers. from Nice who were at loggerheads with Other really effective horror movies: Greene when one of its members was Alien, because it leads you to expect I one divorced by Martine Cloetta, a woman who action and then slams you with the unexpect- was a probably Greene’s love-child. ed. Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris, And the mention of Churchill’s A Histo- this may have been because of not eating ry Of The English Speaking People came as a before seeing the movie but when the doctor reminder that Purnell published it as a week- got out the Black and Decker drill to operate ly magazine back in 1969–1971. That ver- on a patient it was head between-the-knees sion came lavishly illustrated with alternate time. But most scariest of all was a one views and expanding articles by other histori- minute movie put out by the Ministry of In- ans. Checked to see if any sets were still formation in Britain during the 1950s. It was available. THERE ARE! That is, there are if just of a small child slowing reaching up to you can afford $350 to $1,700 for a com- the handle of a saucepan of boiling water. plete set Hitchcock would have been proud of those And one more tale about the Fantasy Art sixty seconds. Society calendar which Alan Hunter didn’t Let’s add a caveat to Eric’s praise of the include, possibly out of modesty, possibly Butler Education Act. Yes, it did increase because it wasn’t germane to the story. Takea education. The average British school leaver look at Alan’s artwork for the calendar on at the age of sixteen had the equivalent of a page 42 of your last ish (The drawing of a twenty year old American’s college educa- robotic beauty-machine and the husband wait- tion BUT those who were chosen for the ing for his wife to be finished with it). Emsh even better education were chosen at the age took a real liking to that and asked Alan’s per- of eleven! That was something both the U.S. mission to use the idea for a magazine cover. and the Soviet educationalists agreed was Have seen part of that cover on a collage crazy. mural at the Kennedy Space Center. Unfortu- Altho’ it guaranteed the even better nately it’s in one of the buildings that was

33 closed to the public after 9/11. Does anyone Great use of color on Steve Stiles’ cover know which magazine and date it was? art this issue. It’s a real rarity to see such use made of color. I’m really appreciating the effect. Your editorial’s a really timely one; I hadn’t gotten all the Earth-like planet news together in my mind and the editorial does just that, so I read the formulation of these [[I wasn’t particularly impressed with news stories with much interest. I’d echo the Silence of the Lambs either, and besides its comment I once saw made in the N3F by being ridiculous, it also seemed implausible way of reaction to your evaluation of all or unreal. To me it wasn’t a movie worth this—we won’t be seeing anything much of remembering or wanting to keep to watch this, so the imagination is a much better way again. Truthfully, I never paid much atten- to travel in space and see the sights than pro- tion to that poster.//I remember seeing Psy- gressive and ongoing reality. cho a long time ago and to me it made more Of course, we might wish to avoid using sense than Silence of the Lambs.But I’m no the imagination so much that we find our- devotee or expert on such movies. Between selves giving serious credence to such theo- Robert Bloch (and I don’t know how close ries as the Bostrom proposal, which I’d say is the screenplay was to his novel) and Hitch- generated by the imagination, which has not cock, the movie worked. I somehow missed generally been the case with theories. The evi- Doodles Weaver or forgot he was in The dence involved seems to have been someone Birds. Maybe I should get a copy and look having thought up the idea. So people might for him. The title of that Weir movie would end up studying the theorist by way of study have been enough or me to avoid watching it. of the theory, a problem once encountered by The one minute movie you mention would Richard Shaver. have been more suspensful than some two In the letters, I recall the to-do about Mr. hour movies.//I’m sure many people over the Gilliland’s laboratory storehouse. It was locat- years have questioned the 'obel Prize com- ed in a pretty mundane setting, but it wasn’t mittee’s choice of recipients. There will wise to go back along the alley and give it a always be those who disagree with the choic- check after it had been cleared out, and I nev- es in any awards. I’m sure the magazine ver- er did have a look in the door. The local sion of Churchill’s History was worthwhile news was with it for a month. It’s still there; but most people would choose the book ver- nothing’s changed much, if at all, at the loca- sion for economic reasons. Of course, there tion ever since. are other much more expensive publications around which would make the magazine ver- John Thiel sion of Churchill’s History look comparative- ly cheap.//It would be nice to see the Emsh [[It was some cover, wasn’t it? I wanted to cover if a copy ever turned up. There must print it on glossy cover stock but it bea way of finding it out. Maybe.]] wouldn’tcome out right; the colors were dis- torted and in some places faded. So it was From: John Thiel back to the regular cover stock. A pity, February 10, 2013 too.//The number of of potential Earth-like planet seems to be increasing often. But as Thomas: you noted, those of us now living won’t be seeing anything of them other than a descrip

34 tion or an artist’s rendering. Imagination is thing in one of his novels. If you want to boundless but in some cases the products of believe in something of that sort, you might that imagination are a little too far from reali- as well believe the universe is an idea in the ty or even plausibility and with little or no mind of God. You don’t sound quite as crazy concrete evidence to back them up. Or, alter- that way. natively might be a hoax or a joke. That Before reading Eric Barraclough’s arti- wouldn’t be surpris- cle, I hadn’t thought ing.//The news about nonviolence in accounts you mention years. It was one of could be interesting those things that was reading, if a person talked about a lot in the could get hold of sixties but seems to copies.]] have faded away since then. Even back then, I From: Milt Stevens knew it wouldn’t work February 10, 2013 in all situations. You Dear Tom, need a government that will play by the rules The cover on and doesn’t like the Reluctant Famulus #91 idea of massacring is certainly eldritch. large numbers of peo- I’m not sure what it is ple. The situation in supposed to be, but it is definitely eldritch. I WWII Norway is represented as a success. It can understand why the couple at the bottom doesn’t sound like much of a success for the look like they want to be on another cover, people who were shot. Personally, I have a possibly on another fanzine. strong interest in preserving my own skin. If I only knew of one story regarding the someone can have me shot, I will probably name Mark Twain. That was about it being a do what they say for the moment. There may measure of depth. I hadn’t heard the other sto- be better chances to subvert them later. ry. I can understand why some writers use Yours truly, pseudonyms. I’m sure Frederick Faust was more successful as a western writer after he Milt Stevens started using the pen name Max Brand. How- 6325 Keystone St. ever, now that I think about it, I don’t know Simi Valley, CA 93063 why Samuel Clemens didn’t just use his own [email protected] name. It seems like a perfectly good name to me. [[Eldritch indeed. Maybe the terrified couple I thought there was already a reasonably stumbled into a place where Cthulhu stores earth-like planet discovered in 2012. It was his munchies. Surely they’d rather be on a dif- circling Tau Ceti, and it was about the right ferent cover but I hope not on a different size and distance from the star. I didn’t hear fanzine.//The story about Clemens taking his about anything else that was wrong with it. pen name from the river boatman’s depth I suspect the speculation about us being sounding call is the one with which most peo- inside a computer is a joke of some sort. ple are familiar and would make more sense. Aside from the Matrix movies, there was also Who knows for certain why Samuel Clemens the novel Darwinia some years back. Robert- chose to use a pen name at all. We’ll proba- Sawyer had an alien race doing the same bly never know. I suspect Samuel L. Clemens

35 didn’t know either. Yes, Samuel Clemens was Interesting point by John Purcell about a perfectly good name. His pen name was a car mileage. Back in those good old days well-known secret in that his real name is when cars were real and built by honest labor often included in parentheses on the title to last, you traded in every three or four pages of his books.//There wasn’t much of years. That was about how long they lasted. anything else wrong with the earlier planet My Taurus has over 110,000 miles on it and discovered as far as I know. It was more while a few bits have worn out (had to get thatastronomers had discovered yet another anew power steering pump the other day) is likely and promising planet. It looks as if still running just fine. they’ll find even more.//The computer simula- The “Pumpkin Papers” were in the pump- tion theory does in some ways seem more like kin for only one night. Chambers had formed a joke but the man who came up with it the idea that Hiss’s lawyers might get a seemed serious. But then, as with sincerity, search warrant, take his microfilms, and seriousness can be faked. Your suggestion leave him with no evidence of the espionage. makes more sense—except to atheists, many So he hid them for the night outside the of whom would think the idea crazy.//'on-vio- house. Being aware of a bit of drama, I sup- lence. The same sort of thought occurred to pose, he handed them over to Nixon from the me, that it wouldn’t work in all situations. pumpkin. Then the press went wild over the There have been and are government leaders pumpkin patch, even though Chambers had cruel and ruthless enough to ignore “the destroyed the evidence. rules” and treat non-violent protesters the One of my relatives has been very notori- same as the ones supplied with lots of heavy ous, but I’ve mentioned him often enough. armament. 'on-violence may be a noble goal Presumably Alexis Gilliland’s father had but it’s not much good if people are killed learned about making explosives in a build- anyway, as they have been. A lot of people ing with a frame structure within the city lim- have a strong interest in preserving their its. Desisting from that would give him more skins. As you say, “There may be better time to send in several thousand entries to a chances to subvert them later.”]] soap company contest. In one of the last chapters of The Return From: Joseph T. Major of the King Gandalf mentions going off to 1409 Christy Avenue spend a little time decompressing with Tom Louisville, KY 40204-2040 Bombadil on the way back to the Shire. So he doesn’t quite reappear, but is mentioned. February 10, 2013 Then the Hobbits find out that there is a new government there . . . Since Peter Jackson Dear Tom: chose not to do that part, it tends to get ignored. About the only thing that comes to mind Namarie, about Eyes Wide Shut (I’ve never seen it) Joseph T Major was the comment that one viewer allegedly shouted from the audience: “Why don’t you [[I’ve never seen the movie Eyes either and go to Plato’s Retreat?” This was a notorious never had any inclination to do so. Partly sex club from the time, in New York City because of Tom Cruise, who has never im- until 1985, then in Miami until 2006. pressed me, especially since he was stupid Given what’s been happening in Egypt I enough to become a Scientologist. (L Ron wouldn’t consider Gene Sharp to be all that Hubbard must be laughing his ass off some- successful. where in the great unknown.)//Unfortunately,

36 non-violence hasn’t been as successful as its to meet his doom.. and yet, as we can see supporters had hoped or or wished. Reality from this cover, those JWs can get pretty can be a bummer.//Well cars these days are nasty themselves. Or, maybe that’s just my still real (very fanciful and gadgeted, though) interpretation of two unrelated drawings? and designed to last a long time with the We’ll never know!!!! proper care. There are plenty of older, often (Oh, before I forget, attaching three restored, early 20th century cars and ones more pieces for your consideration here. A upto the middle or “usual” bit of odd- so of the century.//It ness, plus the last would make some of the “Future is so sense to store the Bright” series, and microfilm some- the first of the two where temporari- “Bored” drawings, ly./Very likely the this one playing building was a with the actual wood frame struc- word. Yes, it was ture and, apparent- an “interes- ting” ly, within the city day for doodling . . limits. Alexis could .) verify that. I wonder about the soap company Regarding the quote that, should an contests even though they were fairly com- Earth-like planet be found this year, it mon many years ago in the 20th century.//I’d “would cause humanity to reassess its placein forgotten about that mention by Gandalf. the universe.” Well, no, it won’t. Especially Even so, Tom Bombadil was only, as you when such a discovery would most likely be said, “men- tioned.” He didn’t make any of the “we found a dot of light that our mea- more actual “physical” appearances later in surements say is in an area close to a bigger the story and take any significant part. That dot of light that is kind of like the Earth is to may be why Peter Jackson chose not to the Sun” type of thing, and not the publica- include it. But then again it wouldn’t have tion of a series of photos of aliens waving hurt to include a scene with that conversa- their tentacles at us in greetings. It will be tion. Or maybe it was left “on the cutting cool, but for most people, no affect at all on room floor”.]] any of their thoughts or beliefs. The same with all the philosopher/physi From: Brad Foster cist musings on “are we living in a computer February 11, 2013 simulation?” questions that has been going on forever as far as I can make out. “Wow, Greetings Tom ~ what if what we think of as reality is just a dream someone is having?” “. . . is just in a A nicely stuffed po box yielded up sever- drop of water on an alien planet, soon to dry al fanzines this weekend, including the new up?” “. . . is just one of an infinite number of Reluctant Famulus #91, with the creepy possible realities stacked on each other?” “. . Stiles cover. Even when I’ve tried to draw . is just a pimple of the ball-sac of a not-quite- monsters and such, they just come off goofy, so-bright worker ant with a learning prob- but Steve got the ick factor down well. (Also, lem?” etc etc. That is, “reality” could be any- I see this one as a follow-up to his monstrous thing and everything, but as long as it is the cover on the recent Trap Door #28. There, it reality we know, then it’s the only one we looks like the Jehovah’s Witness guy is about have to deal with. On the other hand . . .

37 “Dude, have you ever REALLY looked at Loved the Gilliland toon on page 24. your HAND, man? Far out!!!” Really, really, really! I liked the note in Gene’s look at horror I also appreciated his idea of how to movies where he wrote about Hitchcock talk- juice-up the image on the cover of issue 90. ing about being able to give the spooky/ The idea of the outline of an alien/monstrous creepy feelings by not showing anything. I body would not have worked for the original think that’s why so many horror movies fail, source the image was created for. However, because the lead-up to the horror allows us to now that they have dropped it back in my put whatever we personally find the most hor- lap, I think adding some touches like that is a rifying into that blank space, but when they great idea. Have to see if I can get back into finally nail it down to something concrete, it it and do a few things like that. Thanks, Alex- becomes real, and often not as horrifying as is! what we could imagine. I think that’s why And, a great wrap-up this issue with such things move more toward the visceral more “classic” fan art, though does look like gross-out monster in place of the horrifying, the printing might have been a bit heavy on to get some kind of reaction at the reveal. the black, and filled-in some of the finer (The alien in Alien is, aside from those ex- details in some of these. Still, very much ap- tendable mandibles, a quite elegant creature preciate you sharing these with us all. in many ways.) stay happy~ I don’t actually watch too many horror Brad movies these days myself, kind of the “been there, seen it” thing after all these years, and- Brad W Foster no interest in just being grossed out. Howev- PO Box 165246, Irving, TX 75016 er, I do love parodies of it all, and recently- [email protected] saw a wonderful one: “Tucker and Dale vs Evil”. This the write-up someone did over on [[Sooner or later you’re bound to draw some IMDB, and I think they got it down pretty sort of creepy monster. In the meantime the well: “Two lovable West Virginian hillbillies ones you do do draw are good enough and are headed to their ”fixer-upper“ vacation cab- make people laugh or at least smile, and in to drink some beer, do some fishin’, and that’s something we need to see more of have a good time. But when they run into a Sometimes the worst monsters are those group of preppy college kids who assume which look like anything other than what from their looks that they must be in-bred, they really are: the jovial smiling sort or the chainsaw wielding killers, Tucker & Dale’s innocent looking baby-faced kind. Interesting vacation takes a bloody & hilarious turn for correlation on your part concerning the Jeho- the worse.” Rent it and laugh! vah’s Witnesses. All in all, the JWs are rela- I liked the reaction of removing all evi- tively harmless even if annoying for popping dence of an author that Michaele Jordan has up at the worst times. It’s those danged Scien- when being surprised to find out a book has a tologists we should really fear. (Curse you, L cliff hanger ending. While I’m not a huge fan Ron Hubbard! See what you spawned?). of the book-series-that-goes-on-forever, I //May you never get so bored again and can’t complain as long as they tell me that instead draw your usual wacky things.//Re: from the beginning. But to buy a book with Earth-like planets. There you go. Your assess- no hint that it is only an unfinished part of a ment is on the mark. Just because astron- larger whole, that just strikes me as a cheap omers might find an actual earth-like planet trick to get me in, and I’ll do almost the same doesn’t mean there will be life of any sort thing Michaele does. there. Even if there were, unless they trans

38 mit (by ansible?) color photos of themselves From: Al Byrd none of us will ever see them. Still, it would February 14, 2013 be exciting to learn there were other intelli- gent beings somewhere else in the universe. Dear Tom, But I fear it’s all just a pipe dream.//Again, regarding the computer simu- Thank you for another lation theory, you make a fine issue of TRF. You've good point. It’s only one of a begun 2013 in fine style. possibly large number of Again, I enjoyed the (wild) speculations with, so news of the unusual with far, nothing substantial to which you began the issue. back it up. I have looked at The discussion of the origin my hand and found it an inter- of Samuel Clemens's pen esting appendage. And I still name gave your readers remember the fillo you did some fun insight into the concerning that subject.//I man who taught us all to don’t watch much in the way write American English. of horror movies either, part- As for the possibility of ly for the reason you give our living in a computer sim- “been there, seen it” and part- ulation, I'd be interested in ly because there are enough seeing some good hard-sf horrors in the real (as novels on how it would opposed to cinematic) world change the world if it were to scare any sane, sensible learned that we were truly person. Maybe there need to living in one. I liked the first be more parodies of horror movies; some of Matrix movie, but it didn't really deal with them seem to be parodies anyway, though the question of how the Matrix society would probably not the moviemaker’s intention. have adjusted to learning that they were not That movie sounds crazy enough for me to “real” beings, but “simulated” creatures. want to watch. Cometo think of it, some of I suspect that Gene Stewart wrote anoth- the movies Bruce Campbell, Jr made could er insightful article. Sadly for my following be considered parodies.// Regarding the it, I've watched only The Silence of the cliffhanger books, I agree with you. There’s Lambs and The Shining. I'd have to give my not much worse than buying a book and find- nod to the former. I really need to get around ing it’s number 3, 6, or 97th in a to seeing some of those other movies. series.//Certain of the artwork in the calen- Again, I liked Geoff Lardner-Burke's dar was“scratchboard”, something I’d heard Attempts at Utopia article. He's giving me of before but never to my knowledge seen. the impression that communes in Great Yes, its is “a bit heavy on the black” and was Britain arise from a different dynamic than a—pardon me—bitch to get looking right for the one that drives American communes. reprinting.]] There, they tend to come from an noble, either by birth or by wealth, who recruits fol- lowers to his well-reasoned hypothesis; in America, they tend to crystallize around someone from a modest social background with a novel idea and the verbal skills to sell it. At least, that pattern seems to hold for

39 Pleasant Hill, the Oneida Community, and hand, maybe the tale’s originator was mock- Nauvoo, the three communes about which ing Lamarckianism. I've read in depth. I know vaguely that the Thanks for the article by Alan Hunter. Fourierist communes here tended to follow I’d love to see more accounts of classical fan- the British pattern, but they were transplants dom. from Europe and didn’t take well in Ameri- I hope to send you my first in a series of can soil, if I’ve understood them correctly. two articles on the Battle of Perryville soon. The Quantum Thief, reviewed by The articles came from a talk that I gave to Michaele Jordan, looks like the kind of novel reenactors in Birmingham, Alabama, last that I’d love to read if I had more time. September. I’m currently putting together a Maybe, when I retire in four—no, make that talk for them on John Hunt Morgan’s Great seven, more likely—years from now. Ohio Raid. After that, I hope to get to work RE Joseph Major’s loc: I really ought to for you on a three-parter on the Shakers of visit George Rogers Clark’s grave. I’ve been Pleasant Hill. You can’t really have Kentuck- to Daniel Boone’s, if his grave it is. It has at iana without Shakers. least a lovely setting. Frankfort Cemetery has a truly dramatic view of Kentucky’s capital, Best wishes, atop bluffs across the Kentucky River from Al Byrd the cemetery, and of the part of the city that lies in the Kentucky’s River’s gorge. Also, I [[I’m glad you enjoyed the last issue. bet that there is a host of fascinating stories Samuel L.Clemens was a complicated to be told about Brigadier General Major’s brigade of Texas Cavalry. The Civil War man and I’m always learning some- tended to get progressively more free form thing new about him. If you appreciat- and wilder as it moved west. ed the discussion of his pen name then Alexis Gilliland’s tales of a laboratory you might find my Conclusion of some nearly gave me, as a former laboratory safety interest as well since it delves farther officer, heart palpitations. I can’t imagine into the origin of the pen name.//Such what the EPA would do these days to some- one that it caught dumping red fuming nitric a novel as you suggest might be worth acid. Still, I definitely do understand the reading if handled properly. But who temptation to dump it. For the persons trying could we get to write such a novel? to dispose of RFNA, neutralizing it according Would he or she have the time to do to proper protocol would be more dangerous so?//If one were an avid viewer of hor- than dumping it. As for its effect on storm ror movies Gene's analysis would be of drains, I feel led to recall a notorious scene in use. I enjoyed his take on those movies Breaking Bad in which a naive young crystal- meth cook disposes of a murdered rival by even though I’ve seen only a couple of dissolving him in hydroflouric acid in a bath- them; the Hitchcock ones.//Until Geoff tub. That series isn't for the faint of heart. Lardner-Burke’ series, my knowledge The story of the woman impregnated bya of communes was very limited and musket round in the Civil War reveals that its I’dnever heard of the ones he wrote originator believed in Lamarckianism, the the- about.//I might try reading The Quan- ory that genetic information could pass on acquired characteristics, as only by such a tum Thief some day should the mood pathway could the son be born with a round or desire strike me. But there are so where his father had taken one. On the other many other novels and writers . . . //

40 Back before we moved to Ken- tucky, while we were looking for a suitable piece of land we went to Frankfort Cemetery specifically to see Boone’s grave and I took photos of it. The scen- ery there is, as you say, lovely. We also went to see the state capital. I found the building impressive but we didn’t go see the inside and I only took a photo of it. Maybe some day . . .// I imagine these days the EPA people would go bonkers when they found out what had been dumped. I’ve never watched Breaking Bad, nev- er had any interest in doing so.//Who knows what the tale’s originator intend- Cafe Poheme ed.//I wouldn’t mind running some sort 333 Ramona Avenue, El Cerrito CA 94530-3739 of continuing series on “classical fan- dom” but I don’t have access to such 2/14/13 material and don’t know where to find it or from who to obtain it./ /Interest- Mr. Sadler ingly, there’s a grave marker for John Hunt Morgan in Huntsville, Alabama’s As a big fan of Mark Twain, I was fasci- Maple Hill Cemetery. He’s not actual- nated by your speculations about his famous pen name. However, the fact that he told the ly buried there, of course but he had same story about the name on different occa- ties with the city and the marker must sions leads me to believe there must be some be the city’s way of honoring him. Too substance to it, and my own experiences with bad he isn’t really buried there. I could pen names prompts me to discount the objec- make the claim that my grandparents tions made to this story. If no record exists of and one set of great-grandparents, this Captain Sellers use of the name, that along with some other of my ancestors does not mean he did not use it. If Sellers used a title for his writings which did not are buried in the same cemetery,.// include his pen name, if would not show up Yeah. Bring on the Shakers. Although, in a web search or other kinds of catalog. For come to think of it, your article on the example, if the title Sellers used was “The Shakers would provide me with yet Ancient Mariner”, a title search would turn another place I'd like to visit but very up that title, not Captain Sellers' name. likely never will for various reasons I have been speculating myself about the nature of pen names and alternate identities, even if it's not that far away. Sigh.]] and Twain is one of my main targets of inter- est. His novel “Huckleberry Finn” is narrated 41 by Huckleberry Finn himself in a vernacular think we’re all friends in this fanzine.// I too voice quite different from the voice Twain am a fan of Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens, used elsewhere. Finn is an illiterate boy, and with 31 books by him, 11 biographies, and 1 Twain a very literate adult. More, the name autobiography edited by Charles 'eider. I’m Mark Twain is not the author’s real name not trying to brag, just to note what I have by either. On his birth certificate appears the and about Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka name “Samuel Clemens”. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain. Well I’m not the only one who is a pen name for Mark Twain who is a pen doesn’t believe the assumption that someone name for Samuel Clemens. Now it appears else used the pen name of Mark Twain before that someone wrote something under the Samuel Langhorne Clemens did. There are name Mark Twain before Clemens adopted those much, much smarter than I who have it. looked into the story and found nothing to In the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre support it. I find myself wondering why it is there is a category of being he calls “Being so many people apparently seem to find it dif- for Others”, the way you see other people ficult to believe that Samuel Clemens was not and other people see you. Lacking telepathy, the first person to use the pen name “Mark this is the only way we experience each other Twain”. Do they feel Sam Clemens wasn’t as individuals. We never see what we could smart enough or original enough to come up call a “real self.” Mark Twain would be with a pen name like that of Mark Twain abeing for others independent of his being even though he was a riverboat pilot (Which forhimself, or even a being as it is in the phys- cost him $500.00)? I guess there are and ical world. Someone else could adopt the always will be those folks who look for some- name and physical appearance of Mark complicated explanation or make more com- Twain and be just as much Mark Twain as plicated something which might be more sim- Mark Twain himself could be, and in fact an ple than they are willing to admit. People too actor from the Stage Bridge Players did exact- often believe what they want to in spite of evi- ly that as a “ghost guest of honor” at the annu- dence to the contrary. Both Sam Clemens al picnic of the Berkeley California Writers and Captain Sellers are long dead and so Club some years back. unavailable for questioning on the matter I have borrowed from Tibetan Buddhism What’s more interesting is your theory or con- the concept of the Tulpa, an imaginary per- jecture that Huckleberry Finn was a pen son who becomes real, and Mark Twain is a name for Mark Twain, which in turn was a prime example of a Tulpa, in that he was pen name for Sam Clemens. If I recall cor- imagined by someone, but has become more rectly Sam Clemens was supposed to have real than his creator not only to you and me, “an ear for dialect”. When growing up, and but in translation to millions of readers of dif- even in adulthood, he had been around peo- ferent languages, the majority of whom were ple less literate. Huckleberry Finn was sup- not yet born when Mark Twain died. posedly modeled after Clemens’s friend, Tom Ton bon ami, Blankenship. Clemens said that Tom was “ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as any boy had.” I’d have thought one of the attributes of a truly good fiction writer was the skill and ability to portray accurately and believably a charac- ter unlike himself or herself. But what do I [[Gee, you needn’t be so formal. A simple know?//Just because Clemens repeated the Tom would have been adequate. I’d like to same story (with possible minor variations),

42 that doesn’t necessarily mean that really hap- ALEXIS GILLILA*D pened. But, to some people, I suppose the sto- 4030 81h Street South, Arlington, VA 22204 ry that Clemens took over the name Mark February 16, 2013 Twain after Isaiah Sellers’ death is a very Dear Tom, attractive one; and even if there were a moun- tain of proof to the contrary would still con- Thank you for TRF #91, with its dramat- tinue to believe it. Sort of like the theories ic and well composed cover by Steve Stiles. about the UFO crash at Roswell and other In your introduction you mention the Fermi conspiracy theories. Ah well, I don’t expect paradox, which was framed in the 1940s everybody to when a bunch of agree with me and scientists were dis- it’s really not cussing extraterres- worth it to pursue trial life, and Fer- the matter any fur- mi asked the ques- ther. So shall we tion: “So, where is agree to dis- everybody?” The agree?//Regarding paradox depends your theory about on the assumption pen names, it that advanced seems to me I races will be able could claim that to travel around Ray 'elson is real- the galaxy at ly a pen name and faster than light you’re not the first person to use it and, as (FTL) speeds to visit places of interest, Clemens did (or claimed to have done), upon including Sol III. After most of a century, the the death of the previous user of of the pen notion of FTL travel remains firmly in the name, appropriated it for your own use. realm of fiction, and increasingly in the Clemens may have adopted the persona realm of fantasy rather than science fiction, (second hand or not) but he was well aware which needs to be at least minimally connect- of who he actually was and could keep the ed to reality. If, as seems likely, there are bil- two identities separate. His family andclosest lions of inhabited planets with millions of sen- friends certainly had no problem distinguish- tient races, why haven't they paid us a visit? ing between the two personas and for the One reason might be that such visits are not most part addressed him as Sam or Clem- possible. The optimism of the 1940s imag- ens. 'or, I suspect, did Samuel Clemens ined that space flight would be easy. The con- despite taking on the name and persona. As temporary reality is that we understand that for Tulpas . . . The concept seems mystical space flight is hard, even for robots, and or somewhat theosophical to me. Having, to daunting for humans. A second reason might the best of my knowledge, never seen a tul- be that interstellar spaceflight, even if possi- pa—or if I had, never realized what it was—I ble, would be too expensive to be undertak- can’t attest to their existence or non-exis- en. A third reason might be that a hyper- tence.]] advanced race (such as we humans) could use their hyper-advanced technology to achieve the destruction of their civilization, if not the premature extinction of their race. Geoff Marcy thinks we should send probes to Alpha Centauri as a great adven-

43 ture. Will we get those probes launched From: Lloyd Penney before global warming forecloses the possibil- 1706-24 Eva Rd. ity of doing so? Maybe, maybe not If we did Etobicoke, ON would the payoff be of interest a thousand CANADA M9C 2B2 generations later? The idea that the universe is a computer simulation is a high tech varia- February 26, 2013 tion on the idea that we are all dreams in the mind of God. Interesting, but unprovable. Dear Tom: The other two Wizenbeaks, should be available on Amazon, or you could check out This is actually the second time I’ve writ- your local second hand book store. A sheet ten this letter. Our computer is fresh from the of cartoons is enclosed for your contempla- shop, but the backup laptop may have eaten tion and possible use. the first letter, so here is another version, and I think this one is a better one. Thanks for The Reluctant Famulus 91. A great cover. Either Brad and Janet here are petrified, or they’re in the alien deli, and they’re horrified at the high prices. Worst of all, none of it is kosher. AAAAAAAUGH! I had no idea that Sam Clements may not [[To me, the best thing about having that cov- have been the first to use the Mark Twain er is that Steve sent it to me out of the blue pen name. If he was, where did the idea that just when I was wondering how I could get a he wasn’t come from? There are reasons for cover or that issue. There was no way I was a pen name. I wonder if Clemens felt his fic- going to miss such an opportunity.//What you tion may have hurt his career as a journalist? wrote about space travel is, regrettably, all I never thought that, maybe one day, The too true. Scientists have learned a lot over Matrix might resemble a documentary, but the past decades and unfortunately much of it does a programme ever realize it’s in the com- almost totally destroys one of the foundations puter? Only if the programme is told it is, of SF, travelling in space and visiting other and, if it is complex enough to realize it, per- planets. There are ties when I feel certain we haps reach consciousness? I hope those who humans will achieve self-destruction instead were advanced enough to set all of this up of interstellar space travel even in the unlike- has remembered to back us all up . . . ly event such a thing becomes possible. I’ve never been a horror reader or view- Humans' propensity for violence, wars, and er. What little I have read, I found more silly destruction seem to be far stronger. That and than scary. Perhaps I can suspend my disbe- the evidence that humans have a noticeable lief for science fiction, but not for horror. share in causing global warming. As you say, John Purcell, you will love Stan Rogers’ the theory of a computer simulation of the music. It’s fine folk music, and fandom cer- universe is unprovable and probably always tainly likes it. It might sound a little familiar. will be. It's just a wild, fanciful notion or I never knew why the hobbits spent so someone’s drunken mental ravings.//Re the much time with Tom Bombadil in Lord of Wizenbeak books. I should have thought of the Rings; perhaps this was their hideout time Amazon.com; it seems as if everything imag- to shake their pursuers, and it also gave Tol- inable is sold through Amazon.com.//Thank kien the opportunity to indulge himself in you forth cartoons. They are greatly appreci- more of the music he obviously loved. ated, as usual.]] Time to go. Hope this version is kept!

44 Ihave found out that jan howard finder has passed away from prostate cancer, so I am a little numb right now. Take care, and see you with the next issue. Yours, The Methuen Water Demon, 1963 Lloyd Penney The Martin family’s ordeal in Methuen, Massachusetts began in October when Fran- [[The cover: from the look of what’s sur- cis, his wife, and children first noticed a rounding them they’re probably more horri- damp patch on the wall in the den. While fied that the things might still be alive and they watched, the patch grew larger. A ready for mayhem. An alien deli . . . Close to moment later, they heard a popping sound what I thought: Cthulhu’s larder. But I don’t and a drenching spout of extremely cold think Cthulhu is Jewish and so it seems a cer- water began spewing from the wall. tainty the delicacies aren’t kosher—or even Francis Martin immediately ruled out from this world.//In regard to the claim about frozen pipes—temperatures weren’t freez- Samuel Clemens’ pen name, as noted, he was ing—and he’d recently had the drains largely to blame. Again, see my Conclusion cleaned. The inexplicable water spout contin- for an in-depth take on the matter. I doubt he ued to stream a few seconds before it was particularly worried about his fiction stopped. The next day, a second spot in anoth- hurting his journalism; he continued with er location began to spew water like a foun- both up until his death. I think he kept the tain. The spray lasted less than half a minute two occupations straight and his career in and ceased. The phenomena continued over journalism probably helped his fiction.//I several more days, with new icy water doubt that The Matrix might come to resem- streams occurring at fifteen minute intervals ble a documentary. The computer simulation in various rooms throughout the house, soak- theory seems too close to fiction itself. Or ing floors, furniture, and occupants. A deputy else an elaborate hoax.//I too have found it witnessed a water jet burst out of a wall and easier to suspend my disbelief for SF than for spray two feet into the room. horror. With horror, sometimes it’s silly or When the Martins moved into a rela- just plain gross, other times I think, “Oh tive’s house, that place was also inflicted come O'!”// The time spent with Tom Bom- with mysterious water streams from the badil wasn’t that long and, to me anyhow, walls. Returning his family to their own seemed unnecessary. Maybe you’re correct home, Francis Martin had the water turned and Tolkien was just “indulging himself in off at the mains. The next day, water spouts the music he obviously loved.”//I recently began to explode from the plaster walls, learned of jan howard finder’s death but often from several spots simultaneously. Gal- didn’t know the cause. It’s kind of unnerving, lons of water poured out in twenty second since men have prostates and probably never intervals, but the source remained unknown. think about any possible complications. But The Martins moved away again, but were they should have them checked periodical- forced to return to Methuen when the water ly.]] demon followed them. Gradually, the phenomena tapered off and stopped altogether. The family never dis- covered what caused the frightening activity. The official explanation? Moisture build-up.

45 CCCoCooonnnncccclllluuuussssiiiioooonnnn I know I shouldn't do it but . . .

At the risk of being accused of an obses- the balance against him, on Piper’s wall. sion with the subject or of beating a dead Clemens was by no means a Coal Oil Tom- horse as the saying goes, a bit more on last my—he drank for the pure and unadulterated issue’s Introduction regarding the pen name love of the ardent. Most of his drinking was Mark Twain. Seemingly the only evidence conducted in singlehanded contests, but occa- supporting the claim that it was originally sionally he would invite Dan De Quille, used by Isaiah Sellers is the following Charley Parker, Bob Lowery, or Al Doten, Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens wrote in Life never more than one of them, however, at a on the Mississippi and, later, varying ver- time, and whenever he did, his invariable sions in letters to people. parting injunction to Piper was to “Mark “Captain Isaiah Sellers was not of liter- Twain,” meaning two chalk marks, of ary turn or capacity, but he used to jot down course.” brief paragraphs of plain practical informa- Clemens’ reply: tion about the river, and sign them “MARK “Dear Sir: TWAIN,” and give them to the New Orleans Mark Twain was the nom de plume of Picayune. They related to the stage and condi- one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write tion of the river, and were accurate and valu- river news over it for the New Orleans able; ... At the time that the telegraph brought Picayune. He died in 1869 and as he could no the news of his death, I was on the Pacific longer need that signature, I laid violent coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and need- hands upon it without asking permission of ed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the the proprietor’s remains. That is the history ancient mariner’s discarded one, and have of the nom de plume I bear. done my best to make it remain what it was yours, in his hands, a sign and symbol and warrant Samuel Clemens” that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how Please note in the preceding letter by I have succeeded, it would not be modest in Samuel Clemens the year he says Sellers me to say.” died, 1869. And in a letter in response to the follow- According to the Missouri Death Rec- ing statement: The Daily Alta California ords’ “Registry of Deaths, pg. 267”, a copy published a Comstock version: “We knew of which I downloaded, Sellers actually died Clemens in the early days and know exactly in March (3 according to one source) of how he came to be dubbed “Mark Twain.” 1864. John Piper’s saloon on B street used to be the Tennessee burial records for Isaiah Sell- grand rendezvous for all the Virginia City ers state: Death Date: 6 Mar 1864, Birth Bohemians. Piper conducted a cash business Place: N. Carolina, Cemetery: Bellefontaine, and refused to keep any books. As a special Address: Memphis Tenn. Volume: K Page: favor, however, he would occasionally chalk 267 County Library: RDSL 7 Missouri down drinks to the boys, on the wall back of Archive: C 10365 SLGS Rolls: 307. the bar. Sam Clemens, when localizing for Whichever day it was, it occurred about the Enterprise, always had an account, with five years earlier than Clemens claimed in 46 his above letter and elsewhere. pieces. In 1863 he began signing his name Note, also, the following statement: with the pseudonym “Mark Twain,” “Regardless of the source of the name, [Again,emphasis mine] a river term meaning “Mark Twain” was “born” as his pen name in “two fathoms deep.” Mark Twain would be the office of the Nevada Territorial Enter- Clemens’s pen name for the rest of his life. prise, when Clemens first used that name on Then, from two relatively recent biogra- an article published on February 3, 1863.” phies of Samuel Clemens.: [Emphasis mine.] A footnote from Ron Powers’ biography So, according the the preceding state- Mark Twain A Life, © 2005, page 94: “There ment, Clemens first used Mark Twain as a is no evidence Sellers ever signed a dispatch pen name a bit over a year before Sellers that way.” [Emphasis mine] passed away. From Fred Kaplin’s biography, The Sin- And from the following item. gular Mark Twain © 2003, Kaplin cites the From an article on the site for The State same Clemens claim in Life on the Mississip- Historical Society of Missouri, Historical pi”, adding, “though no record of Sellers’ Missourians: use of that signature has been discovered.” The Cub Riverboat Pilot Becomes [Emphasis mine] It would imply, then, that Mark Twain just because Clemens repeated the same story In 1857, at the age of twenty-two, Sam (with possible minor variations) doesn’t Clemens boarded a steamboat and headed to mean that really happened. Both biographies New Orleans. He planned to take a trip to seem to have been well and thoroughly South America. Instead, he met the steam- researched and apparently neither biographer boat pilot Horace Bixby, who agreed to let has found anything to corroborate the Sellers Clemens train with him as a riverboat pilot story. for a fee of five hundred dollars. For the next Furthermore, The New Orleans [Times]- two years, Clemens learned how to pilot a Picayune, to which Sellers supposedly sent riverboat on the Mississippi River. He gained his column, has an online archive of papers his piloting license in April 1859 and made a going back to 1805 and which definitely cov- good living until the outbreak of the Civil ers the time span Sellers was a pilot on the War in April 1861 when all commercial traf- Mississippi and allegedly contributing his riv- fic on the river stopped. Clemens then joined er news. I went to their site and did a search the Marion Rangers, a group of Confederate and came up with nothing more than the Sam volunteers that disbanded after only two Clemens claim in Life on the Mississippi. weeks. There were no results showing anycolumn In the summer of 1861, President Abra- written by a Mark Twain during the time in- ham Lincoln appointed Orion Clemens territo- volved. So, a rhetorical question: have all the rial secretary of Nevada. Sam joined his editions with (supposedly) his river notes col- brother, and together they headed west by umn somehow simply vanished or were they stagecoach. When they arrived in Nevada, destroyed in a fire? Clemens worked for Orion for a while, but Then here is a publication titled Person- thought he could make a fortune mining for al recollections of many prominent people silver or gold. Though he tried to strike it and events, especially of those relating to the rich, Clemens failed and returned to journal- history of St. Louis, by John F. Darby, (Pub- ism, this time as a reporter. He joined the Vir- lished 1885) which includes a section on Cap- ginia City Territorial Enterprise in 1862 and tain Isaiah Sellers. There’s no mention in it was paid $25 a week for various kinds of arti- of Sellers writing such a column under the cles, both serious reports and humorous name of Mark Twain. If Darby was well ac-

47 quainted with Sellers in some way, surely Now, parodying Sellers (and then some.) he’d have known that. There is, however, the Mark Twain: following paragraph: “Capt. Sellers, from his New Orleans Crescent, great success in the calling and business May 17, 1859 which he had engaged in and followed from boyhood to advanced age, and in justice to RIVER I*TELLIGE*CE his good name and fine character, would seem to be entitled to a more honorable Our friend Sergeant Fathom, one of the notice than the seeming burlesque and oldest cub pilots on the river, and now on the ridicule with which he is spoken of by “Mark Railroad Line steamer Trombone, sends us a Twain.” [emphasis mine] rather bad account concerning the state of the To confuse matters a bit more, here fol- river. Sergeant Fathom is a “cub” of much lows a pair of items related to the preceding experience, and although we are loath to coin- quote. The first is an example of the sort of cide in his view of the matter, we give his items Captain Isaiah Sellers allegedly provid- note a place in our columns, only hoping that ed to newspapers; the second, by Mark his prophesy will not be verified in this Twain (Or Samuel L. Clemens), to which instance. While introducing the Sergeant, Darby refers. Please note the dates of each “we consider it but simple justice (we quote article, the preface to the Sellers piece, and from a friend of his) to remark that he is dis- that name appended to it. tinguished for being, in pilot phrase, ‘close,’ as well as superhumanly ‘safe.’ ” It is a well- Sellers: New Orleans True Delta, known fact that he has made fourteen hun- May 7, 1859, p. 8 dred and fifty trips in the New Orleans and STEAMBOAT A*D RIVER I*TELLI- St. Louis trade without causing serious dam- GE*CE age to a steamboat. This astonishing success is attributed to the fact that he seldom runs Our friend, Capt. Sellers, one of the old- his boat after early candle light. It is related est pilots on the river, and now on the WM. of the Sergeant that upon one occasion he M. MORRISON, sends us a rather bad actually ran the chute of Glasscock’s Island, account concerning the state of the river. down stream, in the night, and at a time, too, Capt. Sellers is a man of experience, and when the river was scarcely more than bank though we do not coincide in his view of the full. His method of accomplishing this feat matter, we give his note a place in our proves what we have just said of his columns, only hoping that his prophecy will “safeness”—he sounded the chute first, and not be verified in this instance: then built a fire on the head of the island to run by. As to the Sergeant’s “closeness,” we STEAMER WM. M. MORRISON. have heard it whispered that he once went up VICKSBURG, May 4, 1859 to the right of the “Old Hen,” but this is prob- The river from your city up to this port is ably a pardonable little exaggeration, prompt- higher than it has been since the high water ed by the love and admiration in which he is of 1815, and my opinion is that the water will held by various ancient dames of his acquain- be in Canal street before the 1st day of June. tance, (for albeit the Sergeant may have al- Mrs. Turner's plantation, which has not been ready numbered the allotted years of man, affected by the river since 1815, is now still his form is erect, his step is firm, his hair under water. retains its sable hue, and more than all, he Yours, &c., hath a winning way about him, an air of docil- ISAIAH SELLERS. ity and sweetness, if you will, and a smooth

48 ness of speech, together with an exhaustless- river on the old first “Jubilee.” She was fund of funny sayings; and lastly, an ever- new,then, however; a singular sort of a single- flowing stream, without beginning, or mid- engine boat, with a Chinese captain and a dle, or end, of astonishing reminiscences of Choctaw crew, forecastle on her stern, the ancient Mississippi, which, taken togeth- wheels in the center, and the jackstaff “no- er, form a tout ensemble which is a sufficient where,” for I steered her with a window shut- excuse for the tender epithet which is, by ter, and when we wanted to land we sent a common consent, applied to him by all those line ashore and “rounded her to” with a yoke ancient dames aforesaid of “che-arming crea- of oxen. ture!”) As the Sergeant has been longer on Well, sir, we wooded off the top of the the river, and is better acquainted with it than big bluff above Selma—the only dry land vis- any other “cub” extant, his remarks are enti- ible—and waited there three weeks, swap- tled to extraordinary consideration, and are ping knives and playing “seven up” with the always read with the deepest interest by high Indians, waiting for the river to fall. Finally, and low, rich and poor, from “Kiho” to Kam- it fell about a hundred feet, and we went on. schatka, for be it known that his fame ex- One day we rounded to, and I got in a horse- tends to the uttermost parts of the earth: trough, which my partner borrowed from the Indians up there at Selma while they were at R. R. STEAMER TROMBONE, prayers, and went down to sound around No. Vicksburg, May 8, 1859. 8, and while I was gone my partner got The river from New Orleans up to aground on the hills at Hickman. After three Natchez is higher than it has been since the days labor we finally succeeded in sparring niggers were executed, (which was in the fall her off with a capstan bar, and went on to of 1813) and my opinion is, that if the rise Memphis. By the time we got there the river continues at this rate the water will be on the had subsided to such an extent that we were roof of the St. Charles Hotel before the mid- able to land where the Gayoso House now dle of January. The point at Cairo, which has stands. We finished loading at Memphis, and not even been moistened by the river since engaged part of the stone for the present St. 1813, is now entirely under water. Louis Court-House, (which was then in pro- However, Mr. Editor, the inhabitants of cess of erection) to be taken up on our return the Mississippi Valley should not act precipi- trip. tately and sell their plantations at a sacrifice You can form some conception by these on account of this prophesy of mine, for I memoranda of how high the water was in shall proceed to convince them of a great fact 1763. In 1775 it did not rise so high by thirty in regard to this matter, viz: That the tenden- feet; in 1790 it missed the original mark at cy of the Mississippi is to rise less and less least sixty-five feet; in 1797, one hundred higher every year (with an occasional varia- and fifty feet; and in 1806, nearly two hun- tion of the rule), that such has been the case dred and fifty feet. These were “high-water” for many centuries, and finally that it will years. The “high waters” since then have cease to rise at all. Therefore, I would sug- been so insignificant that I have scarcely tak- gest to the planters, as we say in an innocent en the trouble to notice them. Thus, you will little parlor game, commonly called “draw,” perceive that the planters need not feel un- that if they can only “stand the raise” this easy. The river may make an occasional spas- time, they may enjoy the comfortable assur- modic effort at a flood, but the time is ance that the old river’s banks will never approaching when it will cease to rise alto- hold a “full” again during their natural lives. gether. In the summer of 1763 I came down the In conclusion, sir, I will condescend to

49 hint at the foundation of these argu- expect to change anybody’s mind. That ments:When me and DeSoto discovered the would be expecting far too much. Rather pes- Mississippi, I could stand at Bolivar Landing simistic, aren’t I? No, trying to be realistic. (sev- eral miles above “Roaring Waters Bar”) And so ends my explication of Mark and pitch a biscuit to the main shore on the Twain and of this issue of The Reluctant other side, and in low water we waded across Famulus. Don't cheer too loudly. You might at Donaldsonville. The gradual widening and wake the neighbors deepening of the river is the whole secret of the matter. Yours, etc., SERGEANT FATHOM.

Samuel Clemens freely admitted writing the parody piece, which is substantiated by its publication. As it turned out, to Clemens’ dismay, About which Clemens also also wrote later on.) Sellers took the parody badly and was very upset over it which, in turn, made Clemens deeply regret having written it and, especially, allowing its publication. In making the claim he did about the pen name, he may have been trying in some way to atone for his having embarrassed Captain Sellers. After having presented the preceding results of my research, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some, or many, people will still disagree and maintain Isaiah Sellers was the first Mark Twain. I certainly can’t do any- thing about that and wouldn’t even try. Even if I should end up being in the minority, I’ll continue to believe Samuel L. Clemens was the first to use the pen name Mark Twain. I’ll also wonder why I even bothered to try to set the record straight. Even worse, adding insult to injury, somebody might say ‘So what. [Regarding the above photo: As far as I That’s still not enough proof”. I have the feel- can determine there were no known photos ing that, even if there should be a mountain of Isaiah Sellers. I suppose that can be consid- of evidence against Samuel Clemens’ ac- ered a generic riverboat captain at the wheel.] count, most people will still continue to be- lieve the claim about Sellers. So it goes. If [This space intentionally let blank.] people disagree with what I’ve put forward, so what”. The world will continue on its way. On the other hand, if a substantial amount of information supporting Clemens’ Sellers claim were presented, I would concede the [Well that's what I’ve seen on other matter and accept it. Truthfully, I don’t really “blank” pages. Go figure.]

50 For those who might be interested, here is a copy of Isaiah Sellers's death in the Missouri Death Records from 1834--1910.

51