2

The Reluctant Famulus 114 �November/December 2016

�Thomas D. Sadler, Editor/Publisher, etc.

�305 Gill Branch Road, Owenton, KY 40359

�Phone: 502-484-3766

�E-mail: tomfamulus@hughes.net

� �Contents

� Introduction, Editor 3

Graffiti, Frederick Moe 6

Children of the Flood, Alfred Byrd 7

Book Review by Eric Barraclough 12

Cancer Journey, continued Helen Davis 14

Mae Strelkov, Adam Medenweld 19

The Crotchety Critic, Michaele Jordan 21

NAE, Gayle Perry 25

Letters 34

The Things People Find, Editor 41

Artwork/Photos

Sheryl Birkhead Front & Back covers

A. B. Kynock 36, 39

Anna Byrd 7

� Teddy Harvia 34,35, 38

Spore 34, 37

Brad Foster 5, 39

Mae Strelkov 19, 20

The Reluctant Famulus is a product of Strange Dwarf Publications. Some 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

is printed by permission of the various writers and artists and is copyright by them and remains their

sole property and reverts to them after publication. TRF maybe obtained for The Usual but, in

return for written material and artwork, postage costs, The Meaning of Life, and Editorial Whim.

3

The Reluctant Famulus Introduction: It’s over at last. What a relief.

(The headline is in a font called Benjamin Franklin, presumably because he used such a

typeface in his publications. The rest is in the

usual Times New Roman—for what little it’s

worth.) And, no, we’re not in the 1700s. I just felt

like using it.

In days of old,

when fen were bold

and fen were brave

United in conclave—

The story’s told . . .

Ah, the heck with it!

I’m really glad this recent presidential cam-

paign is finally over, after what seemed like sev-

eral decades. It didn’t help any that my following

what was going on had almost become an obses-

sion, causing me to spend far too much time on it

and less on less stressful activities. Such as , at

the last minute almost, writing an introduction to

this issue. My poor aged brain seem hopelessly

focused on what many people called the worst

campaign they had ever seen (there may have a

been a little exaggeration on their part. The things

I’ve seen and heard on the TV news and read on

the online news outlets were . . . Well I suspect

most of you readers at the very least are well

aware of what had gone on and know the results.

Are those Hillary Clinton haters who didn’t vote

at all or voted for someone else other than the

lesser of two evils satisfied with the results of

their actions? I hope you’ll forgive me for not

going into any other post-election comments or

observations. It’s over and done and can’t be

changed. I know it shouldn’t but this presidential

contest and its result have really got me tensed up

and upset to the point where it has been difficult

to concentrate even on TRF. The enthusiasm I

normally feel has diminished somewhat. Still,

I’ve managed to finish this Intro, such as it is, and

get the issue done but though there will be the

usual letters column there won’t be my usual re-

plies to the locs. Eventually I’ll get over what I’m

feeling now but it may take a while. And, no, I

shouldn’t take it so personally but that’s the way I

am. I’m also concerned about the possibly mil-

lions of people who would be adversely affected

should some of the Republicans’ plans be imple-

mented.

The following subject admittedly has a tenu-

ous connection to fandom and science fiction, so

please bear with me. I think that at one time or

another I mentioned that I’m not a particularly

religious person. I’m probably somewhere be-

tween an agnostic or an atheist. When I was a

child my mother used to take my brothers and me

to church (The Church of Christ, also known as

Campbellites after the person who first founded

it.) on Sundays and at least during one summer to

Vacation Bible school. I’ve read parts of the old

and new testaments but never delved deeply into

The Holy Bible. I was familiar with the biblical

account of Jesus Christ but never gave it any seri-

ous attention or thought. He was someone else in

the Bible which, in an admittedly shallow way I

guess I just thought of it as another book. It never

occurred to me until I became an adult that peo-

ple took the bible seriously and studied it—

pardon the sort of pun—religiously. I also be-

came aware that Christ was a real person. Prior to

4

that it never occurred to me he was a real person.

A side note here: I also learned that there were

allegations that he might not have been real. That

sure makes for confusion.

Now, to get to the point and eventually the

tenuous connection to fandom and SF. Back

around the end of October a group of scientists

opened the alleged tomb claimed to be the final

resting place of Jesus Christ after his crucifixion.

The team of researchers from the National Tech-

nical University of Athens removed the large

marble slab that has covered the tomb since 1555

CE. It was part of a plan to renovate and restore

the tomb which is known as the Edicule in Jeru-

salem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They

found a large amount of fill material beneath it.

The researchers say, “we will finally be able

to see the original rock surface on which, accord-

ing to tradition, the body of Christ was laid.” The

tomb was last renovated after a fire in 1810, but

has since deteriorated. Already, researchers have

announced that the tomb has revealed surprising

discoveries. Using radar, the team has detected a

hidden cave behind thick marble panels surround-

ing the tomb. What might lie inside the cave is

unknown. [Ed. Now that’s interesting. A further

comment will follow later on.]

The researchers say it appears to be visible

proof that the location of the tomb has not shifted

through time. But then they say it’s hard to deter-

mine if the said tomb is the real tomb of Jesus

Christ or an another Jew known as the Jesus of

Nazareth. [Ed. What? Two Jesuses of Nazareth.

Doesn’t that make things a bit complicated? See

the previous bracketed editorial note. ]

But, supposedly, historically, an identification

of the site by representatives of the Roman em-

peror Constantine suggests a possibility that this

might be indeed the tomb of Jesus Christ.

So far no remains have been discovered

which is a shame. If there were, a DNA analysis

made there might be some interesting results es-

pecially considering Christ’s “miraculous” birth.

If I understand it correctly there were claims that

Christ’s body had been moved to a secret loca-

tion. If that were true then further exploring the

Edicule wouldn’t be worthwhile in taking a DNA

sample.

At last the tenuous connection to SF and fan-

dom. There is the novel, Behold the Man by Mi-

chael Moorcock and, if memory is accurately a

Bradbury story about Christ on other planets. I

vaguely recall another story about time travelers

showing up at the crucifixion. And when I think

about it there may be others of which I’m un-

aware. If so, I’m sure my much smarter than me

readers will provide me with samples.

Diverging a bit . . . Until someone invents—

yes, I’m going to say it—a real, functioning time

machine we’ll never know for certain the truth of

where Christ’s remains are located. On the nega-

tive side, suppose that a team of time travelers

went back to the time of the Crucifixion and re-

turned with good, solid evidence there was no

actual Jesus Christ, much less where he is buried.

Just think of the turmoil that would result among

religious followers of Christ.

Here’s another thought. If building an actual,

functioning time machine (A version of a

TARDIS?) could happen maybe a team of travel-

ers could go much farther in time, back to the

Biblical beginning and found . . . Do I even dare

to suggest this? I don’t want to get into trouble. If

the team went back to when it all began and the

team found you know who would it be possible . .

. Well what are the chances of getting a DNA

sample from Him? That would be well worth

seeing what the results were.

By the way, does anyone out there know any-

thing about St. Anne, grandmother of Jesus

5

Christ? Okay. That’s it. I’m done with the Intro-

duction Now on with the good part of the issue.

Recently I was going through my stamp col-

lection, which I had neglected for a long time,

and I came across something that might have a

fannish, Sfnal connection.

Top right, the first sf

novel I bought when I

was a teenager. I don’t remember just how old.

6

The Most Famous Graffiti In New Hampshire

Frederick Moe

One does not associate the semi-rural state of

New Hampshire with graffiti. Yes, there are a

handful of highway underpasses that are scrawled

with looping letters and the occasional stenciled

graphic. For the most part, however, New Hamp-

shire is graffiti-free zone except in the most

unlikely place – the small town of Newbury.

Newbury is situated on the shores of Lake

Sunapee and is home to about 1,500 people in

wintertime. The summer population swells to

several thousand due to wealthy families who

own property along the lakeshore or mansions

nestled among the rolling hills. Every day on my

way to work I pass through Newbury and the

most famous graffiti in New Hampshire –

chicken farmer rock.

No one knows the exact date that the graffiti

appeared. No one knows who painted the mes-

sage or for whom it was intended. But one day,

sometime in the late 1960’s, five words appeared

on a boulder that sits adjacent to Route 103 West:

Chicken Farmer I Love You.

Local legends proliferated quickly as to the

story behind the message. Chicken farmer rock

faces two homesteads across the road. Both fami-

lies at the time had teenaged children. Both

households tended gardens and raised chickens.

The accepted story is that a high school classmate

was attempting to woo Gretchen Rule, a dean’s

list student, but that he was too shy to ask her to

the prom. Other stories abound. Perhaps the mes-

sage was intended for one of the adults who lived

across the street, words of secret passion, signify-

ing an illicit affair. Perhaps it was a same-sex re-

lationship between two teens, a love that, at the

time, dare not be declared publically. Other

townsfolk think that the graffiti was not intended

for nearby residents, but for a specific someone

who drove past the rock on Route 103 often and

who would understand what the message meant.

Everyone in Newbury has a theory. Yet when one

steps back, removes gender or age speculations,

and leaves the realms of imagination for a mo-

ment, there is actually only one person who

knows the true story of chicken farmer rock for

certain – the person who painted the words dec-

ades ago. And that person may or may not still be

alive.

What we do know for (almost) certain is this:

if weeds and brush grow up around the rock,

someone prunes them back so that the words are

visible again. Some time in the 1990’s, the graf-

fiti was altered. The message now reads, in bright

white lettering: Chicken Farmer I Still Love

You.

People take this as a sign —not a physical

sign, but a sign that love endures, that mysteries

are meant to be embraced. Books have been writ-

ten and even a fictional feature film has been pro-

duced about chicken farmer rock. Yet the reality

is that certain things endure, because their mes-

sage of hope is universal. In a perfect world, we

are all chicken farmers and we are all still loved.

7

CHILDREN OF THE FLOOD

The Underground Mitty

Alfred D. Byrd

As we shiver on the shore of

the new, but barren and frigid

continent that we, the Children of

the Flood, must colonize, we

should recall that some of our an-

cestors tried to prevent the disinte-

gration of the West Antarctic Ice

Sheet before its floodwaters drove

us from the shores of Earth’s gen-

tler continents to this Mars-like wilderness. We

should recall the halcyon days of the presidency

of Donaldina Bush-Clinton, the first GMO to sit

behind the desk in the Oval Office, when shehe

united America’s squabbling factions and led

them in a last-ditch effort to reverse global warm-

ing. Sadly, hiser effort failed, but it inspired ex-

periments in ecologically sound communal living

like one memorialized in the pages of the Lexing-

ton Knurled-Weeder. Herewith, let us recall by-

gone days of promise as recorded in

“High Hopes in Low Tunnel”

by Frieda Vogel

A growing trend towards underground living

has touched Kentucky’s Bluegrass with the

founding of a community dwelling in artificial

caves in the Palisades of the Kentucky River near

High Bridge. As this community is just across the

river from a failed utopia, Shaker Village at

Pleasant Hill, it’s perhaps appropriate — and also

ill omened? — that the new community was

founded by a communalistic religious society,

The Terrestrial Communion of the Children of

Ineffable Light [Footnote One]. The Children call

their community The Tabernacle and Encamp-

ment of the TCCIL, but the residents of High

Bridge call it Low Tunnel, and

the name has stuck.

For the sake of you relics from

2016, who still deny that your

car is self-driving, it can whisk

you to Low Tunnel from Lexing-

ton by heading out of town on

Harrodsburg Road, taking the

turnoff to the holy city of Wil-

more all of the way to High Bridge, and then

heading down the river road past the boat landing

and the Mother Ann Lee Locks & Dam & Hy-

droelectric Plant. I’m not free to say how far past,

but you’ll know Low Tunnel when you reach it.

For one thing, a big sign reading The Taber-

nacle etc. spreads across the whole 1320 ft. of

cliff face owned by the community. It takes a big

sign to hold that name. For another thing, the

community, with limestone quarried from its new

home site, has built terraces from the roadside to

the cliff. The terraces hold parks, gardens, wet-

lands, orchards, and pavilions where residents of

the community, marked by blue T-shirts and

white shorts, stroll or work by day and hold con-

certs by night. What kind of concerts? Bluegrass,

of course! You’ve never heard Bill Monroe until

you’ve heard it underground [Meta-writer’s inter-

ruption: I’m not making this up. Underground

concerts occur already near High Bridge. The

acoustics at them are, I hear, wonderful.]

Your car, if you can communicate with it, will

let you off at the base of a wide staircase cutting

through the terraces to Main Cavern’s entrance.

Your car will find legal parking and will return

for you when you call it, if you’re chipped. You

are chipped, aren’t you? I know that some of you

8

2016 fuddy-duddies still fear being life-jacked,

but no one has been in years, and SoftApple has

promised to pay you a huge indemnity if you are.

What you’ll do with that indemnity in your vege-

tative state is your lookout, but you’ll be rich, and

isn’t being rich what being American is still all

about?

As I start up the main staircase, I’m met by

guides cum security officers called Phosphors, a

term that they tell me means “light-

bearers” [Footnote Two]. As they lead me on, I

take in the community’s façade, which fills all of

the cliff face above the terraces and under the

sign. The façade is eye catching, dominated by a

bright shade of blue popular in these parts. Above

an arched entrance into Main Cave rise several

levels of cliff dwellings that the Phosphors tell

me are called “skyboxes.” These, I take it, are for

the most illumined Children, the bright boys and

girls, as it were. On either side of the skyboxes,

cantilevered balconies form a matrix for hanging

gardens. At either end of the community, grand

staircases snake from landing to landing from the

cliff’s top to its base. Figures in blue and white,

actually taking the staircases, show their devotion

to a low energy-use lifestyle [Footnote Three].

Inside the entrance, the Phosphors lead me to

the offices of the First Seer of Ineffable Light, the

amazingly named Dryb Derfla. A late middle-

aged man of graying hair and a growing tendency

to corpulence, he shows only in eyes of mysteri-

ous green any quality that could’ve made him the

founder of a legendary [Footnote Four] religious

society. His desk is buried under a mound of clut-

ter inexplicable in these days of “paper-free” of-

fices, but a shelf above his head flaunts three

books: Utopia, by Thomas More; The New Atlan-

tis, by Francis Bacon; and Civitas Solis, by

Tomasso Campanella [Footnote Five].

“This community,” Seer Derfla tells me after

he’s welcomed me in Ineffable Light’s name, “is

based on the principles of the obscure, yet little

known futurologist Alfredus Avis, who taught

that underground cities would be key to slowing

and perhaps reversing global warming before the

West Antarctic Ice Sheet melts. [Meta-writer’s

interruption: You’ve already read that would-be

pundit’s pontifications in “CHILDREN OF THE

FLOOD: The Caves Are Real” and “CHILDREN

OF THE FLOOD: The Coming Space.” Let’s get

on with the tour!]”

Seer Derfla and the Phosphors lead me into

Main Cavern. This appears to me as an under-

ground cathedral, five hundred feet wide, a thou-

sand feet deep, and two hundred feet high, with

buttresses that seem to me to rise into a cloudless

sky of blue. “The sky,” Seer Derfla tells me, “is

an illusion produced by light tubes that project

natural sunlight onto a backlit screen. At night,

backlighting produces the illusion of a starry

night sky. These illusions reduce feelings of con-

finement that might else make life underground

unbearable for some.”

Indeed, Main Cavern does seem to me unex-

pectedly bright and spacious. Mirrored surfaces

and wide-screen displays, not to mention the

widespread use of warm pastels, increase its feel-

ing of spaciousness. Along each of the side walls

and the rear wall of the cavern run five levels of

living quarters reaching up to where the but-

tresses curve inward. Inside the band of living

quarters, broad avenues carry pedestrians and bi-

cyclists—not even self-driving cars may enter

Main Cavern—to their destinations. Between the

avenues, business structures rise from a park-like

central space. Both the living quarters and the

business structures are open, airy, and spacious,

as, underground, they’re at a constant temperature

and need no defense from central Kentucky’s

9

rain, snow, and ice storms. Every ledge or bal-

cony is festooned with plants. The Web site did

boast of the place’s being green.

“Main Cavern,” Seer Derfla says in his por-

tentous, if high-pitched and nasal, voice [Meta-

writer’s interruption: He’s originally from Michi-

gan, and you know how Michiganders sound], “is

based on a modification of Bogdanovist princi-

ples as enunciated in Kim Stanley Robinson’s

magisterial Mars Trilogy. Main Cavern is de-

signed so that, for any given individual, space

flows freely from residence to work to recreation

without necessarily making a distinction among

any of the three. A person may work at home,

play at work, or be at home at play. Indeed, given

how protected the environment of Main Cavern

is, a person may feel at home anywhere inside it.

You can sleep on a park bench or on a rooftop,

and no one will hassle you.”

Yeah, you talk pretty, Seer Derfla, but I’ve

read the Mars Trilogy and know what happened

to Arkady Bogdanov [Footnote Six].Noticing

greenery on the rooftops of living quarters and of

business structures, I ask about it to derail the

Seer’s sermon.

He nods beatifically. “As much as possible,

the community here aspires to self-sufficiency.

The community achieves this by using its space

as efficiently as possible. Hence, rooftops and

other open spaces in Main Cavern grow crops for

internal consumption and flowers for external

sale. Main Cavern, holding the same temperature

year round, works as a greenhouse, the largest of

many greenhouses in the community—”

Ask this guy a question, and he’ll give you a

speech. It’s a wonder that he isn’t running for U.

S. senator against Mitch McConnell, beneficiary

of a life-extension protocol developed at the Uni-

versity of Kentucky. He’s been senator now for

what, a hundred years? [Editor: No, Al. It only

seems like it. Unfortunately]“You mentioned sell-

ing flowers, Seer Derfla,” I say. “Clearly, it took

a load of cash to build this place and, even though

it’s energy efficient and ideally self-sufficient, it

must take a load of cash to keep it going. Where

does that come from?”

As Seer Derfla walks on, he steeples his

hands before his chest. It’s amazing that he does-

n’t fall down, walking with his nose in the air, but

then the sidewalks in Main Cavern are smooth,

well designed for a guru who likes to pontificate

on the go. “Our community is based on success-

ful communes of the past — communities such as

the Shakers, Amana, and Oneida. These focused,

not only on faith, but also on finance. Following

their models, our community has generated a

number of robust revenue streams. Besides flow-

ers, our community sells other agricultural prod-

ucts, runs restaurants, lodging, and Bluegrass

concerts for visitors to the community, operates a

number of on-line businesses—”

Dear me, the Seer is as much a salesman as he

is a preacher. Still, there’s less difference be-

tween the two professions than you’d like to

think, isn’t there? Robert A. Heinlein seemed to

think so, anyway. “Are these all low-skill jobs?”

“Not at all! The community needs supervi-

sors, accountants, teachers, doctors, lawyers—all

kinds of highly trained specialists. Besides, the

community stresses education as a means to un-

screw the inscrutable—to express Ineffable

Light—”

Yeah, it takes little ineffability for me to get

my fill of it. “Do you send your followers out for

education, or is it all in house?”

“Who needs to go out for education nowadays

when everyone is chipped to the Internet? In any

case, I’m proud to say that the community is self-

sufficient in education as well. The community

has its own teachers, as I mentioned, and inter-

10

faces on line with outside institutions. We have

an elementary school, a middle school, and a high

school in Main Cavern, all of them fully accred-

ited, and the community takes part in Universal

University [Footnote Seven].”

Yeah, you try to get tenure anywhere with a

degree from that. I’m lucky to be a feature writer.

“What about sports? You can’t have a school

without those in these parts. I suppose that you

have a basketball court tucked away in one of the

central buildings, but I don’t see a football field.”

“It’s up on the surface. Still, I must confess

that Tabernacle and Encampment High isn’t go-

ing to beat Lexington Catholic anytime soon.”

Few schools are. As I follow Seer Derfla and

the Phosphors through Main Cavern, I lose my

sense of being underground. All is open, spa-

cious, and green under a blue sky. Main Cavern

looks like the Bluegrass before heat waves and

droughts turned it to the color of mustard. With-

out thinking, I murmur, “This place is good prac-

tice for a generation ship.”

Seer Derfla beams. “In the long run, the com-

munity hopes to launch one. One of our mottos is,

‘Before you go up, you must go down.’” Before I

can comment on how trite, not to mention sense-

less, this motto is, the Seer goes on to say. “Let’s

take that motto as a sign that I should take you to

the surface. Are you willing to walk up two hun-

dred vertical feet of stairs, or would you like to

use the elevator that the community keeps for

visitors?”

Two hundred vertical feet is how many actual

feet? Shoot me if you must, but I choose the ele-

vator. The Phosphors sneer at me, but sneers have

never hurt anyone, have they?

An elevator is an elevator is an elevator. What

matters about this one is where it goes. This is

both impressive and nostalgic, as if a piece of

what the Bluegrass used to be before heat waves

and drought cooked it still remained. The com-

munity has fenced in its whole forty acres with

limestone quarried from Main Cavern. Besides

the aforementioned football field, these hold

vineyards from which I learn the community

makes wine for sale, greenhouses for flowers and

vegetables, and herbal and floral gardens in

which men and women in blue and white stroll in

attitudes of meditation. Everything stands in a

windmill’s shadow.

“As the community learned from the writings

of Alfredus Avis,” Seer Derfla says beatifically,

“‘an underground city needs to be fully integrated

with the surface world.’ Here, you see his princi-

ple put into action.”

Can this guy do nothing but preach? I wish

that he were the Buddha by the road so that I

could kill him. Still, I do have to maintain jour-

nalistic objectivity, don’t I? “I see that you get at

least part of your power from a windmill. What

does it do in the community, and where does the

water for all of this lovely greenery come from?”

“Both of your questions, Ms. Vogel, share an

answer. Following an example that nearby Camp

Nelson set during the Civil War, the windmill

pumps water from the impoundment pool on the

Kentucky River for drip irrigation on the surface.

Besides keeping plants alive and growing, the

water, as it returns through hidden channels to the

river, performs other services for the community.

The water spins turbines, generating power; the

water mimics a running stream, providing a place

for fresh-water mussels that used to live in the

gorge to grow—”

“For your tables, or for restoring the gorge’s

ecology if conservations ever get the Common-

wealth to remove the dams from the river?”

Dryb Derfla sighs. “Realistically, for our ta-

bles, as the dams will stay as long as nearby com-

munities need drinking water and the local distill-

11

eries make Bourbon, as an obscure local writer

named Alfred de l’Oiseau or some such nonsense

once wrote. Still, one of the nearby dams pro-

vides the community with clean hydroelectric

power, so I’m grateful for that. Now, as I was

about to add, the water from the surface also

maintains a side cave where we raise catfish for

food and sale. The community also, in another

side cavern, processes its plant waste into bio-

diesel and ethanol—”

“Why would a self-sufficient community

need those?”

“Because the community’s mission extends to

a world that needs the community’s help. As we

spread our products and our message by com-

pletely clean drone, van, and truck, we help re-

verse bad decisions that led to our present world

of rising sea level, heat waves, and drought.

Someday, if all help us in our mission, heat

waves and droughts will end, the sea level will

recede, and we’ll start to rebuild the Bluegrass

that we once knew.”

Nice sermon, Seer Derfla, I think. As he and

the Phosphors lead me back down to the terraces

by the river for me to listen to Bluegrass as I

chow down on catfish and clams, he lectures me

on how the community reprocesses all of its other

forms of waste into useful byproducts to fulfill its

mission of restoring the earth to balance. I hope

that he does restore it. Still, he should keep in

mind that just across the river is Pleasant Hill,

where others dreamed as he’s dreaming. Where

are the Shakers today? Where will Seer Derfla be

when, despite his best efforts, the West Antarctic

Ice Sheet melts?

Oh, yes, holed up in a cave.

Today, we must recognize that skeptics like

Frieda Vogel were right. The hopes and dreams

of visionaries like Seer Derfla came to nothing.

The visionaries could’ve succeeded had they be-

gun their work sooner and gotten more support

for it, but their efforts came too late to save the

earth that was. In the end, the ice melted, and

here we, the Children of the Flood, are on the

shores of a land that humanity was never meant

to settle. It’s just adding insult to injury for Ere-

bus and Terror to be erupting as we disembark

here, and what’s making that weird noise,

“Tekeli-li”? Nothing that has our best interests at

heart, I bet you. This place gives me the creeps.

Still, there’s nowhere else for us Children of the

Flood to go, so we’ll just have to make the best of

things here at the mountains of madness

[Footnote Eight].

— the last transmission of Fred D. Bradly,

head of Project Shackleton, the first effort to

colonize West Antarctica

[Footnote One] I chose this name so that I could

use the word “ineffable” in a sentence. Hey, I just

used it again!

[Footnote Two] Clearly, the TCCIL chose

“Phosphors” instead of “Lucifers” because the

latter name still holds unfortunate connotations

even for those who’ve read or now watched (I

won’t do that again) Childhood’s End.

[Footnote Three] Unlike young, able bodied grad

students, whom I often see taking the elevator to

the second floor just steps away from an open

staircase.

[Footnote Four] You do still speak Fannish, don’t

you?

[Footnote Five] I’ve read this work only in Eng-

lish as The City of the Sun, but the title in Latin

impressed me.

[Footnote Six] No spoilers here! Read Red Mars.

[Footnote Seven] Motto: If it’s really a university,

why should there be more than one?

[Footnote Eight] Do all of these footnotes make

you think that I’ve read too many novels by Jack

Vance?

12

The Eleventh Eunuch Eric Barraclough

Murder in Megara Mary Reed & Eric Mayer Poisoned Pen Press 2015

Fifteen years ago or more someone in The

Reluctant Famulus wrote a review of One for

Sorrow by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer. Whoever

it was, thank you, Thank You, THANK YOU!

The novel was the first of the John the Chamber-

lain/John the Eunuch series and on the strength of

that review I ordered a copy from the States and

instantly became addicted, getting each of the fol-

lowing books imported until a publishing com-

pany with the odd name of Head of Zeus started

publishing them over here in Britain, and con-

densed the authors’ names to M. E. Mayer.

Just to complicate matters further, Mayer and

Reed have started using the pseudonym Eric

Reed for all their writings outside of the John the

Chamberlain series and Eric Reed’s first novel

has just appeared (The Guardian Stones) but I’ll

go over that in the next ish (hopefully).

Mayer pubbed two of the best written fan-

zines of all time, Groggy and Vexed (Please note:

I am a person who rarely uses superlatives). Reed

was a joyfully perennial presence in fanzines, al-

though for some unaccountable reason they all

came from the U.S. whereas she is originally

from Britain.

Now Poisoned Pen Press has released the

eleventh in the John the Chamberlain/Eunuch se-

ries, Murder in Megara.

Customarily, each novel opens with a murder

or at least a mystery but Megara has the authors

skillfully turning the screw for several chapters

before the titular murder is discovered.

John has had a colorful past, unfortunately two

of the colors were extremely dark: he was a uni-

versity student, a mercenary, a slave, which is

when he lost his wedding tackle, he then rose

through the ranks of the palace of the Sixth Cen-

tury Holy Roman Emperor Justinian I. John is

strong-willed, stoic and reticent but he is totally

loyal to Justinian for liberating him from slavery.

Such loyalty can be a dangerous burden because

Justinian can be as capricious as a compass in

magnet factory.

By the opening of Murder in Megara, Justin-

ian has canceled John’s chamberlainship, taken

away all his estates apart from one at Megara

(where John once lived in his youth) and ban-

ished him there which leaves John in a dodgy

predicament. Because at any time an assassin

could be sent by Justinian or one of John’s rivals

in court. Meantime the populace of Megara are

openly aggressive towards this half-man pariah

13

from Constantinople. Stones are thrown and one

of Megara’s wealthiest business men spends time

sitting on a stylite railing against John. Even the

City Defender whose duty it is to protect John has

made a veiled threat “move out of Megara and

never darken our dodona again” so to stay means

possible (if not probable) death but for John to

leave would be definite death because it would

defy the orders of Justinian. All this has John be-

tween a rock and an ever hardening place.

And when the murder comes it also becomes

obvious that someone has tried to frame John or

his household for the crime.

Once one of the most powerful men in the

empire. John is aging and now a less than ordi-

nary citizen who must live by his wits.

Hey ho! If wits were all.

Murder in Megara makes the mistake of sud-

denly introducing John’s step-father. A character

never mentioned in any of the previous ten nov-

els. In any series the sudden appearance of an im-

portant person, artifact or device that appears cre-

ated like a premature deus ex machina comes

with about the same allure of an unwanted guest.

One of the most egregious examples was in The

Mentalist where he spends the first series ever

happy and smiling and in the second we find he

had a wife and child that were tortured to death.

Mayer and Reed have the excuse that John is reti-

cent, in which case he could have a whole cata-

comb of skeletons rattling behind his closet door.

Their narrative is barbed with questions about

every motive, about every danger and about every

possibility and with each question the screw is

tightened once again but (as if for counterbal-

ance) the dialogue often has a poetry of its own:

“It’s empty barrels that sound the loudest.”

“Men of his sort are like the wind from the

north, they bring storms with them.”

The rich “swim in a different sea from the

poor.”

There is a modern convention for historic

mysteries to be large tomes detailing every stitch

of clothing, every building and every formality of

court-life while bristling with sub-plots. If well

known, such tomes can be left out to impress

friends. If little known, they are better used as

doorstops. They are akin to vast oil painting with

details down to every bar of a bird cage across the

Bosporus (to paraphrase James McNeill Whis-

tler). Mayer and Reed’s mysteries are more like

pencil sketches by master artists who simply con-

centrate on all the details that bring the whole to

life.

And it does come to life which raises the

question that, if back in the ‘90s ITV Central

could turn part of Hungry into Thirteenth Century

Herefordshire for the Cadfael series, why could-

n’t any TV or film company (armed with today’s

CGI) do with the John the Chamberlain series set

in the Byzantium Sixth Century?

Not that it’s likely to happen. Despite the se-

ries receiving rave and star reviews in Booklist,

Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly (the

Times Literary Supplement has doggedly ignored

it), no major paperback company has bid for the

rights. So what chance is there with a major TV

company?

Oh well, one can live in hope.

14

The Cancer Journey 3

Helen E Davis

On February 2, Groundhog's Day,

and just thirteen days after receiv-

ing my diagnosis, I fasted and

prayed and presented my sacrificial

body to the local hospital. With a

minimum of fuss, apparently having

realized that I was a flight risk, I

was ushered into a small room and

told to change my clothes for a gown

and a pair of “lovely designer socks.”

One size fits all, of course. The most

striking feature of the socks is that

they have non-slip soles, for those

few times when the nurses will actu-

ally let you out of bed. They are

made of soft cotton, are washable,

and go home with you.

The gown was made of paper.

Stiff paper. It could have held the

largest person I know, but on me it

stood straight out in all directions. It

was also incredibly hot. The nurse

came back, took one glance at my ap-

parently reddening face, and ran to

get a cloth gown. When she brought

it back and I quickly changed, I

asked her about the paper gown,

which was lined with extra paper. It

also had holes in it, lined with a rub-

ber seal like the opening to a vac-

uum cleaner bag that did not pene-

trate the lining.

“It can be inflated with hot air,”

she explained, showing me a tube

that ran from the wall. “Some people

like it.”

Not people whose estrogen has

been suddenly stopped just a week

previous, I don’t think.

We went through the normal sur-

gical preliminaries --starting the IV,

allowing in the visitors, a quick chat

with the anesthesiology people. I re-

peated again and again my one great

wish, “Please have a big bucket on

the bed in the recovery room. Not a

spit-up tray. I throw up after general

anesthesia. I really throw up.”

15

And everyone assured me it was

okay, that the anesthesiologist has

drugs for this sort of stuff. And I

would repeat my request. And I

would get assurances . . .

And then I and my surgical buddy

were whisked down for some pre-

surgery work. I had to have a wire

installed in my breast. In order to

make sure to get the tumor with a

minimum of effort and damage, a ra-

diologist used an ultrasound to guide

a wire into the center of the mass. As

he planned his route, he muttered,

“I’m going to go right through the

center of both of them.”

“Both?” I was supposed to have

only one tumor. I didn’t like the idea

of new tumors suddenly popping up.

That’s a bad, very bad sign.

“Lesions. The other could be a he-

matoma.”

“According to the MRI, it’s a he-

matoma,” I said, a bit relieved. I

hugged my surgery buddy tightly.

After the wire was installed, I was

also injected with a radioactive

tracer that would help the doctor

know which lymph nodes to sample.

And then a mammogram to verify

that the wire was correctly placed.

And the doctor proudly said, “Right

though all three of them.”

“Three?”

“The tumor, the ‘hematoma’ and

the marker clip.” I could hear the

quotation marks in his voice.

Along the way we discussed the

identity of my surgery buddy. His

technician was the only person that

day to even know who he was, and

even she only recognized the name,

and not his immensely cute, squish-

able form.

And then came the surgery, which

lasted under half an hour, and I

came aware in the recovery room.

After a few minutes polite discus-

sion, I suddenly begged for the

bucket. She gave me a spit-up tray.

And then she gave me something

bigger. And then again, and again,

and again, and

. . . Finally she hung another bag

of fluids so that I would at least go

home well-hydrated.

Reaction 1, drugs 0.

Pathology confirmed that the tu-

mor was no more than one centime-

ter at its widest point, and that no

cancer cells have been identified be-

yond its margins. The lymph nodes,

the filters on the great sewer system

of the body, had caught no cancer

cells. It would appear, at this point,

that it was caught early and re-

16

moved cleanly. And that the other

thing was indeed a hematoma.

Whew!

I don’t know what the future

treatment will entail. I need some

more doctor’s visits to determine

what path to take. Chemo is not

likely, radiation therapy is. Also a

drug to starve my body of estrogen,

which will make life even more in-

teresting than it already is. But I

don’t have those answers yet. I have-

n’t reached that part of the quest.

Still, the dragon is dead and all

that’s facing me is the long slog back

from Mordor.

The reactions to my having cancer

have been interesting. My friends

have taken it much worse than I

have. But from where I’m standing,

this sucker was caught early by an

annual mammogram and removed

before it could start acting really

cancerous. It had not yet begun wan-

dering through my body, and there is

a pretty decent chance that even if I

refused all further treatment, I

would never see it again. And while I

have a couple of new scars, and some

pain, my body is not particularly

mutilated. It’s like I’m looking at a

crumpled fender yet knowing that I

just narrowly missed a catastrophic

wreck.

And It’s even more poignant be-

cause, if I had followed the proposed

guidelines that women shouldn’t

bother with a mammogram every

year, that every other year is good

enough, I would be writing a differ-

ent story. This would have been my

off year, and if I had waited until

next year to find this, then I would

likely be looking at a full mastec-

tomy, strong chemotherapy, and a

much greater chance of recurrence.

So please, go get your annual

mammogram. Tell them Cthulhu

sent you.

The Cancer Journey 4

So, having healed up from the

surgery, I was given the go ahead to

visit the Oncologist and the Radiolo-

gist. According to the Surgeon, I only

needed the Oncologist to prescribe

the hormone blocker for me. The big

truth of medicine, however, is that

17

one doctor does not speak for an-

other doctor. Ever .

The Oncologist suggested the pos-

sibility of chemo. Nasty stuff, chemo.

It poisons you, but hopefully the can-

cer cells, being weaker and stressed

by their growth and fast division,

should die from the chemo while

your healthy cells will only be dam-

aged. Damaged cells, in time, should

recover.

Should.

But does everyone with breast

cancer need chemo? No. If your can-

cer hasn’t metastasized, that is,

some cells have started to wander

away from the mother tumor to hide

in healthy tissues and grow baby tu-

mors, then you don’t need to poison

the entire body to get them all out.

But how can the oncologist be sure

that the cancer cells have not

reached that point? Yes, the margins

of the tumor were clear, not ragged

with areas where cells have broken

away, and there were no cancer cells

trapped in the lymph nodes, but still,

could a few have gotten away and

just not yet been washed into the

lymph nodes?

And that’s where the cancer story

gets complicated.

Cancer starts with a mutation in

a cell, generally a cell that is not

completely differentiated and still

dividing. These are germinal cells

(the ones used in reproduction,) re-

newal cells (skin, gut, and other ori-

fice linings), or undifferentiated cells

used to repair and rebuild tissues.

But most mutations will simply

make a cell defective and kill it. But

mutations in certain areas will

unlock the genes that the cells used

when it was part of the embryo.

These cells grow and divide, just as

they did in the early embryo, but in

a mature person they form a tumor.

This tumor does not have, however,

the directions to tell it when to stop

growing.

Even worse, the unlocking of

these genes causes other genes to

unlock. With each cell unlocked, the

cancer cells become more and more

like embryonic cells. They lose the

characteristics of the cell they had

been, become formless, and then do

something else that embryonic cells

do—they wander to other places in

the body.

In embryology, the cells move

around quite a lot, but they know

where they are going. They form dis-

crete structures and mature into

18

proper organ cells. Cancer cells, on

the other hand, have Alzheimer’s.

Not only are they regressing into in-

fanthood, they wander with no idea

of purpose or place. Eventually they

get stuck somewhere, settle down for

away, and then grow and divide.

And create more tumors.

Worse, the cells in a tumor do not

do this all at the same time. While

many cells are in Stage 1 cancer,

others have changed into stage 2 or

stage 3 cancer cells. So just because

most of the cells are still only mildly

changed, there may already be stage

4 cells wandering through my tis-

sues.

Getting poisoned starts to sound

better. What chance is there that

there are advanced cells in my body?

In my case the biopsy did show

that about 5% of my cells were

changing faster than the rest.

So the Oncologist asked for two

things before he determined that I

would not need chemo. One was a

catscan to check for metastasis tu-

mors in my chest and abdomen, and

the other was Oncotype(dx) testing.

The Oncotype(dx) testing looks at

the genes in the cancer cells and

gives the tumor a score based on the

number of genes that have already

been unlocked in the tumor. “So,” he

said, “I’d like to send your tumor

away for genetic testing.”

I touched my wounded breast.

“But it’s gone.”

He grinned. “I have it here.”

I’m sitting in the office of a doctor

who collects people’s tumors! Does

he have them in little display cases

along the walls of his office?

So I got my catscan two days

later, and it showed many interest-

ing things, but no metastatic cancer.

I do have a tortured aorta, proof that

my heart has been twisted by the

cruelties of fate, and my liver is over-

weight, but nothing to concern the

oncologist. Two long weeks passed

before the result of the Oncotype DX

came back. My tumor had a score of

18, right on the border between slow

and intermediate. With the fact that

the tumor margins had been clear

and the sentinel lymph nodes had

been clear, we threw the dice and de-

cided against chemotherapy.

Yay! I hope… So, on to radiation...

19

Here’s to You, Mae Strelkov Adam Medenwald

The published findings of a scientific study

are not unlikely to bring to mind a certain fan

(except for a fan who is also a science nerd, and

whose conversation is usually a Gosh! Wow! pre-

cis of several articles from Scientific American)

but a recent paper published on-line by the Pro-

ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

immediately conjured up memories of a fan who

was an Argentinian grandmother and lived on a

ranch in the middle of nowhere, wrote loving let-

ters and locs, and printed highly colorful hecto

paintings.

Does any Reluctant Famulus reader remem-

ber hecto?

Does any Reluctant Famulus reader remem-

ber Mae Strelkov?

She was born in China. Her parents were

English missionaries. She married Vadim

Strelkov who was Russian-born and they moved

to Chile, then Buenos Aires, and then on to a

ranch in Jujuy. She was so well loved in fandom

that Joan Bowers and Susan Wood started a fan

fund for her, and in 1974 she attended the world-

con Discon II, DeepSouthCon and traveled the

U.S. for two months.

July 9 2017 will be the 100th anniversary of

her birth.

Among Mae’s many interests was the theory

that even unrelated languages use the same

sounds for many objects and ideas. Her research

was so deep that at least one fan put the body of

Mae's work before a university board in the hopes

of obtaining a grant for her.

Mae had only the research books she owned

on that ranch in the middle of nowhere. She died

in 2000, her work unfinished and practically un-

known.

But in the two-thousand-and-teens Cornell

University was armed with terabyte computers

and a program which compared 62% of the

6,000+ languages in use today.

The findings showed “a robust statistical rela-

tionship between certain basic concepts... and the

sounds humans around the world use to describe

them.”

To be specific, Sci-News reported… “In most

languages, the word for ‘nose’ is likely to include

the sounds ‘neh’ or the ‘oo’ sound, as in ‘ooze.’

“The word for ‘tongue’ is likely to have ‘l’ or

‘u.’ “Leaf’ is likely to include the sounds ‘b,’ ‘p’

or ‘l.’ “Sand’ will probably use the sound ‘s.’

“The words for ‘red’ and ‘round’ often appear

with ‘r,’ and ‘small’ with ‘i.’”

And just to show that this is NOT a fan-hoax,

here is a Gayle Perry style reference... Damián E.

Blasi et al. Sound–meaning association biases

evidenced across thousands of languages. PNAS,

published online September 12, 2016; doi:

10.1073/pnas.1605782113

So here's to you, Mae Strelkov. You were

right all along.

20

21

The Crotchety Critic By Michaele Jordan

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Telegraph Avenue and 100 Ghost Soup

You may have noticed in my last col-

umn that none of the books I discussed

were award nominees. I laid down the

pressure to follow the awards at the end of

WorldCon. And what a liberating experi-

ence that was! Finally I could read what-

ever I pleased! I’m still intoxicated! It just

goes to show, that nothing spoils a book

like assigning it as homework. (Of course, I

always knew that. Back when I w as in

school I made a point of reading all the as-

signed books at the beginning of the year,

so the teacher couldn’t spoil them.)

As a result, I am rich in review mate-

rial. I’ll be telling you about three books

here, and I only managed to narrow down

the list that far by assigning three more to

my column for 115 (which is already half

written.) I’ll start with the oldest on my

list, which I’ve been trying to squeeze into

a column for some while, but kept being

distracted by those pesky award nominees.

Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cor-

morant (Tom Doherty Associates LLC,

NY, 2015) is a complex and engrossing tale

of political intrigue, in which war is only

one—and not the most important—tool

available to the expanding empire it por-

trays. It is not a fantasy. There is not a

scrap of magic in it. Nor is there any ad-

vanced science in it. But it is set in an al-

ternate reality, and so claims status as SF/

F.

Please note that I say an alternate real-

ity, not an alien world. Mr. Dickinson has

made no attempt to construct an alien

race. The characters are, as far as the

reader can discern, human—made all the

more convincingly so by their complex ra-

cial stew, containing at least four distinct

geographical types, plus a wide range of

mixed breeds created by conflicting cul-

tures. Nor is there anything alien about

the planet they live on. The geographic

area in which the story takes place is unfa-

miliar, but its climate and flora are not.

The tough guys wear wolf-skins. The farm-

ers grow lemons and ginger.

Baru Cormorant is the daughter of two

fathers and one mother, born to a culture

absorbed unwillingly into a growing em-

pire. Her parents’ livelihood is crushed and

one of her fathers is killed. But when she is

offered a place in the imperial school, she

is too bright and curious, too hungry for

knowledge, to pass up the opportunity.

When they teach her that her parents were

perverts, she grits her teeth and vows to

stick it out and acquire enough eminence

within the empire to affect change.

Upon graduation, she is assigned to the

theatre of occupation. Aurdwynn is a. . .

landmass, a collection of duchies, a hotbed

of rebellion, the residue of centuries of

marching armies and competing empires.

The legend says it cannot be ruled. The

22

empire means to rule it, and sets Baru

Cormorant to the task.

Mr. Dickinson paints an extraordinary

portrait of this cultural mix. He realizes

the various parties as vividly as if he were

writing a story set in the Balkans, having

first studied their complex history and

their competing claims for territory or

dominance. The characters are stark and

strong, each with drives and loyalties and

weaknesses.

Tying all this together is a vision of

what empire is, the political philosophy

that drives and binds them all. You may or

may not agree with—or approve of—this

philosophy, but you will recognize it on

every page. I loved it. I nominated it for

both a Nebula and a Hugo. But let’s not go

there.

I did not, on the other hand, nominate

Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon

(Harper, 2012) to either of those accolades.

I couldn’t, even back in 2012. It is not an

SF/F novel, but unabashedly mainstream.

My only justification for including it here

is that Michael Chabon won both the Hugo

and the Nebula in 2008, and that accom-

plishment merits further fannish attention

to his writing, even if it isn’t always SF/F.

After all, how many Pulitzer Prize winning

authors do we have in our midst?

Telegraph Avenue isn’t a mystery ei-

ther, although it does have an ugly murder

lurking in the background. Rather, it is the

story of Brokeland Records, a second hand

record store. The owners have little in com-

mon to support their lifelong friendship

save a mutual love of old R&B. But that is

enough.

Archy was abandoned by his father, a

former martial artist and blaxploitation

film star. He has never ceased to feel that

ache in his life, not even in the arms of

wife Gwen and the expectation of their

first child. And yet, fifteen years earlier, he

blew off his pregnant girlfriend. On the

other hand, Nat—a moody, excitable Jew—

is a slave to familial responsibility. His fif-

teen year old son is uneasily discovering he

is gay.

Their wives—Gwen and Aviva—are

also partners, sharing a midwifery prac-

tice. Both believe in their work, as skilled

supporters of a basic and—usually—

simple, natural process. Although they are

keenly aware of possible complications and

quick to call in advanced assistance when

needed, they get no respect in the medical

community. In Gwen’s case, the disrespect

is often racist in tone, and she does not

take it well.

Brokeland Records is located in what

used to be a barbershop, and remains a

comfortable neighborhood water-hole,

where musicians and aficionados gather to

thumb through the stacks and linger

through the day.

The story erupts with the dramatic an-

nouncement that a huge music empo-

rium—practically a mall in itself (think

Virgin Records)—is planned for a location

not two blocks distant. Such an establish-

ment will surely bankrupt Brokeland

which is already less than profitable.

There are protests and political finagling.

And there’s a blimp. There are no grand

events here and no violence. The story

flows through the ordinary events and

23

challenges of day to day reality, displaying

the intricate complexity of life’s cycles.

Archy finds himself at the center of a

parable about parenthood, as his unreli-

able father Luther reappears, looking to

make a come-back and accompanied by a

lush and loyal co-star. Simultaneously his

estranged son Titus appears, sullen and

hostile, hungry for a father figure but too

angry to forgive the father he’s just found.

Generations shift as Gwen’s baby is

born and Archy’s surrogate father—a be-

loved local keyboardist—is killed in an ac-

cident transporting his Hammond organ.

Old secrets are dug up, political protests

are held, money changes hands, and par-

rots fly out windows. And don’t forget—

there’s that murder lurking in the past.

Archy just wants to bury his old friend.

By the time it’s over everybody's life

has been overturned, but most of the char-

acters have landed on their feet. If you are

looking for action, you will be disappointed.

If you are looking for meaning you will be

very pleased. The worst thing I can say

about this novel is that sometimes Mr.

Chabon tries a little too hard to be Thomas

Pynchon. Occasionally the literary flights

of fancy lead the reader away from the nar-

rative rather than into it.

This is supposed to be an SF/F column,

so I’ll conclude with Robert Chansky’s 100

Ghost Soup (Curiosity Quills Press,6). I

might not normally have chosen to review,

or even come to read this book, but while I

was at WorldCon, I had a conversation

with Mr. Chansky. Apparently I made a

good impression, as not long after arriving

home I received a request from his agent to

write a review. I was flattered, and more

than a little startled. I wrote back warning

the agent that I am not (alas, heavy sigh) a

famous author, and that TRF, although be-

loved, does not boast a large circulation.

But the agent wrote back, saying Mr.

Chansky still wanted me to write it, and

offering me a review copy. Apparently I

made a VERYgood impression

The first thing I did after reading it was

look up Mr. Chansky on-line to see if he

were Chinese. Yes, I know. I met him at

WorldCon. Along with hundreds of others.

But I couldn’t remember what he looked

like. I had to look him up. So why did I

care? 100 Ghost Soup is the most Chinese

book I have ever read, even compared to

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

Mr. Chansky does not appear to be Chi-

nese. But he evokes China as thoroughly

as if he spent a few past lives there. It’s not

the landscape. The story takes place pri-

marily in a pile of construction rubble left

behind from a failed development project

in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes it

moves to a nightmarish maze inside a bu-

reaucratic office complex. And yet there is

a spirit of China (not to mention numerous

Chinese spirits) in every scene.

It starts with an orphan whose nick-

name (for he does not yet have a real

name) is Jimo—that’s Lonely in Chinese.

He’s received an offer of adoption. He can

see it’s suspicious; who would adopt an or-

phan one month before he comes of age?

And why does he have to go to the wilds of

Donxi, a town not on the map? A town

where even the train will not stop, accord-

ing to the conductor? But he is so desper-

24

ate for a home, for a name, that he throws

away all of what little he has to follow the

call. And when he arrives, the train does

stop.

He steps off into a different world.

Dongxi is not just haunted. The town itself

is a ghost, a psychic relic of a place that

vanished a thousand years before. The

residents are not just ghosts, they are

ghosts in disguise. Some are spirits pre-

tending to be ghosts, and some are ghosts

pretending to be humans. Some are hu-

mans pretending to be cows. Some of the

ghosts use magic. Some are hiding from

magic. Some are hiding from angry gods.

Nothing is real. Everything is illusion.

Illusion, however, can be weighty and

binding. Jimo feasts each night on deli-

cious meals, and wakes each morning so

hungry he scavenges through the construc-

tion rubble, searching for scraps. Nonethe-

less, these nonexistent dinners are so solid

that he learns to cook watching his

adopted mother prepare them.

Most of his life so far has been illusory

anyway. He's an orphan with no known

parents, and yet he has a brother. He’s a

nobody, but his keepers at the orphanage

spy on him obsessively. His records state

that he has no hands. He has hands. A for-

tune teller told him he would die before he

was thirty, by a gunshot to the head. He’s

never even seen a gun.

Jimo’s adopted father may starve him,

but he values him. He has a purpose for

him. Except that purpose is hard to dis-

cern. It is intertwined with other purposes,

buried under a thousand complications and

obligations, and threatened by the cross-

purposes of people he has never met. Eve-

rything in China is complicated and double

edged, from the brewing of tea to the

mountains of paperwork. Reality often

proves more difficult to penetrate than

magic.

The reader should be warned that this

book is not a fast, light read. According to

Goodreads, some had trouble with the Chi-

nese style. I did not, but I acknowledge it’s

not a good choice for killing an hour at the

airport or for using as a sun-shield while

dozing at the beach. The full story is solid

and satisfying but it depends on a network

of tiny elements too convoluted for synop-

sis. It requires full attention. Take your

time with it. Let yourself wonder about odd

details. Remember that bad manners are

always important. Enjoy.

P.S. I try to avoid personal comment

here. I figure it's my job to tell you about

books, and so I stick to telling you about

books. But I had to remark that my heart

went out to Helen Davis as I read her Can-

cer Journey. Some years back, my husband

and I had to walk him through his cancer

journey. I recognized so much of what she

was saying. The journey itself is so hard

that there can be no ‘happy’ ending, what-

ever the outcome. But I can promise her

that the journey can be successful, the out-

come worth the cost.

[Editor here. Note in the second install-

ment of Cancer Journey that Helen is hold-

ing her own in spite of the obstacles.]

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

Frank Denton

October 5 at 8:02pm

Hooray for Tom Sadler. He’s

given me a ton of pleasure over

the years. And they just keep

coming. Thank you, David, for

saying this, and thank you, Tom,

for continuing to publish an in-

teresting fanzine.

Gene Wolfe

PO Box 10708

Peoria IL 61612

10/10/16

Thomas D. Sadler

305 Gill Branch Rd.

Owenton KY 40359

Dear Tom,

Thank you for #113. The mention of Ha-

waiian shirts reminded me pleasantly of my father,

who wore starched Hawaiian shirts out at the

waist to hide the gun tucked into the waistband

of his pants. I have both his guns now, an auto-

matic and a revolver, both .32s.

Yes, I (an accredited non-genius), talk

to myself. Also to my dog. I generally ask her

what she thinks –maybe someday she'll tell me.

We fans typically do talk to ourselves, I think; we

are usually the only one around who reads.

Faithfully,

8 2 88 W Sh elb y S t a t e

R o ad 44 Franklin, IN.

401312016-October-10

Dear Tom,

Re: TRF 113

TRF is undoubted yours. If

you want to print your edito-

rials in red, go straight

ahead. DON’T use yellow,

it’s unreadable. But any editor who comes

out with “it’s my fanzine and I’ll do what

I want’ should be reminded that an editor

that forgets the readers might as well for-

get the fanzine. At minimum any fanzine

has to have interesting articles, a readable lay-

out and decent fillos & illos.

Wouldn’t mind seeing more science

-fantasy covers by A. B. Kynock but

(having worked in the print/graphics trade)

can tell you that cover must have taken a

month of Sundays to put together. Reckon

there are at least twenty layers and if the

aliens/pigs (or whatever they are) were cut

and pasted individually (doubtful) then you

can double the amount of layers and ques-

tion A.B.K’s mentality.

You made a slight mistake on page

5. The Cosmic Microwave Background is

not light, it's thermal radiation. [The mistake

35

wasn’t mine. I just didn’t catch it.]

And its discovery was

somewhat serendipitous. As

far back as 1946 Cosmolo-

gists had realized if there

was a big bang then would

also have been CMB cre-

ated later and still be de-

tectable but the idea was little known.

Then in 1964 Bell Labs had a Horn An-

tenna built to detect radio waves deflected

from Echo Balloon satellites but no matter

which direction the antenna was pointed it

picked up a ringing noise. So they went to

the boffins at M.I.T. who (knowing the

CMB idea) greeted Bell’s problem with great

delight.

The baby in a giant gas mask is from

World War Two. Fearing gas attacks

British civilians were issued with gas

masks and large, incubator size containers

for babies.

Wonder if Frederick’s piece on KIPM

will spark other articles on pirate radio.

In Britain in the Sixties pirate stations

were actually on ships and sea forts and

have quite a history, and there were one

or two that broadcast from within London

in the seventies. As well as a shipboard

religious station off the U.S. coast and

later a pop station that was closed down

by military action. All that would make

interesting reading.

As for dear old Mike Harding, he pre-

sented the BBC’s folk program for 15

years and was then sacked over the phone!

Having experienced “London Fog”

over two decades, have to agree 100%

with Eric’s assessment.

But it wasn’t just the air

that needed a cleanup.

The Thames was so pol-

luted that Parliament had to

be abandoned one day in

the ‘50s because of the

stench. Within 20 years the anti-pollution

laws resulted in salmon returning to the

Thames (and they will only swim in the

clearest of waters). In the ‘80s there

were cormorants at Woolwich, and now

there’s seals at Pitsea (by an oil refinery!)

and oysters are back in the Thames Estuary. Put

that in an SF story in the ‘50s and ‘60s and

it would have to be one where mankind

was no more.

With regard to Al’s mention of R. A.

Lafferty, at one convention he was seen

just sitting in a chair staring straight for-

ward, so much so that fans became wor-

ried that he’d died, until one brave soul

went up and spoke to him.

And Al asked, “Somewhere does The

Giant Rat of Sumatra still roam?” Who

knows? But the answer might be found

in The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Rick Bover,

The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Sid Fleischman.

The Giant Rat of Sumatra by Jake & Luke

Thoene, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of

Sumatra by Allen Vanneman Sherlock Holmes

and the Giant Rat of Sumatra byPaul D. Gilbert ,

Sherlock Holmes’ Lost Adventure: The True

Story of the Giant Rats of Sumatra by Lauren

Steinhaueer, The Giant Rat of Sumatra: Sherlock

36

Holmes Fan Fiction by

Christopher Milner or

Lestrade and the Giant

Rat of Sumatra by M.

J. Trow And if Jerry or

yourself (or anyone for

that matter) wants to

find a decent description of Charles Fort himself

just read chapter five of H. Allen Smith’s Low

Man On A Totem Pole. Yep, the humorist who

gave us the Rhubarb series actually met Charles

Fort and attended ONLY meeting of the Fortean

Society.

By the way, it was Theodore Dreiser who got

Fort’s first book ( Book Of The Damned) into

print

Actually, Sheryl, kids weren’t afraid of the

Daleks, more like fascinated by them in an al-

most comical way, It’s difficult to be afraid of an

animated garbage can armed with a sink plunger.

Personally, was 13 at the time. At the end of the

first Dalek episode all you saw was the eye rod

from behind while Barbara

(Jacqueline Hill) screamed her head off. Jac-

queline Hill was a darn good screamer. And for a

whole week we were speculating about what it

would turn out to be.

Thought it to be a giant ant

Helen, we all hope and trust you'll

make a full recovery. The cancer journey

is long and hard but it's not the death sen-

tence it once was.

We’re all rooting for you.

Oddly enough, was volunteering at the local

Free Clinic, the day after TRF arrived (with

your article). Found out that one of the patients

who’d we'd sent to the local hospital for a mam-

mogram (paid for by the Clinic) had been found

to have Stage One Cancer. The Clinic will pay

off her chemo costs. Had the Clinic not been

there, the cancer probably

would have progressed past

the point of no return. So

she’s in with a more than a

fighting chance too.

Times like that the volunteers

get a substantial reminder

about why they are doing what their doing. Have

to admit it’s the ONLY altruistic thing I do.

From J Kaufman

Oct 11, 2016

Thanks for he new issue of TRF, with its odd

covers by A.B. Kynock, its intriguing old photos,

and its various journeys to Kentucky Civil War

sites, to ancient eras, into British culture, and

through cancer.

Other people may have already corrected

Dave Rowe in his assumption that Stu Shiffman

never won a Hugo—he got one in 1990. Grant

Canfield and Arthur Thomson on the other hand,

were both nominated (Grant about twice as many

times as ATom) but Dave is right that they never

got the rocket they deserved.

Surprisingly, or maybe not, I don’t have any

other comments on this issue.

Yours,

Jerry Kaufman

P.O. Box 25075

Seattle WA 98165

P.S. Could you change our mailing address to the

one above? We’re having a lot of mail theft in the

neighborhood, so the Post Office Box eliminates

that problem.

From M Stevens

October 13, 2016

37

Dear Tom,

In Reluctant Famulus

#113, you express some degree

of surprise that a meth lab

would be located in your rural

neighborhood. That’s where

most meth labs are usually lo-

cated. Even druggies don’t

want to put one of the damned

things in a heavily populated

urban area. When things go

wrong with a meth lab the re-

sulting explosion can take out

an entire city block. While I was still working, I

saw a training tape on the explosive potential of

one liter of ether. They put the liter of ether in a

junked car and detonated it from a considerable

distance. The explosion reduced the car to slag

and produced a column of fire about fifty feet

high. That was one liter. Meth labs have gallons

of the stuff on the premises.

Most crime is directly proportional to popula-

tion density. Ten thousand people in one square

mile produce more crime than ten thousand peo-

ple in ten square miles. If you want to avoid

crime, stay away from people. They’re no

damned good. Of course, some people are worse

than others. When you mentioned you had

neighbors living in mobile homes it was easy to

imagine what sort of people they might be.

Trailer Trash. The prejudice against people who

live in mobile homes seems to be quite general.

The idea of living cheaply doesn’t seem to be in-

herently wrong. Then you meet the people who

are doing it and realize you wouldn’t want to be

mistaken for one of them.

Mostly I don’t talk to myself. Not unless you

consider grunts, snorts, and monosyllables to be

talking. Since I live by myself, there are long pe-

riods of time with nobody to talk to. This has

never bothered me, since I

don’t mind my own company.

I may make verbal noises just

to inform the universe that I

still exist. Talking to cats is

another matter. Back in the

days when I lived with cats I

frequently talked to them.

Sometimes I would even argue

with my cats. It can be really

disconcerting to realize you

are losing and argument with

your cat.

If gravity really isn’t strong enough, it may

explain a great deal. Periodically, TV news tells

us we are getting too fat. We aren’t really getting

too fat. We are just compensating for insufficient

gravity. If we don’t eat some more doughnuts, we

may float off into space with dire results.

Yours truly,

Milt Stevens

6326 Keystone St.

Simi Valley, CA 93063

miltstevvens@earthlink.net

From M Stevens

From J. Thiel

Tom—Your description of Gill Branch Road

in the editorial gave me a spooky feeling. Then I

looked at the photo pages and the thought of Ark-

ham came to my mind. Indeed, there’s something

uncanny about the introduction to this issue. No-

ticing that it’s the September/October issue re-

minded me that Halloween is coming up; I sup-

pose your Introduction furnishes a further re-

minder. Spooky also is Frederick Moe’s article on

Mystery Science Theater—it reminds me of Dun-

sany’s “Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer”.

I enjoyed the science in the issue, your com-

38

ments on bosons and Al

Byrd’s comments in the letter

column about the solar system.

I am wondering if the

widely-known portrayal of the

fruit of the tree of knowledge

as an apple is the result of

writing the Bible down for

children in the Bible story

pamphlets they have in Sunday School classes.

These sometimes give the impression that they

were written BY a child, and it may be that it was

made out to be an apple because that’s the fruit

the writer liked best. Anyway, or the righteous

one, one, it helps indicate the discrepancy be-

tween Biblical paraphrasing and the Bible itself.

Grand cover. I thought it was done by Spore

when I saw it, but I guess that artist sticks to

Bems.

Nice to see the Famulus on the net, but I’m

glad to be receiving it in paper. I hate scrolling to

read.

John Thiel

30 N. 19th Street

Lafayette, Indiana 47904

From: Al Byrd

10/25/2016

Dear Tom,

Thank you for TRF #113. As always, it was a

treat for me to take it out of the envelope and en-

joy a fresh surprise of artwork. A. B. Kynock

gave you a fascinating wrap-around cover. I feel

that I should know what’s going on in it. Maybe,

if I gaze at it long enough . . .

It’s always disturbing to learn that a crime has

taken place in your neighborhood. Where I used

to live here in Lexington KY, it was an almost a

nightly occurrence for police cruisers to stop,

lights flashing, in front of the

house of some neighbor or an-

other. As in the case that you

mentioned, such a neighbor was

more often than not an aficio-

nado of better living through

chemistry. Now, Anna and I

live in a better neighborhood

where the only time when I’ve

seen flashing lights was on the night when, sadly,

a neighbor’s house burned down. It was dramatic

for us to watch a fire truck followed by a police

cruiser drive across our lawn . . .

Frederick Moe’s article on pirate radio broad-

casts was an engrossing look at a vanishing way

of life. He brought back to me memories of the

underworld of short-wave radio, in which friends

and neighbors who might now have vanished into

their computers to talk with those on the world’s

far side vanished into their basements to talk with

persons on the world’s far side. It’s good to know

that, like vinyl records, short wave is still hanging

on in its own niche.

I’m thankful for Helen E. Davis’s surviving

her experience with cancer. I hope that next year

for her is better than this one has been.

Michaele Jordan’s review of The Human and

the Shiver reminds me of an old saying from the

sf field: “In a story in which absolutely anything

can happen, who cares what does?” Sadly, I’ve

forgotten which critic came up with the saying, or

to which novel he applied it. Do you or any of

your other readers know the answers to those

questions? Dahlgren comes to mind, but maybe

just because it was so mercilessly reviewed by so

many.

New Ancient Earthlings continues to impress

me with the incredible diversity of vanished life.

Looking at a set of toy dinosaurs that I’ve kept

from my childhood, I can hardly believe how lit-

39

tle of that life it represents. I can’t imagine how

large a complete set of toy dinosaurs would be

today.

As you pointed out to John Purcell, he should

feel free to make snide comments about Ken-

tucky’s politics. Kentuckians have been making

such comments since the Commonwealth came to

be. Would Thoreau have said, “That government

is best which governs least, from which it follows

that that government is best that governs not at

all” had he lived in Kentucky? LAmen. Ed.}

I envy Robert Kennedy for having seen Mesa

Verde, given how much more spectacular pueblos

are under an open sky than they are in pictures.

Anna and I are planning a trip to New Mexico in

which I want to see Chaco Canyon, and she wants

to see living pueblos. I hope that I can somehow

work Mesa Verde into the trip. It would make the

subject of a fine article in itself.

Many thanks to Sheryl Birkhead for alerting

me to White Dwarf’s being available on You-

Tube. Someday, I’ll get the hang of all of these

newfangled apps, maybe when I get chipped.

White Dwarf, as she surmised, was a pilot for a

projected series and does have more world-

building than a standalone TV movie should’ve

had. Still, it was both engaging and quirky, and I

never complain about good world-building.

I hope that, someday soon, a WOW! signal

turns out to be that of which we’ve dreamed. I’d

hate to be right in my critique of the Drake Equa-

tion.

Thank you again for TRF113. As always, I’m

looking forward to the next ish.

Best wishes,

Al (Alfred D. Byrd)

From: Brad Foster

New issue of The Reluctant Famulus #113

has been here a couple of weeks, and...

yeah, I know, everyone is getting tired of my

“locs” of the past several months with me whin-

ing about eye problems, not having time, etc etc.

So, will spare you that now. Will just say: I think

am done with the final surgery, might have the

pressure under control in the eye, and maybe can

get back to semi-normal in the next couple of

weeks as heal up. Will promise to do better in the

new year. Really! So, here are two fillos to keep

my subscription paid up. I will try to do better

next year, I promise!

40

A few more old photos. I just couldn’t help myself.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird , it’s a plane . . .

How about a donation the Old Weirdos

Association of America.

Come down from there this instant or else . . .

Now be a good boy and smile for the camera and

you can have all the flies you can eat. Okay?

41

Oh no! Can it be? Is there really another space

alien? More likely not. He looks too much like

Homo Sapiens.

The things people find and what they claim them

to be.

A chunk of aluminum is on display at the Na-

tional Museum of Transylvanian History in Cluj-

Napoca, Romania. It measures 7.8 in by 4.9 in by

2.8 in. It looks like something one might dig up

while excavating to put in a foundation for a

building. In fact, it was found in a 33 ft deep hole

by builders in 1973.

Also found with the metal piece were two mam-

mal fossils that were estimated to be anywhere

from 10,000 to 80,000 years old. Out of curiosity,

the researchers tested the metal piece and found it

to be 90% aluminum and around 250,000 years

old. Even the communist scientists knew this

couldn’t be true so they sent the metal to a lab in

Lausanne, Switzerland, where its age was revised

to between 80,000 years (same as the fossils) and

400 years.

The lab tests said it was old, but the analysis

needs some backup data or lab reports, which Co-

hal didn’t provide. So is that chunk of aluminum

thousands of years old and part of an alien space-

ship? A few more tests might give some answers

Instead, it’s on display in a museum, its “origin

still unknown.”

The interesting thing is that aluminum was first

produced in 1825 by Danish physicist and chem-

ist Hans Christian Ørsted. So what do you think it

really is?

Since we’re fans, among other things, and

read a lot of SF we’re bound to have read stories

about people from other planets have visited

Earth at times in the past and possibly stories

about crashed spacecraft we could almost believe

that the item was aluminum and part of a crashed

space craft. Of course the claim in the preceding

article neglects one important detail: where is the

rest of the spacecraft? Surely there would be

pieces found all over in the excavation. Realisti-

cally, the piece had to be less than the age that

was claimed. That’s it for now. See you later.

42