Vol. 5 No. 1 February 2006 ALEXIADpdf.textfiles.com/efanzines/Alexiad/Alexiad025P.pdf · ALEXIAD...

Vol. 5 No. 1 February 2006

ALEXIAD(!7+=3!)) $2.00

Horse of the Year went to Saint Liam and not Afleet Alex. Ithink Joe expected m e to be royally upset at the unfairness but Iwasn’t. Afleet Alex turned in two spectacular performances early inthe year. Saint Liam plugged away through the whole year and builta substantial record,so I don’t think it was that unfair. It would havebeen unfair had Afleet Alex won the Triple Crown but he didn’t. Butthen again, I don’t think any judge could have denied Horse of theYear to a Triple Crown winner. Had Afleet Alex been able tocontinue racing, I’m sure he too would have built a substantialrecord. Unfortunately he couldn’t. While I l iked Afleet Alex a lot,I haven’t really been interested that much in any particular horsesince Sunday Silence. I might have becom e interested in SeattleSlew’s son Vindication had he not been injured before the TripleCrown because he was so much like Slew. Maybe it’s not possibleto feel that way about a horse more than once. The Courier-Journalis already starting to cover the D erby prospects.I don’t like to choosea horse this early. I find it hard to deal with the disappointm ent ifsomething happens to my horse.

— Lisa

Table of ContentsEditorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Reviewer’s Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Cat News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Historical Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Network News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Off the Main Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Twenty Years After Challenger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Book ReviewsJTM West, ed., The Guy Liddell Diaries, Volume I . . . . . . . . . . . . 8JCS Bjornerud, Reading the Rocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12EBF Chabon, Summerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12RD Daston/Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature . . . . . . . . . 13JTM Havens, Charmed & Dangerous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7EBF Hoffman, A Fistful of Sky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12JTM Jans, The Grizzly Maze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8JTM Scott, Thraxas and the Dance of Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6JTM Resnick, Laura, Disappearing Nightly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6JTM Resnick, Mike, Starship: Mutiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6JTM Rosenfeld, The World Hitler Never Made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7JTM Rule, Worth More Dead and Other True Cases . . . . . . . . . . 9JTM Spencer, Battle for Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10JTM Weiss, American Taboo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Candy Bar ReviewsJGS Brachs’s Circus Peanuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Fanzines Received . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Random Jottings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Sheryl “take an armadillo to lunch” Birkhead, Dainis Bisenieks, SueBurke, Jason K. Burnett, Richard Dengrove, Brad W. Foster, E. B.Frohvet, Alexis A. Gilliland, Marty Helgesen, John Hertz, TrinlayKhadro, Robert Lichtman, Lloyd Penney, AL du Pisani, George W.Price, Joy V. Smith , Rod E. Smith, Milt Stevens, Henry L. Welch,Martin Morse Wooster

Comments are by JTM or LTM .

Trivia: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Art:

Sheryl Birkhead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 22, 25Brad W. Foster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Paul Gadzikowski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3, 26Alexis Gilliland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 16, 20, 21, 25Trinlay Khadro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 17Marc Schirmeister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

February 20, 2006 St. Photini.Great Lent begins March 6, 2006.Pascha (Orthodox Easter) is April 23, 2006.

Printed on February 2, 2006Deadline is April 1, 2006

Reviewer’s Notes

Why don’t I want to move?Mostly because I am moving. At work, that is, into the office next

to mine. One can accumulate a frightfully large quantity of Stuff in tenyears in the same place. It all has to be boxed up, or sorted through anddiscarded. And some of the Stuff I have I inherited from mypredecessor, eighteen years ago. (Yes, I’ve been in the same jobeighteen years. There were times when I wished I could be in the samejob for eighteen days.)

There are unanticipated benefits from global warming. Natural gasprices have gone up. Yet, because we have had the warmest January thatLouisville has had in some time (there have been days when I have goneout in my shirt sleeves), the heating bill has only been insanelyenormous, instead of being bankrupting.

The evidence that Leif Eirikson and his followers landed in L’Anseaux Meadows in Newfoundland has run up against the problem that,after all, Vinland is a land of grapes, a rare thing in Canada. But then,it seems, the climate was warmer, what they called the “Little ClimaticOptimum”. Which was followed by the Little Ice Age, freezing out theGreenland Colony, spreading the Black Death, and generally layingwaste to the world. What exactly were the industrial emissions thatcaused the Little Climatic Optimum?

Of course, everything has a price. I am not looking forward tosummer with any pleasure. Time to go to Sam’s Club and get a seriouswindow unit for the bedroom.

Lisa and I had a little fun along with my step-cousin Robley. One ofMetro Louisville’s aldermen is also U of L archivist. The library whereLisa works is showing a series of documentary films on World War One,and Dr. Owen the alderman & archivist gave an introductory talk on theWorld War Home Front here. (They shut down the red-light district.)

We figured that a WW I talk would be improved by the presence ofa WW I vet. So did Robley, and I took the day off work to bring him.It went over very well; he talked about training at Camp Taylor, thetraining camp here in Louisville.

On the way back home we took him to a bank and he argued with themanager about having lost five days interest on a certificate of deposit.If I notice such things when I am a hundred and four (105 on May 4) Iwill be amazed and astounded, if not outright analoged.

February 2006 Alexiad

RANDOM JOTTINGSby Joe

L.A. Con IV has released the Hugonominations ballot and added a specialcommittee-chosen category (see Section 3.3.14of the WSFS Constitution):

Best Interactive Video Game

What brought in all the other groups wasthat some of the “core fans” liked the other, sothe con had to offer it, and it drew in peoplewho liked the other but didn’t care a rap for SF.Here we go again.

http://www.laconiv.org/

Their Progress Report #3 had an ad for theMontreal 2009 bid. From their having a pre-membership category of “Bon Ami” for $100, Ipresume they will stay in to the end of the race.As you know, Bon Ami™ hasn’t scratched yet.

I watched Star Wars®: Clone Wars™,Volume One and Volume Two, the brilliantanimated series produced for the CartoonChannel by Genndy Tartakovsky (as in SamuraiJack), and came to some conclusions:

g Can Jedi kick butt or what? All byhimself, Mace Windu delivers a wholedrum of whupass to an enemy force,including a giant ship I last saw in themovie Kronos (1957). (The Mean JoeGreene scene afterwards was cute.) Andthen there what Yoda did was . . .

g Anakin Skywalker is a hothead. Likeyou didn’t already know that.

g Amidala, or perhaps I should say Padmé,is a damn fine shot.

g Yoda goes out alone on an ice planet torescue a couple of other Jedi. I wasexpecting him to say, “Just going out Iam, yes, and some time may be.”

g Both sides bunch up too much, but theGrand Army of the Republic at leasttries to act like a real military force, withartillery, vertical envelopment, specialforces, and so on. (It’s only later on thatthey add fragging the general.)

g Shouldn’t the Jedi have known thatsomething was wrong when they foundout Chancellor Palpatine was reading

Slan and The Weapon Makers? Oh,never mind. Then there was whatGeneral Grievous did setting up theopening of Revenge of the Sith.

g Seeing Anakin undergo that quest mademe wonder how good a Jedi K nightLucius Vorenus would be. (There was ascene that looked remarkably like theopening credits from Rome.) Now as forTitus Pullo, that would be a d ifferentkettle of pisces.

g Maybe Padmé ought to ditch C-3PO andhire Alfred Pennyworth, assuming BruceWayne will give him time off. What amecha-putz!

g Jedi Master Shaaka Ti is kinda cute, fora girl who has giant Slan tendrils (seeabove about Palpatine) and worse tastein makeup than Betty Sorenson (of TheStar Beast, and she had dreadful taste).

g Where is the Doctor when you needhim? Some advice would be helpful.

g Did I mention that Anakin Skywalker isa hothead?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361243/

And then I looked at Batman: The AnimatedSeries Volume Four and concluded I like SelenaKyle, sometimes also known as Catwoman,better as a brunette. You have to respectsomeone who can make a cat obey.

Of course, there are a lot of other referencesthere too. Bruce Wayne [B atman]: “What areyou doing tonight?” Barbara Gordon [Batgirl]:“The same thing we do every night, Pinky!”And then they checked and saw that the S.S.Minnow was coming into Gotham . . .

I also have the Looney Tunes GoldenCollection #3, but until I find out how to crackthe setup so I don’t have to watch WhoopiGoldberg every time I want to see a cartoon, I’mdisinclined to watch.

Nancy Stouffer Lives! Ronnie Niedermanand Judith Shangold sued the Poopy Panda Palsfor plagarism; it seemed, so they said, that whenDisney did Micha el Chabon’s novelSummerland, it was based on a movie scriptthey had submitted in 1995.

Problem was, the script referred to the PalmPilot. Which wasn’t out until 1997. Winner:Disney, which gets costs (i.e., probablynothing). Poop-poop-poopy!

http://www.overlawyered.com/2006/01/script_anachronism_sinks_ideat.html

German researchers analyzing the heatemissions of the planet Xena [called in mundanecircles UB313] have estimated its diameter atapproximately 3000 kilometers, larger thanPluto. Michael Brown, the discoverer of Xena,had originally estimated the diameter as being ofthat magnitude. This estimate, if confirmed,would put Xena between Titan and Luna in size.

Norman D. Vaughn, Antarctic and Alaskanexplorer and educator, died on December 23,

2005, four days after his O ne HundredthBirthday. Energetic to the end, he was planningto return to the southern continent to celebratehis personal centennial, having climbed themountain named after himself in 1994.

Another bit of history has passed on.

OBITS

We regret to report the death of RobertSheckley, famed SF satirist, on December 9,2005 at Vassar B rothers Medical Center inPoughkeepsie, New York after surgery for abrain aneurysm.

We regret to report the death of KenBulmer, pro and fan, author of the “DrayPrescott” adventure books and 1955 TAFFdelegate, on December 16, 2005, after a longillness, in a nursing home in England.

We regret to report the death of How ardDeVore, “Big-H earted Howard”, Fan Guest ofHonor of L.A. Con IV, attendee of everyMidWestCon, and co-author of A History of theHugo, Nebula, and In ternational FantasyAwards, on December 31, 2005 in Detroit. Ashe wished, there will be a fan wake for him atMidWestCon 2006. “Drink a shot of Jim Beamfor me,” he said.

Our condolences to Robert S. “Bob”Kennedy on the death of his brother John, inAlameda, California, on January 10, 2006, atthe age of 68.

MONARCHIST NEWS

On December 3, 2005, Prince SverreMagnus of Norway was born to Crown-Princess Mette-Marit and Crown PrinceHaakon M agnus of Norway.

In the name of God, the Mighty, theOmnipotent, Peace be upon the most excellent,the most wise, the most revered Emir and Rulerof Kuwait His Highness Jaber bin Ahmad al-Sabah, who entered into Paradise upon the 15th

Dhul al-Hjjah, A.H. 1426 (January 15, 2005 inthe calendar of the infidels). May Peace and theMercy of God be upon him. The new Ruler,chosen by the Kuwaiti cabinet, is the formerPrime Minister, Emir Sabah bin Ahmad al-Sabah, after the succession and abdication ofthe Crown Prince, Emir Sa`ad bin `Abd All~hal-Sabah, whose health did not permit him toassume the duties of Emir.

http://www.4dw.net/royalark/Kuwait/kuwait16.htm

Carol of Romania , born Mircea GregorCarol Lambrino on January 8, 1920 to MariaJohana “Zizi” Lambrino and her ex-husband, thethen Crown Prince Carol of Romania (later KingCarol II), died on January 28, 2006 in London.For the past few years, his older son, Paul, hasbeen waging a campaign to have him recognizedas the heir to his half-brother, King Mihai[Michael].

Alexiad February 2006

ALL OVERReview by Joseph T Major of

OFF THE M AIN SEQUENCE:The Other Science Fiction Stories of Robert

A. Heinleinedited by Andrew Wheelerintroduction by Greg Bear

foreword by Michael Cassutt(Science Fiction Book Club; 2005;

ISBN 1-58288-184-7)

The intent of this collection is simpleenough; to print all of Heinlein’s short sciencefiction that is not in The Past ThroughTomorrow (1967; NHOL G.162). Thus, it doesnot include his mystery story, “They Do It WithMirrors” (1947, 1980; NHOL G.042) which waspublished under the pseudonym of “SimonRiverside”; his sole “mainstream” story, “ABathroom of Her Own” (1946, 1980; NHOLG.062); or his two girls’ stories “Poor Daddy”(1949; NHOL G.067) and “Cliff and theCalories” (1950; NHOL G.088) both publishedunder the arcane, recondite, and ineluctablepseduonym of “R. A. Heinlein”. As it happens,all of these stories are in Expanded Universe(1980; NHOL G.193). It also doesn’t includehis fantasy stories, but those [along with some ofthese stories] are collected elsewhere (TheFantasies of Robert A . Hein lein; Tor; 1999,2002; $16.95).

Successful Operation (1940; NHOL G.019)The operation is on a man identified only as

“the Leader”. One suspects that Heinlein istranslating the title. The Leader needs apituitary gland transplant, and only onephysician in the Fatherland has the skills, eventhough he isn’t quite up to the Fatherland’sracial standards. It would be so easy for Dr.Lans to let his patient die on the operating table,but his treatment turns out to be far more subtle. . .

What makes this one really stand out is that,as Heinlein confessed, it comes from the timewhen he couldn’t say “No!” The story waspublished in Futuria Fantasia #4 — a fanzine.Ray Bradbury’s fanzine. (And then, I hear, hegot at odds with Bradbury because he wouldn’tvolunteer for WWII . . .)

“Let There Be Light” (1940, 1950, 1963;NHOL G.007)

Solar power has always faced the problem ofbeing just too diffuse. Also hard to collect, dueto weather, poisonous compounds (some solarcells are made with selenium, the activeingredient in locoweed), and other suchobstacles. And then there is the competition.

Although the citation is for Super ScienceStories May 1940 (as by “Lyle Monroe”), theversion is the 1963 “M arilyn Monroe” version;in the original, the good-looking woman withthe big surprise looked like Heinlein’sschoolmate Sally Rand. The edition was toneddown, originally Douglas and Martin talkedpretty raunchy, but that was too much for thedelicate sensibiltites of forties pulpdom. (Thenudity, cohabitation, and polyamory of For Us,the Living (2003, NHOL G.004) would havereally blown fuses.)

— And H e Built a Crooked House —(1941; NHOL G.023)

An elaborate joke on two levels. First off,there is the “crooked house” itself. In BeyondThis Horizon (1942, 1948; NHOL G.033)Monroe-Alpha Clifford asserted that a four-dimensional object would most conveniently fillhis current need, and here an architect designs abuilding that turns out to be such an item.Which has its own interesting prob lems.

Secondly, the story is set in Heinlein’s ownneighborhood, and in fact he gives an addressfor one of the characters and says that theHermit of Hollywood lives across from it. Atthat time, the Heinleins lived at the addressgiven for the Hermit of Hollywood. Well!

The story itself contains several of whatwould become Heinlein’s standard charactertypes, including the wiseacre with the fluenttongue and the Whining, Useless, Middle-AgedHeinlein Matron. W hat were the people likewho really lived at 8775 Lookout M ountainAvenue? (Astounding Science Fiction February1941)

Beyond Doubt (1941; NHOL G.014)This is one of the notorious “stinkeroos”, the

stories that Heinlein disliked and did not wantreprinted. This is the only one of them that wasprior to this publication (Beyond the End ofTime, Frederik Pohl, editor (1952), as byRobert A. Heinlein and Elma Wentz). It is alsohis first collaborative fiction work. (Perhaps“only”, depending on how you evaluate thedegree of connection between John W.Campbell’s “All” and Heinlein’s Sixth Column,(1941, 1949; NHOL G.022) or what weight yougive to the detailed and elaborate notes (NHOLG.180) on the draft of Niven’s and Pournelle’sThe Mote in God’s Eye (1975).)

The co-author, Elma Wentz, was alsoassociated with Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty inCalifornia (EPIC) campaign. And the storydeals with a political campaign that’s reallyrough, and uses some really innovative methodsto publicize the opposition’s failings. If only theguy could have done the job properly . . .(Astonishing Stories April 1941, as by LyleMonroe and Elma Wentz; Fred Pohl was alsothe editor there)

They (1941; NHOL G.021)

“Have you ever had a dream that you wereso sure was real? What if you were unable towake from that dream? How would you knowthe difference?” Heinlein explored Morpheus’squestion long before the Wachowski brotherswere born. But the Matrix established here is

set up for one man, who discovered it thanks toa glitch. Or so he thinks, but it is impossible totell from paranoia . . . from his point of view.

Solipsism is a recurring theme in Heinlein’swork; a doctrine peculiarily attractive to animaginative writer. This is one of the earlierexamples of his exp loration of the theme.(Unknown April 1941)

Solution Unsatisfactory (1941; NHOLG.026)

The atomic standoff story. A neutralistAmerica finds itself with a war-ending weapon,and its application turns out to lead to a resultmore terrifying than not using it.

It’s worth noting that the description of howthe radioactive-dust project was organized, andfunctioned is very close to how the ManhattanEngineering District was organized, andfunctioned. Heinlein’s name came upperipherally in the investigation of CleveCartmill’s “Deadline” (Astounding, March1944), the notorious “A-Bomb” story. Giventhat RAH had described the real-world setup ofthe ENORMOZ Manhattan EngineeringDistrict, one would think they would havelooked into his case a lot more closely.

The unsatisfactory solution was in effectproposed after the end of the war, albeit notunder similar conditions. What made it a non-starter was that nuclear weapons turned out tobe harder to make and even harder to deploy.For example, John W. Campbell imaginedBelgium or Czechoslovakia getting the Bomband using it against any or all of its neighbors(The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume I, Page57; letter of November 21, 1945 to L. RonHubbard). There was more unsound fantasizingwhen the speculation was proven workable thanwhen it had been only a scientific dream.(Astounding, May 1941, as by AnsonMacDonald)

Universe (1941, 1963; NHOL G.025)The generation-ship story. One can

compare it to “They”, in that both feature a manwho finds out that his entire picture of the worldaround him is profoundly wrong. Only thistime, the protagonist can do something about it.The world of the Ship is only sketched in, butthe lines fill the frame, so to speak; there is abelief-system, a society, and a world-viewconsistent enough for the protagonist to haveactual opposition.

This story is usually considered part of the[First] Future History, but as it is not included inThe Past Through Tomorrow, Heinlein’scollection of those works, it belongs here.(Astounding, May 1941; that issue also hadAsimov’s Robot story “Liar!”, Eric FrankRussell’s “Jay Score” [a different sort of robotstory], and the last part of de Camp’s “TheStolen Dormouse”. Wow!)

Elsewhen (1941, 1953; NHOL G.008)This time “They” had collective experiences.

Heinlein continues exploring the theory ofsubjective reality by allowing some subjects toexplore alternative time-tracks, with wildlyvarying results. We see here the earlypresentation of Heinlein’s attitudes about rea lityas the five subjects of the time-line travellingprofessor undergo five different fates in the


great spread of Elsewhen.The publication history is in some ways

more interesting than the story itself. Forexample, the 1953 version used here restoresone character, moves the important dates in theprofessor’s life forward ten years, and has theoriginal title; as first published it was“Elsewhere” by Caleb Saunders (the only use ofthis pseudonym) in Astounding for September1941.

Common Sense (1941, 1963; NHOL G.030)Now that Hugh Hoyland of “Universe” has

found out what his world is really like, and thatthe whole point of it all was leaving it for adifferent type of place, what does he do aboutit? Run into established problems, mostly, andget out of them by an incredible run of luck.

Alexei Panshin argues that the plot problemsof this one vitiate the original story, while JimGifford says that they work together better as aunified whole. The two were collected as oneshort novel (Orphans of the Sky, 1963; NHOLG.152). The idea is good, the execution a bit ofa let down (those three pages of lucky breaks forexample). (Astounding, October 1941)

By His Bootstraps (1941; NHOL G.029)The recursive time-line story, at least until a

story later on in this collection. (Notice howHeinlein invented so many basic science-fictionplots?) Bob Wilson is out of tucker and hard atwork when he interrupts himself. And does soagain. Then the manipulator behind theseinterruptions steps in, and eventually Bob findsout who is responsible . . . a short story withsome huge ideas. (Astounding, October 1941,as by Anson MacDonald)

Lost Legacy (1941, 1953; NHOL G.013)The “lost legacy” is that of vast and varied

powers of mind. Somehow one thinks of theMartian powers of Stranger In a Strange Land(G.127; 1961, 1990) here.) The independentdiscoverers find a co lony of others like them(see below about “Gulf”) and get into adifference of opinion with others who havesimilar powers and quite different scruples.

This is a story of wizards zapping eachother. It’s hard to see what distinction it makesto the ordinary person. As for the powersthemselves, in spite of all the comments aboutsuch pow ers be ing commonp lace, yetunrecognized, the Randi Million-Dollar Prizeremains safe.

This is the version as originally written, theoriginal published one (Super Science Stories,November 1941, as by “Lyle Monroe”) wasretitled for some reason “Lost Legion” and ahistorical character was renamed (out of fearthat he might sue?).

“M y Object All Sublime” (1942; NHOLG.009)

The second “stinkeroo”; it’s hard to see whyHeinlein didn’t want this one reprinted. In somestylistic ways it anticipates “They Do It WithMirrors”.

The Gilbert & Sullivan quote sets the scene;bad drivers in one part of the town are gettingdrenched with artificial skunk scent. The hard-boiled reporter sent down to smell out thereason finds him; a lone eccentric inventor whohas discovered how to bend light waves to keep

people from seeing him (unfortunately for theplot, it probably wouldn’t work that way), and isannoyed with bad drivers. Some local intrigueensues (the reader will recall “Our Fair City”(1947; NHOL G.068) and “A Bathroom of HerOwn” for more along that line) and the reporterends up with his own plans for doing more.(Future, February 1942 , as by Lyle Monroe)

Goldfish Bowl (1942; NHOL G.032)“CREATION TOOK EIGHT DAYS” and

whatever would those beings created when theLord was fresh after His rest, but hadexperience, would be like? For those who liketo consider Heinlein as the Humanity-supremetype, there’s this to explain away.

There are two inexplicable standingwaterspouts off the coast of Hawaii; at the sametime, people are getting sucked into balllightning there. When two scientists investigatethis event, not entirely intentionally, they learnhumiliatingly where humanity stands in theworld. “The Horror of the Heights” (Sir ArthurConan Doyle, 1913), anyone? But the survivingman can’t even drop a “Joyce-ArmstrongFragment”. (Astounding, March 1942, as byAnson MacDonald)

Pied Piper (1942; NHOL G.010)The third “stinkeroo”, and here it seems

merely trivial. Two countries are having a war,and a scientist who has just invented a“wormhole” device proposes kidnapping all thechildren of the opponent’s leaders. But then,when his own leader suggests using it moreselectively, he deselects a feature.

There’s not much to select here, it seems likeone of the heavier-handed commentaries oncontemporary events. (Astonishing, March1942, as by Lyle Monroe)

Free Men (1966; NHOL G.050)When this was first published, in The Worlds

of Robert A . Hein lein (1966; NHOL G.160), itseemed like a post-nuclear war resistance storyof the sort that was not uncommon between theSoviet achievement of atom bombs (including astory in this collection) and the demise of theSoviet Union. Yet He inlein asse rteduniversality for it; and one can argue that he isgoing back to the situation of Sixth Column(1941, 1949; NHOL G.022) and being morerealistic, showing the results of a “Pan-Asian”invasion without any super-science to save theday.

From references, the fictional town ofBarclay seems to be in Missouri (which waswhere Heinlein would put a story when no otherspecific location was required). The BarclayFree Company is a guerilla unit fighting anenemy that is brutal, ruthless, and exceedinglywell-equipped. For example, right off there is areference to the nuclear destruction of St.Joseph, M issouri.

The “free men” of the Barclay FreeCompany have to deal with betrayal, dissent,assault, and general debilitation. The story endswith a typical Heinleinian “wolfish” credo.

In a rare d isplay of agreement, both Panshinand Gifford find the work less than satisfying.Panshin guessed, and Gifford showed, that thestory was written earlier; 1947 in fact.

On the Slopes of Vesuvius (1980; NHOL

G.066)Heinlein said that after the end of World

War II he wrote a number of stories warningpeople about the prospects of nuclear war. Heseems to have overstated the number; and noneof them sold. This is one of them.

This is a minor work at best; some peopleare talking in a bar and one of them reiteratesthe line about atom bombs being easy to makeand easier to use. Another one panics, leavestown, realizes he was overstating the case, andthen sees he was right after all. “SolutionUnsatisfactory” was a better warning.(Expanded Universe, 1980; NHOL G.193)

Columbus Was a Dope (1947; NHOLG.053)

This one’s in a bar, too, but this time the guyarguing is not the winner. Why go out on a“generation ship”? The bartender implies ananswer. According to Panshin, it’s a neat littlepuzzle story; Gifford thinks it would make agreat intro to Orphans of the Sky. (StartlingStories, May 1947, as by Lyle Monroe — thelast time Heinlein used a pseudonym)

Jerry Was a Man (1947; NHOL G.054)The story of determining sapience (I said

Heinlein invented a lot of basic SF plots). Jerryis a talking chimpanzee, created by geneticmodification. The well-to-do and bored lady towhom he’s been lent becomes quite taken withhim. However, he’s also the property of hismaker, which has a schedule for disposing ofobsolete equipment. Is this putting down an oldanimal, or murder? (No one seems willing totake the work-to-rule attitude demonstrated inLois McMaster Bujo ld’s Falling Free (1987,1988).) It all has to be settled in court, andbefore it can be, some basic moral questionshave to be addressed.

Gifford makes the interesting point that inthis story we have a male version of the HeinleinMatron, while his wife, Martha van Vogel, lookslike the female version at first, but very quicklybecomes a resolute woman in the line of Dr.Edith Stone, Betty Sorenson, and MeadeBarstow (a lady we shall meet later).

As biological science expands and isdeveloped more thoroughly, the kinds ofquestions raised in this story become more andmore inevitable. (Thrilling Wonder Stories,October 1947, as “Jerry Is a Man”)

Water Is for Washing (1947; NHOLG.059)

Earthquakes are a natural disaster thatpeople in Southern California are frequentlymade painfully aware of. Add to that the factthat the Imperial Valley is below sea level, andthe prospects would be not very promisingunder the right conditions. Particularly to a manwho doesn’t like large bodies of water, but willprotect helpless children and even help ahitchhiker. Who, in turn, earns himself aredemption of sorts. (Argosy , November 1947;the last two paragraphs cut by their editor andrediscovered by Bill Patterson are not restoredhere, unfortunately)

Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon(1949; NHOL G.074)

This was the first of his Boy Scout stories, ofwhich Farmer In the Sky (G.083; 1950;


published in Boy’s Life for September 1950 inan abridged form) is the longest. The Boy Scoutin this case is trying to be a triple Eagle, andfinds that lunar conditions are not justadventurous, but po tentially fatal — which iswhat Scouts are supposed to know anyhow.(Boy’s Life , April 1949)

Gulf (1949; NHOL G.081)By now you should know about Richard

Hoen and his predictive review of Astoundingfor November 1949. A secret agent courierfinds himself in big trouble — and even morefrom his superiors. Which leaves him withnowhere else to go but to a chance-metacquaintance, who turns out to have a newperspective on the progress of humanity. Thisturns out to be important when his originalproblem goes very seriously wrong.

Panshin argued quite pointedly that the plotshows a number of flaws, which he ascribed tothe need to compose the story quickly. BillPatterson describes how Heinlein had conceivedthe idea of the “trick issue”, which other sourcesattribute to Campbell. If he had had the idea,wouldn’t he have been more careful about hiscontribution? Damon Knight, by way ofcontrast, liked it. (Astounding, November-December 1949)

Destination Moon (1950; NHOL G.086)“This looks like a movie.” Well, mostly

because it was intended to accompany therelease of the movie Destination Moon And ifyou’ve seen the movie . . . the first flight to themoon has to deal with legal obstacles, thenphysical ones. As the lunar explorers did in somany first-landing stories (e.g., John W.Campbell’s “The Moon is Hell” (1951)), theylanded on the far side of the Moon, out of sightof Earth, though in this case that was notintended. Which led to further problems on topof the existing ones. There is a firmunderpinning of hard engineering and scientificdetail here, but not much in the way ofcharacterization. The story gives a good pictureof how they thought it would be back then.Including how Moon travel would not stop aftera success, or even a failure . . . (Short StoriesMagazine, September 1950)

The Year of the Jackpot (1952, 1959;NHOL G.097)

Of the principal characters in this game, onemight well at first confuse Meade Barstow withthe sex-obsessed female character of theauthor’s later works, mostly because when wefirst see her, she is undressing. She proves tohave in abundance, as her primary nature, thecharacteristics that in her later sisters are merely(so to speak) top-dressing.

This is, however, only a Meet Cute forPotiphar Breen, a statistician who is followingtrends . . . including women stripping in public.Making a personal acquaintance with this trendturns out to be a reassurance, overall.

However, other more violent trends led toproblems, and Potiphar and Meade have to fleeto the wilderness, for a less strident version ofFarnham’s Freehold (1965; NHOL G.154)[I’ve come to consider that novel Heinlein’s “Icould have been that”]. Where he has plenty oftime to review the trends, only to find out that

after this jackpot, the Great Calculator is goingto take his toys and go home.

The portrayal of “The Silly Season” mightremind one of the story of that title by CyrilKornbluth (1950). The portrayal of Meade ismore touching; the scene where they kneel downand repeat the marriage service, for example.Also more decisive, as when she shoots thewould-be hijacker without qualms.

Due to a printer’s error, the words “THEEND” were left off, which leaves the endingsomewhat more truncated. The version here isthe anthologized version and not the oneoriginally published. That had dates to indicatethat the “year of the jackpot” was the currentone. (Galaxy, March 1952)

Project Nightmare (1953; NHOL G.098)I’m surprised this one didn’t appear in

Astounding. The army establishes a pro ject tostudy “wild talents”. It turns out said “wildtalents” include a way to influence atomicfission. At the time this gets proven, the Sovietshand down an ultimatum, enforced by atomicdemolition munitions smuggled into the U.S.,there being no Fourth Protocol (by FrederickForsyth, 1984) barring such things in this world.It has to be stopped, of course. (Amazing, April1953)

Sky Lift (1953; NHOL G.103)This is a very real and tragic story about

human cost. An epidemic has hit the researchstation at Pluto. The treatment can only getthere in time if shipped at the maximumsurvivable acceleration. “Survivable” does notinclude a quality of life factor for the pilots, andthe happy ending is very tragic indeed.

Panshin had a comment on this story and theprevious one that is far more succinct andapplicable than anything I could say:

The issues of “Project Nightmare”are artificial ones. Those of “Sky Lift”are real, immediate and important. Thatis the difference between a story thatmeans something and one that doesn’t.

— Heinlein In Dimension, Page 66

(Imagination, November 1953)A Tenderfoot in Space (1958; NHOL

G.133)That last Boy Scout story was about an

Eagle Scout; this one is about the lowest rank, aTenderfoot. Or seeing as he was a dog, maybea “Tenderpaw”.

If you thought Dan Davis was all soft eyedabout his kitty Pete (The Door Into Summer,1957; NHOL G.131), the story of Nixie the muttshould reassure the canineophiles. N ixie can’tgo to Venus. Well, maybe he can, at a risk tohis life. The Dog Star shines on his goodfortune, and once on Venus he returns the favorfor his very loyal master. If you want a friend,get a dog — and when the lad who did so muchfor his friend was in dire peril, this one was afriend indeed.

This is apparently the published version andnot the longer original, which was titled“Tenderfoot on Venus”. As you can see, thiswas written about eight months after The DoorInto Summer. (Boy’s Life , May-July 1958)

— All You Zombies — (1959; NHOLG.139)

Readers who had thought that “By HisBootstraps” was economical and recursivelearned that they didn’t know from economy andrecursiveness upon reading this one. In fact, it’sthe ultimate ve rsion of Roger Ebert’sMysterious Objects Antecedents Myth[Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie G lossary, Page133]. A guy in a bar confesses his wildest story;he was not only a woman once, but a womanscorned and then de-childed. The bartenderknows that problem very well, surprisingly well,and has an answer for his problem. . . and worksfor a time-traveling security organization toboot, one that recruits unusual people ininteresting ways.

Panshin exuberantly and enthusiasticallycharacterized it as “A wild story with every knottied.” [Heinlein In Dimension, Page 94]Heinlein himself said, “I hope that I havewritten in that story the Farthest South in timeparadoxes,” [Grumbles From the Grave, Page156, letter of December 5, 1958 to his agentLurton Blassingame] and he has been provenright so far. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, March1959)

This collection demonstrates the growth andconsistency of its author. He had the same coreideas from beginning to end. (As should havebeen noted by comparing the conceptualsimilarities of For Us, the Living with To SailBeyond the Sunset (1987; NHOL G.201).)What he did learn was the application of them;it is now possible to get a complete view of hiswriting, the “stinkeroos” now being available.

The Science Fiction Book Club has aprogram of reissuing Heinlein; for example,most of the juveniles are now available incombined volumes. Tbese are:

Four Frontiers (with Rocket Ship Galileo,Space Cadet, Red Planet, and Farmer Inthe Sky)

To the Stars (with Between Planets, TheRolling Stones, Starman Jones, and TheStar Beast)

Infinite Possibilities (with Tunnel In the Sky,Time For the Stars, and Citizen of theGalaxy)

Have Space Suit — Will Travel and StarshipTroopers are available separately. With those(by the way, did I mention that Heinlein’sChildren, the collection of my essays on thejuveniles, will be out from Advent almostimmediately?) and this, the reader can see thescope and development of Heinlein’s skills andopinions.

Entries from the New Heinlein Opus List ©2000 by James Gifford.

Used with permission.

CHALLENGERby Johnny Carruthers

It was twenty years ago today . . .

Has it really been 20 years since theChallenger disaster?


I remember where I was January 28, 1986.You could ask anyone 25 or older where theywere and what they were doing whenChallenger exploded, and they would be ab le totell you without a moment’s hesitation.

I was at home. I wasn’t even watching theliftoff. If I’m remembering correctly, NBC wasthe only network covering the launch, and I waswatching something on ABC. I had completelyforgotten that the launch was scheduled for thatday.

The first indication I had that something hadhappened was when ABC interrupted programwith a special bulletin (or whatever term theyused.) I was wondering what was going on, andI started flipping the channels. I flipped to NBC,and that’s where I stayed the rest of the day.

I remember seeing shots of the KennedySpace Center, and something in the back of myhead said, “Oh yeah, Challenger is launchingtoday.” NBC then replayed the explosion. It wasprobably the first time that shot was replayedthat day — the first of all too many times. Idon’t remember how many times I saw theexplosion that day. It seems like it was at least ahundred times, though in reality it must havebeen far less. it really doesn’t matter how manytimes I saw it, because that first time was morethan enough to forever sear the image in mymind.

As I watched the coverage over the next sixor seven hours, I remember hoping and prayingthat the astronauts somehow managed to survivethe explosion. At the same time, another part ofme already had come to grips with the coldreality that none of them could have survived.

It took some time, but the launches resumed.I’m glad they weren’t brought to a halt. That thelast thing any of the Challenger astronautswould have wanted. It’s also the last thing thatthe Columbia astronauts would have wantedafter their shuttle broke up on re-entry a fewyears ago. Space exploration is, and willprobably always be, a dangerous prospect. Wecan minimize the danger as much as possible,but we will never be able to completelyeliminate it. But just because the danger existsdoesn’t mean that we shouldn’t go forward.

It was Tsiolkovsky who said (and I hope I’mnot mangling the quote too badly), “Earth is thecradle of mankind, but we cannot stay in thecradle forever.”

IN MEMORIAMMISSION 51-L

Gregory JarvisChrista McAuliffeRonald M cNairEllison OnizukaJudith ResnickRichard ScobeeMichael Smith

OV-099 Challenger

CATCH-23Review by Joseph T Major of

STARSHIP: MUTINYby Mike Resnick

(Pyr; 2005; ISBN 1-59102-337-8; $25.00)

Resnick writes of people in the boundarybetween settled and wild lands mostly becausethat’s where the most interesting conflict is, andwithout conflict, what you have is severalhundred pages of paper spoiled with some ink.

Wilson Cole, his protagonist, knows fromconflict. Some of it even against the enemy.Perhaps it’s a symptom of the doom that cameto humanity (this novel is, by the way, set in hisBirthright universe, which includes most of hiswritings) that Cole seems to be unable to get apatron in the high command. Understandab ly,a repeat hero (and a survivor to boot) is anembarrassment for the neatness of the files.Bureaucracies seem to prefer dead heroes, whocan’t embarrass them. (If Captain Oates hadgone back with Evans, Lashly, and Crean,Captain Scott’s reputation might have had alittle trouble, for example.)

If they can’t bust him out and the enemywon’t cooperate in bumping him off, then thebest thing to do is to dump him. ThereforeCommander Cole, a former CommandingOfficer no less, finds himself relegated toSecond Officer of the no longer so good shipTheodore Roosevelt, a junkheap relegated tobackwater patrolling. Understandably, a shiptabbed as a dumping ground for troublemakersis likely to be less than efficiently run.

He does his best, finding a few members ofthe crew who are wanting to save themselvesanyhow. However, weariness and sheer envy atthe top are a problem that can’t be handled.Then, worse yet, Cole finds that he is lacking inreserves when a resolution to a crisis turns out tohave further ramifications.

Now the one famous SF space warfarecommander would have turned the TheodoreRoosevelt into a top-notch ship, confronted anenemy ten times as strong, and eliminated them,losing 98+% of the crew (and possibly anextremity or organ of her own to boot) in theprocess. The other would have connived atsome dreadful loss of the crew and afterwardssat in his quarters whining about how he was soloathsome and evil that he should kill himselfbut he couldn’t because he would go to Hell forthat even though he was going to anyway. Coleis a little more realistic. In spite of a less-than-supportive commander, he takes on a crisissituation, where all the alternatives are bad ones,takes the least-bad one, and lives with theconsequences/.

Which doesn’t do him much good when hissuperiors are willing to abandon him to sufferall the consequences. However, hissubordinates have a more realistic view of thesituation, and since both they and their ship aresort of on the discard anyhow, they take abruptand not quite formal action, which will lead tomany interesting events in the Inner Frontierwhen this is . . . [To Be Continued]

UP FROM CONJURYReview by Joseph T Major ofDISAPPEARING NIGHTLY

by Laura Resnick(Luna; 2005; ISBN 0-373-80233-1; $13.95)

Esther is suffering for her art. Before thisbook ends, though, the reader will be wonderingwhich art (or Art) Esther is suffering for.

The filial part of the family is writing aboutthe daughter of Wilson Cole and her search for. . . no, of course not. (I got annoyed readingThe Knight and Knave of Swords (1988)because at the end Leiber introduced twocharacters, one presumably the son of Fafhrdand the other presumably the son of the GrayMouser, and it seemed to me that he was settingup something for his son Justin to write; butJustin didn’t, and in fact, according to IMDB,hasn’t done anything in the field since 1990).Laura is writing about a chorine who findsabruptly that there really is magic, and she’sgoing to be blamed for it unless she doessomething like right now, if not sooner.

The show Sorcerer! is supposed to be usingreal stage magic to have its heroine, Virtue(played by the obnoxious Golly Gee [there aretoo real stage names this silly] and understudiedby the desperate Esther Diamond, our narratrixand heroine) disappear. When she really doesdisappear through very real magic, that’s wherethe problem arises.

Or is it the strange letter that appears in herdressing room?

As you value your life, do not go into thecrystal cage.There is Evil among us.

— Disappearing Nightly, Page 15

Whoever this M.Z. who wrote the note is, hemust know something. And he does. But then,in the three hundred plus years since Dr.Maximillian Zadok (Oxon. 1678) took the Elixirof Life, he’s had time to learn a few things.Magic not being the least of them. (But not,sorry to say, how to make the Elixir of Life.)And yes, there is indeed magic in the air, andno, it’s not good magic.

The quest to find out who is making themagic disappearance acts have real magicdisappearances leads through some of thestrange and outré characters who are perfectlynormal in Noo Yawk, past a Magical Collegiumthat is hopelessly overstretched, into the arms ofDetective Connor Lopez (and you thought theCollegium was overstretched, you should see theNYPD!), and over under around and through agood bit of the sidewalks of New York. Theresult turns out to involve a most hopeless quest,but also a most hopeful one, and one at least willbe carried on when this fun romp is . . . [To BeContinued]

YOU BET YOUR LIFEReview by Joseph T Major of

THRAXAS AND THE D ANCE OF DEATHby “Martin Scott” [Martin Millar]

(Baen; 2002, 2005;ISBN 987-1-4165-0907-3; $22.00)

A Thraxas novelhttp://www.thraxas.com

http://www.martinmillar.com

W hen last we saw Thraxas, the finest


sorcerous investigator in the city of Turai (alsothe only sorcerous investigator in the city ofTurai), he was doing pretty well, having securedthe election of Liustaris, Mistress of the Sky, tothe leadership of the Sorcerers’ Guild andavoiding too hard a collision between Thraxasand the Sorcerers (2001, 2005, reviewed inAlexiad V. IV #5). Alas, his unerring ability tobet on the best-placed chariot in the race hasbrought him to penury again.

Add to that the untimely death of the bestpastry cook in Turai, the quarrel between Gurdthe landlord and his cook Tanrose, and Makri(don’t get me started on Makri) having to dealwith her own school problems, and you have theingredients of a prime headache. The sort ofheadache best solved by drinking fifteen pints orso of beer and then withdrawing upstairs to tokeup with a tharsis stick.

However, first off you have to be ab le toafford fifteen pints of beer, a tharsis stick, andthe back tab at the Avenging Axe. Thraxas willhave to find work (the curse of the drinkingclass). Fortunately work presents itself.

Indeed, before long, Thraxas is up to his earsin work. Some of it even renumerative. Did Imention that the Orcs might attack at anymoment, and that Lisutaris is responsible for theone remaining artifact, the green sorcerer’sstone, er jewel, that might defend Turai againstit? Except, oops, she lost it at the races.

Thraxas is hired to find it. And he does.Several times. Amid assassination threats, deadthieves, strange happenings and apparations,and Makri’s problems at school. Oh, now Ihave to get started on Makri. W hen you are aquarter-Elf, quarter-Orc, half-human with anAttitude, problems happen. Well, if it hadn’tbeen for her Attitude, even being the bestgladiator in the orc pits wouldn’t have beenenough for her to get out, much less kill herowner and his entire family. But there’sprejudice against people of her . . . er, sex. Andsome people are willing to use anything to keepher down. It takes some persuasion to keep herfrom solving the problem in the expectedmatter; but that hampers Thraxas’s other job.

There’s a lot to hamper Thraxas, includingdwa addicts, charges of cowardice, problemswith the other barmaid Dandelion (who talks todolphins), fires, Orcs, wizards, and the bettingpool on how many people will end up deadbefore it’s all over. Everything comes togetherat Lisutaris’s great masqerade, and Thraxasreally has problems, but obviously there’s moreabuse remaining to be heaped upon him whenthis saga is . . . [To Be Continued]

SHE TURNED ME INTO A NEWTReview by Joseph T Major of

CHARMED & DANGEROUSby Candace Havens

(Berkley; 2005;ISBN 0-425-20691-2; $14.00)

When Bronwyn, our narrator and hero,comments about finding herself in bed next to adead man, it’s not what you would expect in thefantasy genre (i.e., he’s not a vampire) muchless the mystery one (i.e., where it would be a

setup, as Maureen Johnson found in To SailBeyond the Sunset (1987; NHOL G.201)).

Susan Baugh, retired librarian and formerpresident of Louisville’s NOTA SF club, hasbeen telling me for the past year or two thatmost of the good new stuff in SF & F is comingfrom romance writing. Considering that whatpasses for fantasy in the SF line seems to bestuck in the theme of “in a world without genderdifferences, the poor little match girl fightsgender discrimination” I can see her point, but.

Harlequin Books has apparently finallyrecovered from the Laser Books debacle of theseventies. (This isn’t the time or the place totalk about that but let me tell you, it wassomething else!) Their new fantasy line iscalled Luna Books. I hadn’t had much luck withthem until I found Laura Resnick’s entry. Asone of those pre-modern fantasy heroes said, “Iwill drink any wine once,” so, with it was to behoped more sense than Jurgen, I tried this out.

Bronwyn is a witch. She lives in the plainsof Texas (apparently a bit away from CrossPlains) but commutes, Texas Style. Her job,you see, is providing magical security for VIPs;currently the British Prime Minister (no noyou’re supposed to bring in the Tories, theTories!) and a sheik from Dubai. Betweenspecial tasks, she works at the local hosp ital,where among other things she is working on amagical potion to counteract Alzheimer’sDisease.

If this sounds a bit fantastic (i.e., likewondering how it was that everything was thesame in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004)when a magic king had been occupying thenorth country for three hundred years), well, it’sbased in a very homey sort of background; asmall town where people have time and space toknow each other.

This is however neither melodramatic normundane, for in the course of her duties,Bronwyn learns a good bit about love, life,friendship, responsibility, and family. It’s anovel actually about something, that is, for allthat there is International Adventure andRomantic Passion. That just makes it fun.

LIGHTNING IN THE NIGHTReview by Joseph T Major of

THE WO RLD HITLER NEVER MADE:Alternate H istory and the Memory of Nazism

by Gavriel D . Rosenfeld(Cambridge U niversity Press; 2005;

ISBN 0-521-84506-0; $30.00)

From the Top 59 M istakes Made byAdolf Hitler:

1. Land War in Asia 9. Chose “Deutschland Über Alles”

over “Let’s All Be There” as partyslogan

10. Lost the Ark to Indiana Jones12. Referring to Stalin as “that old

Georgian fat back”14. Free beer in munitions plants25. Always got Churchill out of bed for

conference calls30. Strong fondness for sauerkraut and

beans made General Staff avoid himconstantly

40. Spent jail time planning how toconquer the world instead of his ownescape.

47. Used to make prank calls to FDRasking if he had “Prince Albert in acan”

49. Got drunk on schnapps andsuggested Tojo attack the U.S.saying, “The U.S. only has twentytimes your industrial power, what areyou, a wimp?”

56. Alienated Chamberlain at Munich bysticking an “Invade me” sign on hisback

— Compiled by Brad Templeton

I once opined that the ultimate alternate-history novel would be Die Gewehre desSüdens, the story of how a band of time-traveling Nazis help the Confederacy win theWar Between the States, by providing them withMP-44s, so that the future Nazi Germany wouldhave an ally in their coming war. ProfessorRosenfeld doesn’t quite cover the full topic; hedoes discuss the one popular AH topic, that of adifferent World War Two. Will somedaysomeone do a book on the topic of “The WorldGeneral Lee Never Made”?

Nazi imagery is today’s politicalpornography; with historical knowledge beingso stunted and blunted, about the only thingmost people know in that line is “Nazis = Bad”.Of those who do know something about thehistory, all too many of them adhere tounrealistic images of Nazi Germany.

There are three main foci of alternatehistories of this topic; the U.S., the U.K. — andGermany itself. You’d think the authorities inthat last country would be worried about thepopularity of that topic among certain people,and that certain people would take to it.

Rosenfeld identifies several trends. One is“normalization”, recognizing the N azi era as justanother historical event. Another is that ofcollaboration; British writers for examplepiercing the legend of the united hostile stanceagainst Nazism.

The alternates he covers list everything fromthe Super-Führer (Gloder of Stephen Fry’sChanging History (1996), a book that takeshundreds of pages to say what L. Sprague deCamp said in his story “Aristotle and the Gun”(1958)) all the way down to Hitler hunted(Philippe van Rjndt’s The Trial of Adolf Hitler(1978))). He searches in popular culture, too,listing the Hitlerian satires put forward by P. J.O’Rourke when he was editor of NationalLampoon . (And deriding them; as befits anacademic milieu, missing the point.)

He lists what I think is the best portrayal ofa Nazis-victorious world , Otto B asil’s Wenn dasder Führer wüßte [“If Only the Führer Knew”,tranlated into English as The Twilight Men](1966), with its portrayal of the irrational Naziworld, obsessed with pseudo-science, laden withAryan kitsch, splintered amid competingNational Socialist sects, each the truest ofFührertreu. And of course utterly proud of


having removed the threat of World Jewry. Thisis far truer to the Nazi theme than the super-scientific Reich of Brad Linaweaver’s Moon ofIce (1988) or the angst-ridden “Ach Mein Gott,we killed the Jews!” discovery of RobertHarris’s Fatherland (1992). No matter howimplausible the point of divergence, though.

There are some issues. Rosenfeld neverquite seems to get to the problem of the“demonization”, or how throwing aroundcomparisons to Hitler does far more tonormalize and indeed trivialize the Nazi erathan, say The Iron Dream.

Some of the more technical historians findthe fantasizing of these works hard to take.Whether it be the miraculous removal of navalopposition and logistic difficulties found in suchworks as Kenneth Macksey’s Invasion (1980) orthe curious why not implicit in the non-ascension of Gloder of Changing History , thereare issues. Indeed, the ultimate example of thisis Gary Gygax’s Victorious German Arms(1973), where the Germans make all the rightdecisions, and the Allies do all the wrong things.(Stirling is not original.)

“The World Hitler Never Made” has beenused in a variety of ways, from power-wish-fulfillment to vengeance on enemies. Thosewho actually wish to analyze the circumstancesand postulate the results, like David Downing inThe Moscow Option (1978) [where the Germansand Japanese get whole bunches of breaks andstill lose], or Cecil Lewis Troughton “C. S.Forrester” Smith in “If Hitler Had InvadedEngland” (1960) [where the Germans get thepossible breaks and not the impossible ones, andstill lose], don’t have the cachet and don’t getnoticed. They don’t have the thrill of Nazism,it’s not, like, kewl to have the grody old Allies,like, win.

From the Top 59 Mistakes Made byAdolf Hitler:

54. Being born

SPY/COUNTERSPYReview by Joseph T Major of

THE GUY LIDDELL DIARIES, Volume I 1939-1942Edited by Nigel West

(Routledge; 2005; ISBN 0-415-35213-4; $40.00)

http://www.guyliddelldiaries.comhttp://www.nigelwest.com

Pentimento Paradigm. Pentimentois when images from an old paintingseep through and become visible in anewer picture that has been painted overthe old. The Pentimento Paradigm iswhen what we know about a filmmakeror actor seeps into our perception of hisfilm work. Example: Any old RockHudson movie, now that his private lifeis no longer private. Being aware of thereality behind the fiction may add to thecomplexity of the drama (Taylor andBurton in Who’s Afraid o f Virginia

Woolf?) or distract from its intentions(Woody and Mia in Husbands andWives).

MERWEN GROTE, St. Louis— Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie G lossary, Pages

159-150

This sort of insight is, of course, hardlylimited to movies. For example:

24 September

I dined with Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess atthe Reform Club. . . — The Guy Liddell Diaries, Volume I, Page 98

Reading in this diary the number of timeswhen Liddell says he called Kim Philby aboutsome matter only adds to that pentimento.

Guy Liddell was director of B Division ofthe Security Service, MI-5, during the SecondWorld War. In this position, he oversaw muchof the counter-espionage effort of the war. Inparticular, his field of authority included themanaging of the Double-Cross Agents, thatexotic and devious band of men and womenwho so thoroughly hoaxed the Nazis.

As with any person involved in that effort,he was branded the Fourth (or Fifth or perhapseven Sixth or more . . ) Man, the unknownSoviet mole in the British intelligence services.Donald McCormick (who wrote under the nameof “Richard Deacon”, thoroughly bewilderingfans of The Dick Van Dyke Show, whowondered why the actor who played AlanBrady’s pompous putz of a brother-in-lawshould dabble in spy journalism), for example,speculated in The Greatest Treason (1989) thatsuch had been the case, and he was joined byJohn Costello in Mask of Treachery (1988;West erroneously calls the book Mask ofDeception). Later on, in his analytical history ofthe Soviet manipulation of Western publicopinion, Double Lives (1994, 1995, 2004),Stephen Koch accuses Liddell of a number ofcrimes. He cites in particular the case of theplaywright Em Jo Basshe, who was accused ofbeing a Soviet agent, based on information fromMI-5, at the time when Bassche was apparentlyin the process of breaking with the Soviets(Double Lives, Pages 246-249).

Liddell had an unexpected defender,however. Peter Wright, one of the arch mole-hunters and mole-publicists, co-author of TheirTrade Is Treach ery (1981, uncred itedcollaboration with Chapman Pincher) and thenotorious work Spycatcher (1987; with PaulGreengrass), said that anyone who had readLiddell’s diaries could not possibly suspect himof having betrayed his country. (West modestlyglosses over his own Mole Hunt (1987) in whichhe also exculpates Liddell, but then he had inthat book accused Graham Mitchell, who wascleared by the information provided by OlegGordievsky)

No one outside the service could have hadthat chance. Until now.

What surprises one about the diaries is themundaneness of it all, in a sense. This isn’t thevast knows-all controls-all Intelligence Agencyof thrillers and conspiracies. What Liddell and

his colleagues (well except for the Communistmoles) are doing is trying to handle a d ifficultand desperate situation as best they can,gradually striving through to a sort of success.

Where the surprises are is in theconfirmations. Ever since J. C. Mastermanrevealed the German questionnaire with all thequestions about Pearl Harbor (The Double-Cross System (1972)) and its recepient AgentTRICY CLE , Dusko Popov, popped his mouth offabout it (Spy/Counterspy (1974)), conspiracistsand theorists have been slamming each otherover the head about whether or not it was true,or just a big fat Ragusan lie. Yet, Liddell said,ruefully, “TRICY CLE’s questionnaire is now inour possession. It shows quite clearly that inAugust last the Germans were very anxious toget as full particulars as possible about PearlHarbor.” [Page 202, entry for 17 December1941]

So much of the entries refer to internalmatters. The attack on Pearl Harbor, let alonethe change of government, are hardlymentioned. One thinks of Charles Stross’s TheAtrocity Archives (2004) where the heroic BobHoward, having saved the world, has to explainwhy he worked overtime without having firstfilled out a request slip

What Liddell does is note the interaction,sometimes even p ositive, o f differentorganizations with different aims. So much ofthis is meetings with other people ingovernment; but in those interagency sit-downs,one finds things such as about “Felix Cowgillcame to see me about the Lisbon agent Pujol,”[Page 238, entry for 26 March 1942], whichbegins the tale of Juan Pujol Garcia, AgentGARBO, the spy who kept the German Armyaway from Normandy (for which see West’sown GARBO (1985)).

Nigel West has been doing a yeoman shareof work in bringing to public light first thepeople and now the documents that explain thereal story of the secret war of World War Two.It was a lo t different than fiction, and far moreinteresting and complicated.

The referencing and indexing are not quiteup to what they could be. For example, JuanPujol Garcia is not cross-referenced with hiscode names.

But then, this isn’t really an introductorywork. The more we know, the more weunderstand, and the more silliness is refuted. Orought to be.


CVLTVRE MADE STVPIDReview by Joseph T Major of

THE GRIZZLY MAZE:Timothy Treadwell’s Fatal Obsession with

Alaskan Bearsby Nick Jans

(Dutton; 2005; ISBN 0-525-94886-4; $24.95)

Readers of Tom Weller’s inimitable CvltvreMade Stvpid (1987), the sequel to the Hugo-winning Science Made Stupid: How toDiscomprehend the World Around Us (1985),will remember the famous Shakespearian stagedirection, “They are eaten by a bear”.

The fate of the late Timothy Treadwell, heroof the documentary Grizzly Man , sometimesinspires the application of a less comical sciencefictional quotation: “Just think of it as evolutionin action.” Yet he wanted it that way. This isnot a sympathetic figure of speech; in a letter toa bear biologist who was president of theInternational Bear association, Timothy said thathe “would be honored to end up as grizzly shit.”[Page 42] If he didn’t, it was because moreresponsible game wardens killed the bear thatate him while it was still digesting.

Treadwell — actually his birth name was“Timothy Dexter”, but he preferred Treadwell— had reinvented himself in other ways. Hehad begun as one of those middle-class kids whotakes to drugs because life is like so bor-ing.But then, he found himself.

Timothy was a likeable person, affable, thesort of man who works his way into people’sgood graces and then departs with most of theirassets. He soon found his metier, though, withthe bears of Alaska. He would work inCalifornia during the winter, then head northand settle down with the bears.

As his reputation as a bear whisperer grew,he became known as a lecturer. He would gofrom school to party to grove, lecturing on howhis friends the bears were just big gentle folks infur outfits being persecuted by those stupidredneck hunters.

As I’ve said, he was attractive to women andvice versa. Amie Hugenard was a surgicalphysician’s assistant with a master’s degree inbiology — hardly your flutterbrained type. Shewas also interested in animals, with a strongmystical streak, so a bear whisperer would bejust her sort of man.

On October 5, 2003, Amie was withTimothy in his place, so to speak, the GrizzlyMaze of Katmai National Park in Alaska. Hewas, as usual, close to the bears. Shortlythereafter, one got fatally close.

Most painfully of all, when he beganshouting for help, Amie turned on the videocamera inside their sleeping tent and made arecording of the sounds of his death. Afterwhich a bear got her.

Jans works at presenting an even-handedpicture of the man’s life. To do so, though, hehad to interview biologists who worked withbears and rangers who dealt with bears.Including the ones who, for example, shot thebear at Timothy’s last camp that had a stomachfull of human flesh. The biologists were even

less approving; Timothy took a misleading andmisguided approach to dealing with bears, theythought, a dangerous one that would harmothers, both bear and human. The biologist Jansquotes describes his presentation as toodisorganized to be worth consideringscientifically. And did I mention that he kept oncalling them “grizzly bears” when the Katmaipopulation of bears is more properly calledbrown bears?

There is a lamentable human tendency toassume that nature is inherently good andincapab le of harm. I have stood beside awoman who beckoned to John Henry, thefamously aggressive Thoroughbred racingsuper-champion at the Kentucky Horse Park,asking him to come out of the stall to her (Imoved away). Projecting our beliefs on otherpeople can be problematic; doing so on animalscan sometimes be even worse.

A CASE OF IDENTITYReview by Joseph T Major of Ann Rule’s

WORTH MORE DEADand Other True Cases (Pocket Books; 2005;

ISBN 0-7434-4874-X; $7.99)“Ann Rule’s True Crime Files #10"

http://www.annrules.com

I smiled and shook my head. “I canquite understand your thinking so.” Isaid. “Of course, in your position ofunofficial adviser and helper toeverybody who is absolutely puzzled,throughout three continents, you arebrought in contact with all that is strangeand bizarre. But here” — I picked upthe morning paper from the ground —“let us put it to a practical test. Here isthe first heading upon which I come. ‘Ahusband’s cruelty to his wife.’ There ishalf a column of print, but I knowwithout reading it that it is all perfectlyfamiliar to me. There is. of course, theother woman, the drink, the push, theblow, the bruise, the sympathetic sisteror landlady. The crudest of writerscould invent nothing more crude.”

“Indeed, your example is anunfortunate one for your argument,” saidHolmes, taking the paper and glancinghis eye down it. “This is the Dundasseparation case, and, as it happens, I wasengaged in clearing up some small pointsin connection with it. The husband wasa teetotaler, there was no other woman,and the conduct complained of was thathe had drifted into the habit of windingup every meal by taking out his falseteeth and hurling them at his wife,which, you will allow, is not an actionlikely to occur to the imagination of theaverage story-teller. Take a pinch ofsnuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that Ihave scored over you in your example.”

— “A Case of Identity”

Admittedly, Holmes also said that “There isa strong family resemblance about misdeeds,

and if you have all the details of a thousand atyour finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravelthe thousand and first.” (A Study in Scarlet)

Thus, the typical “worth more dead” casewould have the spouse taking out uncommonlylarge insurance policies and then the deceasedwould perish during the grace period (the thirtydays after the premium was due and unpaid), thepreciptious demand for a death certificate, therushed burial, the questionable grief, the rapidrelocation . . . but these are the “thousand andfirst” cases, and if there is nothing so eccentrichere as damaging a perfectly good se t of falseteeth by throwing them across the dining table,there are enough unique features of thesemurders to make them out of the ordinary.

Roland Pitre was, one would think, boundfor success, combining good intelligence withthe firm self-discipline that service in theMarines will engender. And yet, because hethought himself so superior, and that not one buttwo Significant Others were Worth More Deadthan alive to him, he is in prison.

The first S.O. happened to be someoneelse’s husband, the husband of a sometimelover. When he died at the hands of an intruder,one who had thoughtfully locked the children inthe closet, the police began to wonder. It turnedout that the dead man’s wife had been having anaffair with Roland, and one of his friends hadbeen the killer.

Then, when he got out of prison (a very shortterm, too) for that, he walked into the arms ofyet another prisoner groupie. They got married.A while later, she disappeared.

After that his family situation became evenmore confusing. Roland had had a briefmarriage, to a woman who already had children.The marriage broke up, and after breaking upher marriage he took up with yet another woman— who, it seemed, was willing at first to helpRoland kidnap his last wife’s son. That one theygot him on.

Along about 2004 , after he had done a fewyears for that, the police did some DNA testingon the body of the late wife, to learn that he wasresponsible. Now if he should live so long, hewill be in prison well into this century.

The sort of man who is superficiallycharming and secretly self-centered is all toocommon. Ted Bundy was merely the mostnotorious, and the most energetic of late. By thetime one finds out that the latest love is aRoland Pitre, or a Ted Bundy, it may be too late.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer,displayed certain habits, or pathologies, in hisdepradations. For example, he took his victims’bodies to selected places. Before Ridgway,another killer made his selected victim have thatfeeling that “It’s Really Weird Looking At M yOwn Grave” . In 1979 , the body of a youngwoman was found; a police search turned up heridentity. Shortly thereafter, one young womanreported having been dragged off the street andraped, having been tied up like the dead womanhad been, and talked herself out of furtherabuse. Then a second escaped after similartreatment. The first rape victim identified thespot where she had been taken; the same placewhere the dead woman’s body had been found.


The rapist-murderer was caught and convictedbefore he got started on a really serious spree.

Teresa had had an unstable life, what withbeing in foster care, four marriages, and twochildren, which may have been why sheremained emotionally a self-centered teen. Shefinally became an Old Man’s Darling, as themistress of Denver automobile dealer JustynRosen. But Rosen wouldn’t give up his wife,and when he told Teresa they had to split up,she became furious and self-pitying. So furiousthat she shot and killed Rosen, being killedherself by two policemen in a shootout.

What made her life so sad was that she nevergrew beyond her childhood. She looked for anideal male image, someone who would stay withher, and made herself so hard to live with that inthe end each lover would leave her. She waspitiable, and yet dangerous.

Debra Sweiger was a nurse, and the creatorof a contract nursing service. Larry Sturholmwas a popular Seattle TV personality and theauthor of a book on a famous Washington trainrobbery (edited by Ann Rule, before she did herown book). Bill Pawlyk was a Boeing executiveand a Naval Reserve officer. The problem wasthat Debra dated both of them. Bill wanted tocommit; Debra didn’t. One day he snapped andstabbed Debra and his rival, Larry (who wasmarried to someone else, making things worse).Then he tried to cut his own wrists. Thus givingthe police the creepy experience of seeing thedead man in the bathtub sit up.

There are no clear answers. W hy shouldpeople so well off come apart like that? Suchgood lives and it was All For Nothing.

Holmes might be more familiar with “Ahusband’s cruelty to his wife” in the final case;while there was no drink, no push, no blow, nobruise, Carolyn Durall was A DesperateHousewife entrapped by a controlling husband.He was, as were so many of the people in thisbook, a self-centered and demanding person.Carolyn found release in organization, which ledto work, which led to the prospects of escape.But before she could file for a divorce, shedisappeared.

Her husband believed , seemingly, that hewas proof against implication. Everythingleaves traces, though, from blood in the house torecoverable computer files with bits ofinformation on how to carry out a killing. Inspite of his story that he was kidnapped by thereal killers, he was convicted. Then the juryfound out that he had led the police to her body.

What people are worth to others varies.Sometimes it is crude money, sometimes it’s athrill, sometimes it’s freedom, sometimes it’s anobstacle to be removed. The imagination of theaverage story-teller is far less expansive thanreality, for stories have to make sense and havean ending.

SCOTT FREEReview by Joseph T Major of

AMERICAN TABOO:A Murder In the Peace Corps

by Phillip Weiss(HarperCollins; 2004;

ISBN 0-06-009686-1; $25.95)

William Gaylin’s The Killing of BonnieGarland (1982) is a memorial to the caringtheraupeutic society. In 1977, two Yalestudents had to deal with a breakup. BonnieGarland wanted to see other guys. HerSignificant Other, Richard Herrin couldn’t livewith that, so he killed her with a hammer.

It’s not what you do, it’s who you know.Thanks to a defense fund raised by fellowYalies, keen psychiatric testimony, and publiccourtroom support and adoration by a conventfull of nuns, Richard was found guilty only ofmanslaughter. He got out of prison in 1995.

The year before that murder, another couplehad a similar encounter. Dennis Priven waseven more fortunate; Deborah Gardner even lessso. American Taboo is the story of a crime thatwas remade so as no t to embarrass the Corps.

The Peace Corps is one of those Kennedy-era creations that is not what it promised to bebut of some value anyhow. It traces its roots toThe Ugly American (1958); like the titlecharacter, the Peace Corps volunteers wouldwork among the common people, sharing theirordinary lives, without diplomatic privileges.

At the end of 1975, Deborah Ann Gardner,a pretty American, went out to the Kingdom ofTonga to teach biology. Already there wasDennis Priven, a math and physics teacher.

The volunteers socialized with each other,but then Tongans have a easygoing nature andthey tried to understand these crazy foreigners.If you want to know where the Star Trek: TheNext Generation people got that one script ideaabout “the Enterprise visits a planet where sometrivial act incurs the death penalty” — one ofthose script ideas thay had to shoot all of whenthe writers’ strike left them with no new scriptsand all the on-spec ones — the Polynesian tabusystem gives one an idea.

Deborah got along well; the Tongans likedher, her fellow Peace Corps volunteers thoughtshe was one of the bunch, and she marked thegood and bad of it all.

Then, on October 14, 1976, she was stabbedto death. Dennis Priven was arrested before toolong and that was when the trouble began.

The Peace Corps Administrator for the areawas, not surprisingly, a political appointee. Shewanted to cover up the mess. (Weiss impliesthat it was because she was a self-centered ex-model, but I can’t imagine a academicthirdworldie being any less defensive of TheCorps.) She brought in a psychiatric expertwitness to exp lain that Dennis really hadn’tknown what he was doing. After all, he had saidthat she was evil and deserved to die and hereally really had been intending to kill himselfafterwards but they caught him too soon.

The Tongans didn’t really feel up to it.There hadn’t been a murder trial there in years,and no one really wanted to be responsible forhaving a man hanged. All this made it easy toacquit the defendant.

So Dennis was returned to the United States— where he walked. He’d already beenacquitted, see?

The theraputic society is hard on the

survivors of murder victims; the murderer isalive, he gets understanding and support, whilethe surviviors are shunned as primitivevengeance-seekers. Accordingly, BonnieGarland’s parents worked on building victimsupport groups. Another prominent survivor,Dominick Dunne, whose daughter Dominiquehad the same fate as Bonnie and Deborah, wroteabout it (Justice : Crim e, Trials, andPunishm ents (2001)), and managed to put themurderer in fear. (Dominick’s ex-wife,Dominique’s mother, passed out flyers atrestaurants where her daughter’s killer workedreminding patrons of that fact.) DeborahGardner’s family didn’t have these securities.

Any organization puts the survival of theorganization higher in priority than theperformance of its ostensible task. The scandalof one Peace Corps volunteer killing anothermight have destroyed the Peace Corps; far betterto get over it and go on.

Deborah Gardner’s family didn’t have thatoption. Weiss describes his research ininterleaved chapters. Almost the first thingDeborah’s mother said to him was, “I justwanted to make sure you’re not Dennis.”

No, none of us are Dennis, none of us areRichard Herrin, none of us are John Sweeney[Dominique Dunne’s murderer]. They are allour burden and our fear.

WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICEReview by Joseph T Major of

BATTLE FOR EUROPE:How the Duke of Marlborough

Masterminded the Defeat of the French atBlenheim

by Charles Spencer[the Right Honourable Charles Edward

Maurice Spencer, Earl Spencer](John Wiley & Sons; 2004;

ISBN 0-471-71996-X; $30.00)

SUN TZU said:

15. If a general who heeds mystrategy is employed he is certainto win. Retain him! When onewho refuses to listen to mystrategy is employed, he iscertain to be defeated. Dismisshim!

16. Having paid heed to theadvantages of my plans, thegeneral must create situationswhich will contribute to theiraccomplishment. By “situations”I mean that he should actexpediently in accordance withwhat is advantageous and socontrol the balance.

17. All warfare is based ondeception.

18. Therefore, when capable, feigni n c a p a c i t y ; w h e n a ct i v e ,inactivity.

19. When near, make it appear youare far away; when far away, thatyou are near.

20. Offer the enemy a bait to lure


him; feign disorder and strikehim.

21. When he concentrates, prepareagainst him; where he is strong,avoid him.

— Ping Fa (The Art of War), Book One“Estimates”

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, hadan inimitable way of getting books of praisewritten about himself. The biography by hiseven greater descendant Winston S. Churchill isnow not alone. The “S.” stands for “Spencer”,you see, and the heir of the junior line ofMarlborough’s daughter and heiress AnneChurchill Spencer, Countess of Sunderland, hasnow joined his illustrious relative in writing oftheir glorious ancestor. However, I don’t thinkeither of them points out how Marlboroughfollowed the recommendations of Sun Tzu.

Spencer begins with a description of thegeneral state of Europe and in particular France.It is somewhat disconcerting to learn the degreeto which France was militarized a centurybefore the levee en masse.

Louis XIV was what Sun Tzu called a“Hegemonic King”, and a remarkably well-served one. He had praise for a number ofpeople, even those among his allies. For awhile, England was in those ranks; and heappreciated one Ensign John Churchill. Theycall this irony. (Especially after the bit thatDumas left out of the Three Musketeers booksabout how d’Artagnan and Churchill saved thelife of the Duke of M onmouth. Really.) But theworld shifted and England found itself fightingthe Hegemonic State, France.

Internal politics were as problematic asexternal ones, and Spencer lists severalproblems. One was his ancestor’s well-knownavarice. The first Sir Winston Churchill, theDuke’s father, had been fined very heavily forbacking the Cavaliers, and his son never quitegot over the feeling that a few thousand sparepounds in the vaults was always a good idea.

Another was his friends. In a counter-zeitgeist attitude, Marlborough married for love,to the beautiful Sarah Jenyns (or “Jennings”),and remained faithful. (Spencer could use inthis case the example of the second thing theDuke did after getting back to England, home,and Sarah after one campaign; he took off hisboots. Really.) And Sarah had a friend in animportant place: the Palace. This wouldn’t bethe last connection between the royal family andthe Churchills, of course.

A third was international relations. Thetraditional English attitude to such war was tostitch together a coalition, and this was noexception. On the negative side, there were theDutch Field Deputies, who combined ignorancewith forwardness. (The most infamous casebeing that of Field Deputy Slagenberg, who keptMarlborough from winning the battle ofWaterloo. Really.)

Not all the wogs were quite so obnoxious.Indeed, one of the best allies had been born,raised, and educated in France. However, Louishad decided that his cousin Eugene de Savoy-Carignan was a natural-born abbé, and ridiculed

his military ambitions. Prince Eugene gave himconsiderable arguments to the contrary, andmuch opportunity to regret the insults.

SUN TZU said:

6. That you may march a thousandli without wearying yourself isbecause you travel where there isno enemy.

7. To be certain to take what youattack is to attack a place theenemy does not protect. To becertain to hold what you defendis to defend a place the enemydoes not attack.

8. Therefore, against those skilledin attack, an enemy does notknow where to defend; againstthe experts in defence, the enemydoes not know where to attack.

9. Subtle and insubstantial, theexpert leaves no trace; divinelymysterious, he is inaudible. Thushe is master of his enemy’s fate.

10. He whose advance is irresistibleplunges into his en emy’spositions; he who in withdrawalcannot be pursued moves soswiftly that he cannot beovertaken.

11. When I wish to give battle, myenemy, even though protected byhigh walls and deep moats,cannot help but engage me, for Iattack a position he mustsuccour.

12. When I wish to avoid battle, Imay defend myself simply bydrawing a line on the ground; theenemy will be unable to attackme because I divert him fromgoing where he wishes.

— Ping Fa (The Art of War), Book Six“Weaknesses and Strengths”

In the march down the Rhine, which was alot more than 500 kilometers (1000 li),Marlborough made good use of his enemies’weaknesses and his strengths. To begin with, hehad to deceive his own allies the Dutch intobelieving that that year’s campaign would bealong the Moselle.

That also helped confuse the French, whichwas convenient. Louis massed his troops there,reducing the reinforcements intended for Tallardin Bavaria.

Then there was the subordinate problem.Not the Dutch this time, but the Imperialsubordinate, Prince Louis of Baden. A generalso useless that he’s worth giving up tenthousand troops to get rid of is one thing, butbeing able to get rid of him diplomatically isquite another

But then, in spite of everything, the Alliesmet the Franco-Bavarians in Bavaria, at the littletown of Höchstadt. The Bavarians had thehome team advantage, their foe was deep intohostile territory. They had the backing ofMarshal Tallard and behind him King Louis, the

French, the premier military power of Europe,putting the enemy in a desperate position. Howcould they lose?

SUN TZU said:

47. To assemble the army and throwit into a desperate position is thebusiness of the general.

48. He leads the army deep intohostile territory and therereleases the trigger.

— Ping Fa (The Art of War), Book Eleven“The Nine Varieties of Ground”

Well, they did. Marlborough was incommand of the battle from the beginning, byhis brilliant maneuvers and effort making theFrench and Bavarians do not what they neededto do but what he needed them to do. The resultwas a stunning victory that knocked Bavaria outof the war completely.

Spencer has had to assume the readerdoesn’t necessarily know what’s what; hedescribes in detail many of the most elementaryitems. This book is not, therefore, primarily forthe expert. Rather, its primary appeal is to thereader who wants to know why the palace whereWinston Churchill chose to be born and tomarry was named after a small town inGermany. How did Marlborough fight?

SUN TZU said:

13. When campaigning, be swift asthe wind; in leisurely march,majestic as the forest; in raidingand plundering, like fire; instanding, firm as the mountains.

— Ping Fa (The Art of War), Book Seven“Maneuver”

MARCONIby Joe

It all started that day we went to see Robley,my WWI vet stepcousin. Robley was not in.However, it was Yard Sale Day in hisneighborhood and we found enough to entertainourselves. Including one guy who was selling aLinksys wireless router for $20.

Time passed. Gradually, as we go t used tothe DSL connection, it became a better andbetter idea to have a local wireless network. Itried to get the router set up but it just didn’tseem to go. Finally, in January, Grant gotenough free time to help me.

The computer turned out to have had someinteresting unanticipated disconnections. Thisinvolved tipping the computer over more thanonce to get at the ports in back,

Once we got the network set up (it turns outthat there’s another one in the area) we began toconfigure my laptop computer. Which includeddownloading antivirus software, since thus farthe laptop had not been hit by viruses but . . .Grant recommends Grisoft, a Czech firm thatprovides free anti-virus software:

http://www.grisoft.com/


Lisa’s computer turned out to have somefunny problems in recognizing its connectionhardware. The solution to that would be to re-install Windows 98®©™K Bill Gates is GOD! butthere was one little problem. We couldn’t findthe CD. Therefore, Grant had to go prepare anew one, which with one thing and another tookhim until Wednesday night.

The next Sunday Grant came again. I hadre-installed the operating system, and with greatlabor we managed to install the new drive.Which after all our labor (the switch to pop adisk from the drive was too short on the newdrive) still didn’t work!

In other connections, the computer nowrecognized the Ethernet board which we hadbeen using for some time. However, thewireless connection was still a mystery. NewBIOS will be in order, looks like.

On Monday I bought a new laptop. The twolaptops recognize the wireless network just fine.

THE ANNUAL VACCINATION

Yesterday, Saturday, January 14, we tookfour of the cats in for their yearly shots. Thisduty cannot be evaded, since Animal Controlknows where all responsible pet owners live andhow many animals they claim responsibility for.This time it was comparatively painless.

We lured two of the cats, Elfling andGemellus, in by the simple expedient of leavingthe bedroom door open. The other two Joesnared and brought upstairs. I then shovedC’Mell and Delenn into the bathroom as theyare generally the worst about going into theircages. Joe came upstairs and we secured Elflingand Gemellus in their cages.

Then I knelt down by the bathroom door.Joe took the backup spot behind me and verycautiously I opened the bathroom door. Delennducked through but was unable to evade fourhands. We shoved her into the cage quicklybefore she had a chance to scratch us badlytrying to escape. C’Mell we treated likewise.At this point Delenn began making distress callswhich we managed to ignore .

We lugged the cages downstairs, securedthem in the car and away we went. Snow beganto fall as Joe started the car. We shrugged andhoped it would deter others from getting to thevet as early as we were. We arrived at the vetand found that indeed there were still manyempty parking spots. We were able to leave lessthan two hours later with our animals.

— Lisa

What Lisa fails to mention was thatwhen we entered the bathroom in searchof C’Mell she was nowhere to be found.Unless she could teleport we were sunk.We looked in all the cupboards, withoutresult. However, a second look under thesink revealed that she had pulled out thelower drawer and was hiding behind it.She was unwillingly extracted andconfined.

We arrived at the vet’s just beforeseven in the morning. I haven’t driven atseven in the morning on Saturdays since

I gave up the paper route.The vet’s treatment room had a

poster of a ferret. Evidently they aregetting more popular as pets.

— Joe

What Shall We Do With the Skullof Nicephoros the First?

(A.D. 1014)

So they’ve finally recovered it,after two centuries,the infamous cup made out of the skullof Nicephoros the First,from which the inhuman Bulgarsforced our ambassadors to drink,to the everlasting shame of our Empire.

He wasn’t a bad ruler,this Nicephoros.He greatly improved the conditionof the state, especially finances,and even won a victory in the field,before being suckeredinto chasing the enemydeep into the mountains,where, amid sunless ravines,they made short work of him.

Now our glorious Basilhas utterly crushed the Bulgarian army,blinding the survivors,sparing only one eye of one man in a hundred,so he can lead the other ninety-nine home.They say that when the Bulgar king Samuelsaw his soldiers returned to him thus,he went mad and died.

So Nicephoros is avenged.Should his skull then be laid to rest,with solemn prayer and ceremony?But, look — that gold plating is expensive,and, barbaric though it is, the workmanship is exquisite.The gems dazzle my eyes!To the treasury, then.Nicephoros was a treasury officialbefore he was emperor.He’ll understand.

— D arrell Schweitzer

A FISTFUL OF SKYby Nina Kiriki Hoffman (2002; Ace; $23.95 hc)

Book Review by E. B. Frohvet

Gypsum LaZelle had come to admit herselfthe untalented child of a magical family. Thusshe ignored the teaching figuring she -would notneed it. At twenty, far past the usual age oftransition, she burned with fever and hadreluctantly to accept that she was gifted with theunkind power of curses. Gyp’s transitionpromised to be among the more interesting infamily lore, with help from Great-Uncle Tobias,her brother Flint (who could channel her cursesinto making brownies), and Aunt Hermina’scomputer, which helpfully re-programmedGypsum’s mind. For once, Gyp could compete

on equal terms with her family. The questionwas: did she want to?

All of Hoffman’s writing is about theintersection of people and magic, and the oftenunplanned consequences thereof. The effect isless narrative plotting, more stream ofconsciousness; if Jack Kerouac had writtenurban fantasy it might have come out somethinglike this. The æproblem I have is that I keepexpecting Hoffman’s stories to have a point, abeginning, an end. Instead they have a sort oforganic flow, a random wandering, with noapparent conclusion or destination in mind. Thismight even be, TO BE CONTINUED? Withthis author it’s hard to tell.

SUMMERLANDby Michael Chabon

(2002; Hyperion Books for Children;$22.95 hc)

Book Review by E. B. Frohvet

Summerland is the westernmost end of ClamIsland, Washington, where it never rains; andwhere, from time immemorial (or at least 1883)the Clam Islanders have played baseball.Eleven-year-old Ethan Feld is distinguished asthe worst ballplayer in the history of the island.Yet it is Ethan who is recruited by the werefoxCutbelly, to be the hero of another world, wherethe Little People (among other activities) alsoplay baseball.

This is a very specialized book, and frankly,one that seems to lack a natural audience. It’stoo nostalgic for the pre-teen boys who are itsostensible target audience, and who probablydon’t play baseball anyway (very much anadult’s idea of the sort of book they ought tolike, but won’t); and too cutesy for most adults.The people most likely to enjoy Summerland arethe sort of literary critics who can describe it as“deliciously ironic”.

READING THE ROCKSThe Autobiography of the Earth

by Marcia Bjomerud(Westview Press, 2005, 237 pages/indexed,

$26.00, ISBN 081334249X)Reviewed by Jim Sullivan

Rocks: Igneous (“formed from theincandescent state”), metamorphic (“modified inthe solid state by heat, pressure, deformation, orsome combination of these factors”), andsedimentary (“deposited at Earth’s surface andderived — ground down or eroded — frompreexisting rock”) make up a large part of theearth. And for the first time, this reviewer,thanks to this writer, understands the basics ofgeology, which is the study of the origin,history, and structure of the Earth.

Bjomerud, a professor of geology atLawrence University, is first and foremost ateacher. Using analogy after analogy to explaincomplicated terms, like plate tectonics,uniformitarianism, catastrophism, she explainsin easy to understand terms and comparisonshow the earth comes by its existence, chemistry,and physics.

The author shows how combinations of


those factors are used to calculate the dates ofbirth and the ages of surrounding fossils, variousminerals, and ores. She also elaborates on howthis planet, contrary to the other terrestrial orbs,has maintained its various ecosystems to remaina hospitable place in which to live but that nowhas become imperiled.

The author writes:Earth is a very pleasant planet and,

according to her stone diaries, has beenso for millions of millennia. It is easy toforget just how remarkable this conditionis, in the same way that we tend to beunaware of good health until becomingsick. For at least four billion years,through meteorite impacts, climatechanges, and continental reorganizations,liquid water has remained stable atEarth’s surface, and life has thrived fornearly as long. Earth is a supersystem ofcountless smaller, interconnectedsystems involving rock, water, air, andlife. These systems operate at spatialscales from microscopic to planetary,over time periods from seconds tomillions of years. Anyone who has everstruggled with diabetes, depression, ordebt knows how hard it is to achieve andsustain his or her own physiological,emotional, or financial equilibrium. Theelectrical blackout that hobbled theeastern United States and Canada in thesummer of 2003 also illustrates howdifficult it is to build stable systems ofany complexity. How did a messy tangleof systems without a centralized controlmechanism (e.g., a brain, a banddirector, or a board of trustees) maintainEarth’s equipoise over time?

The fact is, we don’t entirely know.But if this equilibrium had not prevailed,we would never have emerged to wonderabout such things. [ . .. ]

Bjornerud specializes in structural geologyand has studied mountain formations in Norwayand Canada as well as details of thePrecambrian Shield region of North America(Northwest Territories, Manitoba, Ontario,Quebec, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, andMinnesota’s Boundary Waters region). With herthree children, she resides in Wisconsin.

Recommended(Originally published in Midwest Book

Review for October 2005.)

WONDERS AND THE ORDER OFNATURE 1150-1750

by Lorraine D aston and K atharine Park. New York: Zone Books, 1998.Review by Richard Dengrove

Daston and Park’s book is about a subject

that we are really interested in but we can neverput our finger on, Wonders.

Traditionally Wonders have been equatedwith that which is unexplainable, like theShroud of Turin or telepathy. However, aWonder can be something explainable too, likedwarfs and giants. Traditionally, their size has

been regarded as explainable by the science oftheir time.

In fact, it is true that while those who explainWonders are often considered wet blankets, theexplanation for a phenomenon can at times be aWonder. Sherlock Holmes’ clever explanationshave often been regarded as Wonders.

It is obvious from Daston and Park’s surveya Wonder or Marvel is an emotional rather thanobjective category. It both astonishes and giveus pleasure.

You can see this in the derivation of words.According to the book, the word Marvel, whichmeans the same as Wonder, ultimately derivesfrom the word Smile. That tells about thepleasure we derive from Wonders. Daston andPark have not been able to trace the wordWonder. However, they think it has somethingto do with the complexity of the phenomena;and, I might add, the confusion over it.

Certainly Daston and Park often confuseWonders with the unexplainable. However, Icannot blame them. Writers have been doingthat for at least a thousand years..

According to Daston and Park, in the 12thCentury, the Church’s view was that Wondersand the Unexplainable were the same. Churchdoctrine opposed the academics who, throughpride, tried to explain everything. Nature was upto God, not man. However, to be any good, thepleasure caused by Wonder had to bring you toa mystical state.

Many churches displayed ‘griffins’claws’and ostrich eggs for the public. These, it washoped would give them a petite mystical state.However, gems that were wonders werereserved for churchmen, who were thought to becapable of a much higher mystical state. Still,churchmen did not spurn humbler objects. In1276, the Holy Roman Empress sent aporcupine to the Dominicans of Basel so theycould better achieve a mystical state.

Popular secular writers portrayed much thesame view, that the world was filled withWonders. Wonders from the Ancient world, likethe dog-headed men of India. Wonders fromfolk beliefs, like the barnacle goose thatdeveloped from a barnacle. Wonders fromnational prejudice. Gerald of Wales, a Britain,made much of the degenerate Irish, whom, heclaimed, commonly committed incest andbestiality.

All these phenomena were unexplained bynatural causes in the Aristotelian thinking of theday. Academics, like Adelard of Bath, who weresolely preoccupied with explaining Wondersnaturally, must have aimed at a small audienceindeed.

On the other hand, these secular writersdiffered from religious ones. The idea behind allthese Wonders was pleasure alone, That was theidea behind the Medieval rhetoric they werepracticing, too. There was no hint that you hadto gain some mystical insight. There was nohint either, like with later writers, Wondersshould spur you to scientific curiosity.

By the 18th Century, belief had taken a 180degree turn. We are in the Age of Reason now,and both the religious and secular had to believethat everything is explainable. The religious

went even farther: they had to believe in naturalexplanation’s religious equivalent, that we cantrace in all phenomena God’s plan for the world.

If the unexplainable fared poorly, Wonderitself fared even worse. Pleasure from it was alow emotion we should avoid . All the writers ofthe 18th Century, except Adam Smith, agreedthat it inevitably led neither to religion nor toscience but to unreason and superstition.

That which had previously beenunexplainable became at least potentiallyexplainable: phosphors, stones that glowed inthe dark, did, as did figured stones, stonesornamental in color and pattern. If Wonderscould not be made potentially explainable, theybecame a peasant superstition. The belief inmeteorites, i.e., stones falling to Earth, was atthe time considered a peasant superstition.

A good deal of the book concerns timesin-between the Ages of Faith and Reason,maybe 1350-1660, when Wonder was good forboth science and religion. Also, it was a timewhen Wonders cou ld be exp la ined ,unexplainable, or a sign sent from God.

Human anomalies, for instance – giants,dwarfs, two-headed men – could be all three upuntil the 1660s. Explanation and God’s signbeing the way authorities handled wonders, andan Unexplainable Wonder being the commonfolk’s true view of Wonders.

Such anomalies have often been referred toby the un-p.c. term Monster. That derives fromthe Latin, to show. They were considered a signfrom God that people should repent their ways.

However, Wonders for pleasure’s sakenonetheless dominated. People never stoppedgawking at giants, etc . Although the Krakowmonster, a sort of potpourri of creatures, wasregarded as demonic in origin, the 16th Centurywas nevetheless fascinated by it.

Also, for this period between Faith andReason, especially the 16th and 17th Centuries,Daston and Park discuss how connoisseurs, orvirtuosi, of Wonders arose: for example, Ficino,Cardano and Della Porta. Their books describedWonder after Wonder.

More and more, however, they explainedWonders naturally. For instance, while Cardanobelieved the influence of the stars was anunexplainable Wonder, he explained that Irelandhad no snakes because its soil was bituminous.

According to Daston and Park, theseexplaining virtuosi led the way to Sir FrancisBacon, who advocated in his Great Instaurationsystematically taking Wonders and explainingthem. For that, he is often called the father ofthe scientific method.

Even so, Wonders continued to bementioned without explanation even in the mostprestigious scientific circles. Daston and Parkpoint out that the papers of the royal scientificsocieties of the later 17th Century saw their jobas being mainly to report Wonders. Forinstance, one of their correspondents mightreport that he saw three Moons one night, andanother correspondent might report about a deafman who started to hear after church bells beganringing.

On the other hand, all through this period, awhole class of Wonders had a perfectly good


natural explanation: namely, a craftsman madethem. These Wonders mixed art and nature.Some were prized by royalty then even thoughall would be considered kitsch today.

For instance, even the primitive automata ofthe time were considered Wonders. One thatelicited particular Wonder was reputed to havebeen built at the court of Kublai Khan. It was asilver tree. W hen an angel b lew a horn, itbelched mare’s milk and other drinks. Eventhough it needed human beings for a good partof its operation, it was considered a greatWonder.

Another Wonder mixing nature and art wasa statuette where Atlas carried on his shouldersan ostrich shell, which looked sufficiently likethe world. The statuette was art and the ostrichshell nature.

Other such Wonders were tromp l’oeil art,either paintings or figurines where the duck orlizard of the art could not be told from a duck orlizard of nature.

Daston and Park basically end their accountwhere they promised, around 1750, give or takea few decades. Then they typify Wonders today.Wonders have been laid low, they mourn. TheWonders of today are only fit for tabloids andtabloid TV. They are not much more than thesmile that the derivation of Marvel said theywere.

Yes, you can pick up an edition of theWeekly World News, which laughs at them. Init, you can read such headlines as ‘Interviewwith a Sasquatch: Why We Love Twinkies,Why We Fear Halle Berry.’ Also, ‘Shipattacked by Gefilte Fish.’ The all time favoriteseems to be ‘Flying Saucer lands in the LastMinutes of the Superbowl at the Forty YardLine.’

However, have Lorraine Daston andKatherine Park lived under a rock? In the 21stCentury, Wonders are alive. Many influentialpeople have strived to make our pleasure seriousstuff, with flying saucers, the Shroud of Turin,the Loch Ness Monster, telepathy and otherWonders too numerous to mention.

Even Daston and Park give the lie to theiraccount of the present. It is obvious they arevery sympathetic to Wonders and uneasy withscience and materialism.

My own belief is that we need both Scienceand Wonder. Since Wonder is at base anemotional response – pleasure, a smile – andscience is anything but, they are very differentanimals. I think they could learn to live together.

BRACH’S CIRCUS PEANUTSCommentary by J.G. Stinson

A while back I purchased two bags ofBrach’s circus peanuts from one of the localgrocery stores. I love circus peanuts eventhough they really don’t have any flavor o therthan sugar; it’s the texture that grabs me, Iguess. Circus peanuts, when fresh, are softenough to squeeze but not at soft asmarshmallows. When they’re stale, you can’tsqueeze them at all, but like most sugar-basedfoods, they will eventually melt in the mouthwith some concerted chewing.

As a circus-peanuts aficionado, one wouldthink I’d have tested the Brach’s product beforeI purchased it. Circus peanuts are easily testedfor freshness by gently applying pressure to oneor two of the peanuts while they’re in theunopened bag, as some folks do with tomatoesout of the bag. But for some reason I didn’t testthese peanuts, and only discovered their stalestate when I opened the first bag at home. Ofcourse, I ate them anyway. Then I looked at theback of the bags and noticed that Brach’s put afreshness guarantee on them. One only had tocall the toll-free number provided and have theproduct bag in hand.

So I called, and the lot number turned out tobe from 2004, and the nice woman in theBrach’s customer service department took myname and address and said on be half of Brach’sshe apologized for the stale product and that I’dreceive some coupons in the mail asreimbursement. Being a cynic, I wondered howlong it would take the coupons to get here, andhow much they’d be worth.

It took about a week, and the two couponsfor free Brach’s candy (up to $2.00 per bag)came with a nice letter which also includedapologies.

While I was waiting for the coupons toarrive, the next time I was in the store where I’dpurchased the stale peanuts, I asked to see themanager. When he arrived at the service desk, Itold him about the peanuts, and that I’d justchecked the rest of the circus peanuts bags thestore had on the rack that day and they were allstale as well -- a half-dozen bags. So he thankedme for letting him know and said he’d take careof it right away.

The last time I checked that store, they stillhadn’t put more Brach’s circus peanuts out,though they had plenty of other Brach’s candyproducts available. But I want the circuspeanuts!

My advice to anyone considering purchasingBrach’s circus peanuts: check the product forfreshness before purchase, and then check otherstores in your area for Zachary’s circus peanuts.They cost less.

FANZINES

Beyond Bree December 2005, January 2006Nancy Martsch, Post Office Box 55372,Sherman Oaks, CA 91413-5372 [email protected] available for The Usual; $12/year, $15in envelope or overseas.

Catchpenny Gazette #13 December 2006 (?),#14 February 2006David Burton, 5227 Emma Drive,Indianapolis, IN 46236-2742 [email protected]://www.geocities.com/cpgzinehttp://www.efanzines.com

Challenger #23 Winter 2005-6Guy H. Lillian III, 8700 Millicent Way#1501, Shreveport LA 71115- [email protected]://www.challzine.net

eI # 23 December 2005Earl Kemp, Post Office Box 6642,Kingman, AZ 86402-6642 [email protected]://www.efanzines.com

File 770:145Mike Glyer, 705 Valley View Avenue,Monrovia, CA 91016-2446 [email protected]://www.efanzines.com

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/mglyer/F770/index.html

The Knarley Knews # 115 Henry & Letha Welch, 1525 16th Avenue,

Grafton, WI 53024-2017 [email protected]://www.msoe.edu/~welch/tkk.html

MT Void V. 24 #23 December 2 , 2005 — V. 24#30 January 27, 2006Mark and Evelyn Leeper, 80 LakeridgeDrive, Matawan, NJ 07747-3839 [email protected]@optonline.nethttp://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper

Nice Distinctions #12 December 2005Arthur D. Hlavaty, 206 Valentine Street,Yonkers, NY 10704-1814 [email protected]://www.efanzines.comhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/supergee

Opuntia # 59.3 December 2005Dale Speirs, Box 6830, Calgary, AlbertaT2P 2E7 CANADA

Vanamonde # 613-622John Hertz, 236 S. Coronado Street, No.409, Los Angeles, CA 90057-1456 USA

Visions of Paradise #104Robert Michael Sabella, 24 Cedar ManorCourt, Budd Lake, NJ 07828-1023 [email protected]://www.efanzines.comhttp://visionsofparadise.blogspot.com

THAT TIME OF THE YEAR

Yes, Friendly Readers, it’s time again forHugo nominations!

Some chronic recommendations of my own:

Challenger for Best FanzineDale Speirs for Best Fan WriterSheryl Birkhead for Best Fan Artist

I’d recommend Thud! for Best Novel, butgiven how PTerry declined a nomination lastyear, there may not be any point in it.

I can see nominating The World Hitler NeverMade for Best Related, but it’ll probably lose toan art book of media charcters drawn in tightoutfits . . .


Letters, we get letters

From: John H ertz November 28, 2005236 S. Coronado Street, No. 409, LosAngeles, CA 90057-1456 USA

Shouldn’t that be “Mother Very ExcellentlyMade a Jelly Sandwitch Under No Protest”?We may have to revise. “Mother VeryExcellently Made a Jelly Sandwich UnlessNeighbors Played Xylophones.”

Lesee . . . Mercury, Venus,Terra, Mars, Asteroids, Jupiter,Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, Xena . . .don’t see no problem there.

I think human nature has a unifying tendencyand a fragmenting tendency. Either may comeforward. I think the civilized man looks aroundBarbarians don’t. Let us, therefore.

Caesar salad is of course not named forJulius, but poets get license.

Thanks for your horse and candy reviews.The “Anticipation” bid for a MontréalWorldcon in 2009 was at Loscon XXXII withspruce beer and Samanties.

Dancing and Joking is ready. Want one?

Sure.— JTM

December 30, 2005

Hurrah for Covadonga! Hurrah for turrón!

From: Robert Lichtman December 18, 2005Post Office Box 30, Glen Ellen, CA95442-0030 [email protected]

Thanks for Alexiad 4:6, on which I have afew comments, first of which is in Joe’s“Random Jottings.” While it’s true that B illRotsler left behind thousands of cartoons — myown fan art larder is well-stocked with them,probably more than enough to hold me the restof my life, at which point they’ll go to someonestill publishing fanzines — and is, as Tom Vealpoints out, “still eligible to be considered asBest Fan Artist,” I would much prefer to see thatHugo going to a living fan artist. Andpreferably one who’s not yet been awarded arocket, although his or her lifetime work morethan merits one. In this regard I’m thinking of

Ross Chamberlain, Dan Steffan and Steve Stiles,all of whom have been active fan artists forthree decades or more. (No doubt thisobservation will earn me a snipe from E.B.Frohvet, who will incorrectly observe thatthey’re part of the so-called “Corflu Cult.”)

I enjoyed your review of The Best of Xero,which I feel was incorrectly overlooked byHugo voters. I *did* know that DonaldWestlake wrote science-fiction and then left thefield in something of a huff because I read it inXero when that issue first came out. In theanthology at hand, I particularly enjoyed beingone of the fans mentioned in Roger Ebert’sintroduction. At the time Xero was appearing,I was also publishing a fanzine for generaldistribution, and Roger was doing a regular (andpopular) book review column for me. He alsowrote a short article about the closing of hischildhood theater, the Princess, that preceded byseveral years the one he wrote professionally onthe same subject.

If I was editing your letter column I wouldhave cut out all the material in RodneyLeighton’s letter about his ongoing predilectionsconcerning his rate of correspondence, whetheror not to buy a typewriter ribbon, etc., as beingboring and repetitive — how many places andtimes have I read his meanderings on the samesubject(s) over the past decade? — but I didnotice that he paid $800 (Canadian ones?) for aset of four new tires. Since that’s nearly twicewhat I paid for a set for my Corolla a year ago,I surmise that Rodney is running a much largervehicle with much larger tires than me. Later hementions a GM truck — was that what hebought tires for? In your comment to himconcerning oil change places, you mention that“they offered a cheap price, but they nag youinto getting other things that jack the price up.”You *can* say no; I always do. I go to an oilchange place between trips to the Toyota dealerfor other oil changes and scheduled services.As for your getting a tire rotation but notavailing yourself of their suggestion that you getthe tires rebalanced (and also Rodney on thesame subject), it’s my observation that it’s agood idea to both rotate and rebalance your tiresperiodically in order to extend their useful life.I do this every 7,500 miles and also generallyget a four-wheel alignment at the same time. As a result I always get at least the rated wearfrom my tires, and usually at least 10-15 percentmore. Yes, it costs some extra money, but it’swhat is *recommended* by tire manufacturersas part of proper care for your expensive tires.

Frohvet’s blast at the FAAn awards seemsshort-sighted. If he and others who think there’san exclusionary “Corflu Cult” somehowcontrolling the outcome of the voting, a betterway to deal with it rather than opting out wouldbe to make sure one votes. The voting pool ismore representative of fandom as a whole whenmore people participate. The same goes forTAFF which, so far as I can tell, continues to besupported by fandom at large (based onchecking out who’s voting in the recentelections: an electorate that goes far beyondwhat Frohvet considers to be the “Corflu Cult”).

As Samanda b Jeude observedduring her run for TAFF.

John Thiel observes that both Ben Indickand “Li’l Kim” live in Teaneck, New Jersey,and wonders “if Ben Indick was acquainted withher.” I would be really amazed if the answerwas yes.

Finally, Marty Helgesen correctly notes that“an e-zine published on the web can have lots ofart.” Not only that, but the art can be in fullcolor — something seldom done in paperfanzines due to the expense involved. As forsending it as an attachment that “some peoplewould be unwilling to open . . . because of thedanger of viruses,” a better way to distributeone’s e-zine is to send it to Bill Burns forposting on his wonderful “efanzines.com” Website.

Happy holidays to you both!

Frohvet had a bad experiencewith Corflu Valentine; whether it“opened his eyes” or “embitteredhim” depends.

— JTM

From: Alexis A. Gilliland Dec. 16, 20054030 8 th Street South, Arlington, VA22204-1552 USA

Was Alexiad #4.6 waiting for us when wegot back from Philcon? Well, no, it arrived thefollowing Wednesday, due no doubt tocircumstances beyond your control, but a closeenough approximation of the ideal forgovernment work. Many thanks.

We enjoyed Philcon; I had five panels andLee had three, although there wasn’t much goingon Friday evening. Lots of parties on Saturdaythough, on the 6th and 7th floors, and we hitmost of them, but spent a lot of our time in theSFWA suite and the Nth Degree party. Takinga nap in the afternoon is a help, but (sigh) I stillturned in before midnight. One of my Sundaypanels made some interesting points aboutreligion, though. Noting that Europe was farmore secular than the US, the initial speculationwas that this was due to the heavy losses in WWI and WW II, a recoil from religiosity being theresult of ecclesiastical support for the variousnational war efforts which resulted in appallinglosses. The panel then decided, no, theEuropean churches tended to be state churches,supported by the taxpayer, while America neverhad a national state church (because we neverhad a majoritarian denomination) and so ourvarious churches were left free to compete witheach other for members. Lacking competition,the state churches of Europe became moribund,as their members went secular, while as a resultfree enterprise competition, American churchesbecame more member friendly. The result is thatAmerica as a whole is more religious thanstodgy old Europe.

Oh, Europe is quite religious.They’re building a mosque in Londonfor the 1433 Olympics, one thatcan hold forty thousand people.


And yet, this pursuit of the almightytithe-dollar has not been without adverseconsequences, notably the erosion of theologicalrectitude. The trendy mega-churches were citedas having nothing in their doctrinal essence thatwould discomfit the congregation, being merepanderers to their parishoners. A viewpointsupported by some bizarre statistics, namely thatof the people who believe in the afterlife, 99+percent thought they were going to heaven, a farcry from the days of Calvinist predestinationwhen it was thought the heaven bound amountedto less than 10 percent of the total. Did theyeven do polls in those days?

Marty Helgesen challenges my assertion thatthe 415 AD murder of Hypatia was carried outby monks (Which he dismisses as “a riotingmob of Christians.”) at the orders of BishopCyril, saying that Cyril’s responsibility for thatatrocity “is widely disputed.” No doubt it is,Saint Cyril being one of the major saints in theCoptic Church and all. At the time Cyril deniedthat it had even happened, saying that Hypatiahad simply left the city. However, when the oldBishop of Alexandria died, Cyril, then the headof a monastic order, made himself the newbishop by force and the threat of force, using themuscle supplied by the monks of his order.Traditionally, control of Alexandria had beendivided between the religious and the secular,the Bishop of Alexandia, now Cyril, and theImperial Prefect, a man named Orestes. Seeingthe weakness of the Empire — Rome had beensacked in 410 — Cyril was emboldened to takeon Orestes, who was wounded in anassassination attempt by monks, and foughtback. In this fight Orestes had the support ofHypatia, then in her fifties, who was effective inrallying the pagan Greeks of the businesscommunity to the Imperial cause.

Now for all the protestations of innocencemade in his behalf — Hypatia’s murder being amajor blot on his escutcheon from day one —we note that Cyril had the motive and themeans, and that the monks who killed Hypatiawere led by Peter the Reader, a religious zealotwho was one of Cyril’s partisans, if nottechnically a henchman. After the murder ofHypatia, Orestes was either murdered or he leftthe city, depending on your source, whereuponAlexandria, which had been a major commercialcenter in the Roman Empire — rivalingConstantinople — came under the sway ofBishop Cyril and his religious orthodoxy. Youcan’t do only one thing, of course, and whenChristianity became mandatory, the business

community, pagan Greeks and Jews for the mostpart, left for the more tolerant environment ofConstantinople, while Alexandria — which hadbeen a contender — became a pious backwateruntil Islam swept in a couple of centuries later tosupplant Christianity as the ruling faith in theregion

Elsewhere Marty notes that Googling“Josephus Pontius Pilate” gave him around96,100 results, then goes on to say that myimage of a secular life of Christ assembled frombits and pieces on the cutting room floor isinteresting “but I’m not aware of any bits andpieces availab le for assembly.” Perhaps thecommentary on Josephus would qualify? OrJosephus himself? Some assembly would berequired, of course, but if he’s interested, Iwould recommend The Last Temptation ofChrist by Nikos Kazantzakis, a scholar and abeliever of genius. Written at the end of a longand productive life, TLToC is a non-Gospel lifeof Christ that is emphatically not secular even asit is consistent with the secular history presentedby Josephus.

Just as long as you ignore themovie, of which Mad said quiterightly that video renters missedthe most interesting part, whichw a s g e t t i n g t h r o u gh th eprotesters around the theater.

— JTM

From: Trinlay Khadro October 18, 2005Post Office Box 240934, Brown Deer,WI 53224-0934 [email protected]://stores.ebay.com/Silly~Kitty

On a Saturday in mid-November, ElricFerret passed away. He is survived by Trinlay,KT, and Omeko Megumi-hime. He is wellmissed.

Elfling, C’Mell, Delenn, Gemellus,Sarang, and Red Wull send theircondolences.

We are considering getting a male kittenfrom the Humane Society in Spring for Megumito raise as her companion.

Autumn and Winter are difficult seasons forus; the cold wet weather causes theFibromyalgia to flare up. We also seemsuscep tible to seasonable depression. Somedays the best I can do is remind myself that it’llpass. Tomorrow I’ll be assisting Uncle as theplumber is coming to replace the water heater.A high-anxiety event for him. After that I makehis bank deposit and pick up his medications atthe pharmacy and maybe get some odds andends from Sam’s Club.

In the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel a fewmonths ago one of the big stories was aboutWal-Mart as one of the largest employers in thecity . . . and also the employer with the largestpercentage of employees getting generalassistance, aid to families with dependentchildren (AFDC), and medical assistance fromthe state. I’m not sure what to make of this:

does this mean they have more employees whootherwise would have NO job? Or that they usethe lack of benefits to artificially squash pricesdown? If someone had a similar job at K-Martor Target would they have better benefits? Ifthey didn’t have Wal-Mart to provide a bare-bones job would they be employed? In myhumble opinion the newspaper and t.v. coveragerarely give me enough detailed information tocome up with an op inion based on reality.

I very much enjoyed Thud! — weparticularly enjoyed the near Death experiencewherein Death must also have a near Vimesexperience and “D on’t worry about me, Ibrought a book and a chair.”

Young Sam’s need for Dad Sam to read thesame book at the same time every day is VERYmuch like a REAL child of toddler age. We arealso very amused by Where’s My Cow?. Ourhousehold joke goes something like “Where’smy kitty?” “Is this my kitty?” “No it is a mostlyunrolled roll of toilet paper, that is not mykitty,” and on through the stuffy toy ferret,jingle bell, and so forth until either until we endup hugging said kitty with the declaration “Yes,this IS my kitty,” or dissolving into giggles. Ilove that KT and I love the same books. :-)

We recently got Uncle signed up for theLibrary for the Blind and Handicapped, whosend him books on tape — soon we will get himsome Terry Pratchett books.

I suspect Jules Verne perceived Oregon as“the vast wilds of America” renderingterritorality a non-concern. <sarcasm alert>Remember, these are the days beforeStarbucks™. (Yes, I know that Seattle is inWashington, but I hear Portland, likeMilwaukee, seems to have a Starbucks™ onevery corner of some trendy neighborhoods.)

Re: my con-report: I left out a lot . . . inparticular who all was there . In addition toHope’s list, the Smiths and all the Welches aswell as some caving friends of the Welches werethere.

Rodney — I hope things pick up for yousoon. Wish that I were able to help. I’ll try towrite semi-regularly and I don’t expect a replyletter.

Dainis and Majors: Megumi associates thecat carrier with going visiting, and willsometimes climb in or knock it over with aninsistent “mew” to go see uncle. On the way tothe vet she doesn’t panic till she realizes we justwent past where we turn into Uncle’sneighborhood.

E.B.: Megumi just knows she’s royalty inour home or maybe I’m just a compliant sleeper.“Move over” she says and I go “O.K.”?

I know Social Security is backlogged 18-24months, what do people do for income in themeantime? When I worked for SSA’sinformation line (temporary job many manyyears ago) we could tell when there were layoffsor plant closings as we’d be flooded with callsasking for disability forms from the particularcity. When the economy is rough employers areless likely to take on, or keep on, a less thanoptimal employee.


I just delete thephishing mails —a real notificationfrom eBay willshow up on myeBay account. I’mkind of surprisedh o w s i m p l eworking with eBayhas been.

Mart in : R e“[they] wante dpeople to wearcolorful togas, soas to avoid then o t i o n f r o mspectacle ladenm o v i e s t h a tRomans only wore

white” . . . and of course they’d never wearwhite after Labor Day. :-)

Ah yes, Dies Laboris, the dayafter the first market day afterthe Kalends of September. AsDarrell Schweitzer has noted, thatwas when Emperor Tiberiusgathered together all his friendsof the speculative bent for parties,lectures by various writers,sophists, and scholars, and theawarding of the Palma Lucianae forbest speculative poem, play, anddiscussion of the year.

Rod: KT does like Helsing, she also recentlyborrowed Appleseed which she really enjoyed.She returned it before I had a chance to watch it.

Robert K: I have to admit though that Marchof the Penguins shows us that the tuxedoed onesare tough kick-butt birds! I’m not so sure of the“family values”, though parental devotion to theeggs and chicks is certainly something humanscan mimic. (A new wife and a new kid everyyear . . . not a human standard — I hope.)

Marty: My point about the Sudanese doctoris that he fits in perfectly with his neighborhood(suburban) and would be just as uncomfortablein the inner city as I would be.

E-zines are usually posted on the web in awebsite (art intact much as in a print zine) or asan Adobe file that has text and art in place as asingle file. (It opens like a web page with actualdownload as optional.)

If your security and anti-virus software iskept updated it wouldn’t be a concern in emaileither.

From: Jason K . Burnett December 20, 20054903 Camden Avenue N, Minneapolis,MN 55430-3544 [email protected]

Having just returned to Minneapolis from aLong Drive Down South to visit my family andAngel’s family, I was very pleased to find thelatest Alexiad in the Big Bin of Mail which hadaccumulated during our absence. This pleasurewas, unfortunately, tempered by the memorythat I really had not done as well with keeping

up with LOCs as I should have this year. Andso, rather than let the moment escape, I sat downto write to you, even before I finished readingthe issue.

This year has been one of big changes forAngel and me: Moving from N ew Orleans toMinneapolis. Starting to homeschool Dylan.Helping our families as they attempt to recoverfrom Katrina. Watching in amazement as Loganlearns to walk and talk and really begins toblossom as a person. Finding new employmentas technical writers (for both of us) and finallygetting out of the medical records field. And,last but not least, getting things ready for me tostart library school in January (distance learningprogram through University of Wisconsin atMilwaukee). All in all, a very exciting andpersonally satisfying year.

Recent reading has been pretty much alllight reading: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,the Brother Cadfael mysteries, MercedesLackey novels, a reread of Gail van Asten’sCharlemagne’s Champion, and a reread of theHarry Potter books. I’m rather nervous aboutstarting back to school, especially looking backat the near-burnout that was my last semester inmy history MA program, so I’m deliberately notstarting any big projects right now and notreading anything too taxing.

My first semester in school I’ll be takingIntro to Reference Services, Intro to LibraryMana gemen t, and S pec ial Topics inLibrary/Information Science: Metadata. Thatknocks out two out of my five core courses andgives me one really interesting-soundingelective (which may or may not live up to thepromise of its name). I had originally beenconsidering children’s/YA librarianship as afocus, but after seeing the way some parents lettheir children behave at the library, I’m leaningmore towards either academic librarianship(maybe getting a chance to actually use myhistory training after all) or cataloging. Isuppose only time (and the job market) will tell.

Well, I’m off to go fix dinner. Here’swishing you a Merry Christmas, Happy NewYear, and a Happy Birthday to Joe.

Thank you and best wishes foran even better next year. Maybeyou can succeed Colleen Cahill inJoe Mayhew’s chair at the Libraryof Congress.

— JTM

From: Joy V. Smith December 21, 20058925 Selph Road, Lakeland, FL 33810-0341 [email protected]

http://journals.ao l.com/pagadan/JoysJournal/

I enjoyed your Wal-Mart/March of Penguinsanecdote. We have a big Wal-Mart supercenternear us and shop there a lot, often for gardeningsupplies.

Did Paul Hellyer really ask for aninvestigation of our government’s dealings withintelligent aliens?! That would make aninteresting addition to one of those UFOdocumentaries.

Read Watch the Skies! byCurtis Peebles (1994) for the storyof how that particular ideachanged and twisted.

I enjoyed your review of Thud! I've read itat least twice and enjoyed Where’s My Cow?too. And your usual eclectic round-up of fictionand non-fiction books. I’ve learned a lot abouthistory in Alexiad. The World Was Going OurWay: The KGB and the Battle for the ThirdWorld , What Stalin Knew , and Her Majesty’sSpymaster were especially interesting — amongothers.

Re: Feed ing the cats. Lisa, I read two booksin a series of fantasy books by Tanya Huffrecently — Summon the Keeper and The SecondSummoning. I think you'd enjoy them and thecat characters.

Re: Letters. E .B., I knew you'd disagreewith me when I said it, and I looked forward toyour response. You, sir, are a gentleman. Re:Yorkie candy bars “not for girls.” We discussedthis candy bar or another on an AOL folderrecently. Apparently they’re for truck drivers;and I asked if there weren't women truck driversin Britain. There are. Apparently themanufacturer thought it a clever marketing idea?I am not amused. Re: comics. I have aHiroshima comic by a Japanese, which is veryinteresting; Cadillacs and Dinosaurs; Duncanand Mallory; and early Phantom reprints, whichare funny, among others. Speaking of the CivilWar, the United Daughters of the Confederacywill be marking a CSA soldier's grave at achurch cemetery just down the road from us ina ceremony in January. They’ve already markeda number of CSA graves there.

So “Do they love us still inDixie?” still has an answer. But forhow long?

— JTM

I liked the idea of the Tardis landing on thebridge of the Enterprise. (I always love a goodcrossover.)

From: E. B. Frohvet December 17, 20054716 Dorsey Hall Drive #506, EllicottCity MD 21042-5988 USA

As we just passed the 64th anniversary ofPearl Harbor, let’s take a moment to honor thememory of Lieutenant Commander FrancisThomas, U.S. Navy. As watch officer of U.S.S.Nevada, he did not wait for orders, or to locatethe captain, who was ashore. CommanderThomas slipped the anchor, got the ship underweigh, manned the guns with whatever crewmembers were available, and charged out firingback at the enemy. Of course, this made theNevada an obvious target, and the Japanese hither with so many bombs the ship had ultimatelyto be run aground to save it from sinking. Still,Thomas did the right thing. (If anyone cares, theonly surviving vessel from Pearl Harbor stillafloat is the retired Coast Guard cutter RogerTaney, which is maintained as a touristattraction in Baltimore Harbor. Every


December 7th there is a memorial service heldaboard.)

Rear Admiral (ret.) Francis J.Thomas died January 21, 2005 inAloha, Oregon at the age of 100.He liked to say he was the only guywho got the Navy Cross for runninga ship aground.

“The tiger is probably the better bet.. .” Isuspect there’s still a difference between acarnivorous predator, however lazy, and avegetarian quadruped, however ill-tempered.

I’m not talking a lengthy stay,merely walking in and out.

— LTM

Possibly a nomination for Rotsler could bejustified within the letter of the rules. It is stillclearly misguided.

I had never really thought of time-travelstories being inherently pointless, but there’ssomething to be said for that. M ost time-travel,and much alternate history, is clever merely forthe sake of being clever.

“Why Live Theater?” — In general I agreewith Bill Breuer, live theater (or live music)have a magic not transcribable on disc/tape. Onthe other hand, the recorded/filmed version hasprobably done twenty takes on each scene, outof which is edited what the director and editorthink is the best version.

I recently re-read Navohar and decided tokeep it. The book has a certain wilted charm.One of these years I should do an article on thevirtues of good mediocrity; if I resume doingarticles some day I will have to consider it.

Even supposing your receipt thereof to befairly recent, the listing of a fanzine I should get,and didn’t, is irritating.

Joy Smith: Hard to imagine why anyonewould order “personalized M&M ’s”. However,in my childhood there was a shortlived fad forpersonalized pencils with your name printed onthem in gold letters. That was back whenschoolchildren used pencils.

Dainis Bisenieks: I don’t know about femalegladiators (may be a fantasy trope, or an ideainflicted on history by Political Correctness).However, to fill the gaps between bouts, theyheld executions. I recall reading once of agladiator kindly telling the victim to hold stilland close his eyes, it would hurt less.

They were quite real; seeGladiatrix:The True Story ofHistory’s Unknown Woman Warriorby Amy Zoll (2002). Gladiatriceswere another way to fill the gapsbetween (male) bouts.

I agreed with Joseph to give Bujold creditfor working outside the comfort zone ofVorkosigan books, if with less entertainmentvalue.

Defining “Patient thinking he’s not mentallyill” would depend on defining mental illness.Certainly that’s common in psychotics, largely

separated from reality. It is certainly possible fora person to be miserably unhappy, even have adefinable condition according to the DSM(Diagnostic and Statistical M anual of MentalDisorders), without being psychotic.

Trinlay Khadro: Keeping the performerswarm, cocoa may be helpful for the young crew;consider the merits of brandy for the geezers.Umm (third time), that’s Nhi Vanye. I neverused a sword or battle ax, but in my time I couldfield-strip, clean, o il, and reassemble an M-16 aswell as the next guy.

Martin Morse Wooster: Read in the paperthe other day that Virgin Galactic, the“commercial” program based on Spaceship One,already has several thousand reservationsincluding quite a number pre-paid in full (c.$200,000).

Rod Smith: The concept is well establishedin law as “felony murder” — any death whichresults from the commission of a crime ismurder. Suppose you stick up the localconvenience store and wave a gun, and the clerkhas a coronary and dies. You can be tried formurder. Of course, terrorists are unlikely to bedeterred as they intend to commit murder.

Robert Kennedy: An article in BaltimoreCity Paper on “Ten best films of the year”began: “Fuck March of the Penguins . . . God,it feels good to finally say that.” So TarasWolansky is not alone in his opinion. (Myself?Have not seen it; I rarely go to movies anymore.)

Marty Helgesen: I don’t recall having beento a Catholic wedding; they may still “publishthe banns” (a custom I associate mainly withhistorical novels). I have attended weddingswhere the question is asked, if anyone can showcause why these two should not be married. . .It is not specified that only certain persons haveright to object, or only for consanguinuity; it’sopen to anyone present. It’s ritual, but seriousritual. I respectfully disagree with you about thesex abuse scandal.

I am looking forward to my pre-paid copy ofHeinlein’s Children. Maybe I will review it.

Are you getting an autographedone?

— JTM

From: Brad W. Foster December 20, 2005P.O. Box 165246, Irving, TX 75016-5246 [email protected]

Greetings folks —Well, getting down to the last few days of

the calendar year, and looks like got about asmany print ‘zines this year as last. Thosenumbers are way down from previous years, butI’ll take a holding pattern over an even furtherdrop. Thanks for keeping the meaty issues ofAlexiad coming!

I feel I have to make special mention of the‘toon by Schirm on page 18; and the one byAlexis on page 23, as both causing me to laughout loud when read them. Great stuff!

Also enjoyed Lisa’s tale of “Feeding theCats”. Of our three inside cats, two of them are

pretty laid-back about feeding time. They knowthe food will arrive, and they don’t worry aboutit. The third cat, Vlad, seems to be in a constantstate of worry that we have forgotten about him,and will never give him food again. A couple ofhours before usual feeding time he will start tohang around, sitting and staring a hole in theside of our heads, with this wide-eyed look of “Iknow I look well fed, but I assure you I will fallover dead from malnutrition any second now.”When we do actually dole the food out intothree bowls for them all, he will attack his, butusually only eat a few bites, and then go and sitas close as he can to the other two cats, staringat them, with that “Are you gonna finish that?”look. I can usually distract him from that bypicking up his abandoned bowl and bringing itto him, telling him it is the bowl from the othercat, at which point he will dive in and finish it.The other two cats will often only want tobrowse, then come back later. So to save theirfood from him, we put those bowls up on a highshelf. I have now come to the conclusion thatViad can count to three, as he will be prettyagitated until all three bowls, full or empty, areon the floor for him to check out. Bear in mindthis cat is something like eight years old, andhas never missed a meal in that entire time. Yettwice a day, every day, he goes into panic modethat the food train has come to an end.

The cats get so desperate thatas I’m pouring they knock the cupof food aside to get to what’s inthe bowl, and food goes flying allover the floor.

Speaking ofcats, in one of yourloc responses youmentioned takingyour cats to the vetfor shots. If youare not alreadyaware of it, we aretrying to get theword out to all catowners of thedangers of VAFS( o r V F S )Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma.This is a rarec o n d it ion t h a t,u n f o r t u n a t e l y ,s e e m s t o b estarting to show up

more and more, where the cat will grow acancerous tumor at the point of injection. Andsince most injections are given between theshoulder blades, this is the worst possible placefor a growth to happen. We already lost one catto this a couple of years back, and now we havea second one who is a victim of the growth,though it might be early enough that we aretrying some treatments (much too expensive, butwe can’t handle losing two of them this way, sousing the credit cards to cover the bills . . . firststep on the slippery slope?)

Most vets are aware of this problem now,


and will give injections in the tail, or an arm.Thus if a tumor develops, it is still possible tosave the cat’s life through amputation. There isno such option when it is in the middle of theback. If your vet is not aware of this, CHANGEVETS. There is no reason to have to do theinjection at the center of the body knowing thisrisk.

We are not advocating stopping getting shots(though others debate that), simply that there isa safer way to administer them with knowledgeof this growing problem. Cindy has given me acouple of websites to pass on to folks for moreinfo:http://www.petplace.corn/article.aspx?id=215http://www.avma.org/vafstf/ownbroch.asphttp://www.vin.com/VINDB Pub/SearchPB /Proceedings/PRO5000/PR00109.htm

With all the fannish folks out there who havecats, hope you can pass this info along. We areonly a week into treatments now on Duffy, andshe will have about four weeks of daily radiationtreatments, along with several chemo sessions,all to try to reduce and control the presenttumor, then surgery sometime in January. If shewas older, or the tumor further along, we mightnot have elected to go into all this cost But sheshould still have a long life, and having alreadylost one, would be tough to have a second diefrom this.

Thanks for the various links to info on the“Ellison event” at Foolscap. Can only say fromwhat I read that a couple of guys who didn’tknow him were surprised by his telling them tofuck off, and then it just kind of grew. If it wasanyone other than Ellison, we probablywouldn’t even have heard about it outside thecon. Lots of writers and artists out there whosework I greatly admire, but would avoid anypersonal contact with!

All I can say is that if I were aguest of honor at a convention, Iwould try to find out about theother guests. I mean, Ellison evenhas a website, Ellison Webderland:http://harlanellison.com/home.htm

— JTM

From: Henry L. Welch December 27, 20051525 16th Avenue, Grafton, W I53024-2017 [email protected]://people.msoe.edu/~welch/tkk.html

I’ve kept terrible records this past fall and Iapologize for my delay in loccing and if any ofthis is a duplicate of a previous letter.

Vol 4 No 3I find the ear lobe is a much more agreeable

blood sample site than the finger tip. It hurts lessand the likelihood of infection is much lowerbecause you aren’t sticking your ear lobe intodirty things afterwards. The sound on the otherhand takes some getting used to.

Response to Rod E. Smith: I toured theCanadian Rockies in August and there has beena significant re treat in the glaciers since I lastvisited in 1976. Even more so if you review therecords for the earlier part of the 20th century.

Vol 4 No 4Re: “My Local Mystery”: W hen they

removed the dam just downstream from myhouse there was all kinds of debris in the riverbottom. Most curious to me was the large castiron boiler. I have no idea how it got thereunless it was the boiler from some boat scuttledin the river a long time ago. The odd part aboutthat is that the river was no t really navigablebecause there was another dam upstream only3/4 mile from the one removed. It makes nosense that a large boat would have operated onthis stretch of river.

Vol 4 No 5Read and enjoyed, but no comment.

Vol 4 No 6I caught an interesting typo on your zine

listing pages. Apparently I’ve moved all the wayup to issue 133. :-)

You are far more productivethan most of fanzine fandom, orthe people who call themselvesfanzine fandom anyway . . .

— JTM

From: George W. Price November 24, 2005P.O. Box A3228, Chicago, IL60690-3228 [email protected]

Dainis Bisenieks asks, “How much was

letter-rate postage in the 1920s. I rather believeit was 2¢ . . . . and didn’t rise to 3¢ until the1930s.” That sounds about right. My memory asa child in the late 1930s was that it was 3¢,except that local mail (within the same city; noZIPcodes then) was only 2¢. Somewhat later —I don’t remember exactly when — local mailwent up to 3¢ also, but greeting cards could still

be sent at 2¢ as long as they were not sealed.* * * * *

At the end of AL du Pisani’s letter, Joecomments that in Louisville “we are talkingabout building a light rail system (if it’sanything like the ones I’ve seen, it’ll do nogood).”

Amen, brother. I grew up with streetcars,and am somewhat of a streetcar buff. (Chicagoreputedly had the world’s largest system, about5,000 cars, and the longest straight route — theWestern Avenue line ran 22½ miles in a deadstraight line.) But I admit that this is allnostalgia. In the automobile age, streetcars arehighly impractical.

They are indeed more pleasant to ride thanbuses. They don’t stink of diesel fumes, andmodern ones are nearly noiseless. The ride issmoother — no potholes — and since they areon rails they don’t swerve from side to side togo through traffic (but being confined to railshas a very serious downside, which I’ll get to ina moment).

The first impracticality is that light railrequire a lot of expensive and high-maintenanceinfrastructure: tracks and overhead wires.(Washington, D.C. used to have streetcars withthe power wires under the street, with the powerpickup extending down through a slot betweenthe rails, like a cable car’s grip; this cost morebut eliminated the unsightly trolley wires.)

Second, streetcars are highly incompatiblewith heavy automobile traffic. It’s not just thatthe traffic moves slowly (though that is badenough). When a bus encounters an obstacle, itcan swing over to the other side of the street, oreven detour on side streets. But when somethingblocks the tracks, the streetcar is stuck rightthere until the obstacle is removed. And so areall the streetcars coming along behind it.

The only way a streetcar can detour is toswitch to a track on an intersecting line beforethe blockage, run a half-mile or so over to thenext parallel line, go a mile or so on that one,and then come back to the original route on theother side of the blockage (traveling three sidesof a rectangle). And that’s assuming that thereare the necessary switching tracks at theintersections of all those lines. That’s what wasactually done when streets were blocked for along time, such as by a major fire. It is not apractical way of dealing with automobileaccidents, etc., that block the tracks for twentyor thirty minutes. The streetcars just wait.

From a traffic standpoint, “light rail” isusually practical only when it has its ownlimited right of way and does not share streetswith automobiles. As was said in anothercontext, the pleasure is fleeting and the expenseis damnable. No mass transit system in thiscountry, as far as I know, comes anywhere nearsupporting itself — they are one and all heavilysubsidized for political reasons. (Chicago’ssystem is required by law to pay half itsexpenses out of the fare box — and has constanttrouble doing even that much.) When you addall the extra infrastructure requirements of lightrail, compared to buses, plus the expense ofacquiring limited right of way, it becomes evenmore of an economic white elephant.


In sum, light rail may be fun to ride, and canbe a tourist attraction, but it is the taxpayer’senemy.

Except the people with thenostalgia often also have thelawyers and lobbyists to get such as y s t e m r a m m e d t h r o u g h .Transport nostalgiasts can besomething else; ever met adirigible buff?

— JTM* * * * *

Joe asked me by e-mail what I thought ofHarry Harrison's "Stars & Stripes" trilogy (Stars& Stripes in Peril; Stars & Stripes Forever;Stars & Stripes Triumphant) which I had toldhim I was reading. This is alternate history inwhich the Trent incident in the American CivilWar did not get smoothed over by PrinceAlbert, but instead led to war with Great Britain.Now that I have finished it, I can recommend it,with certain reservations.

Turtledove he's not. The story isfast-moving, but not with much depth ofcharacterization. In contrast to Turtledove,almost all the main characters are movers andshakers: Lincoln, Lee, Sherman, Grant, Davis,Farragut, Lord Palmerston, (most surprisingly)John Stuart Mill, and so on. These all behavemore or less as I expect their namesakes reallywould have, with the possible exception ofVictoria, who is portrayed as stupid and petulant(which is not what I have heard of her). Onlyoccasionally does Harrison show events fromthe standpoint of low-level soldiers andcivilians; mainly he follows the conferences anddeeds of the top dogs.

The story line is not entirely plausible. Earlyin the first book a British general makes aserious mistake and attacks the wrong place.When the mistake is realized, he does not fallback and apologize and try to smooth it over; hebulls ahead and makes matters enormouslyworse. That’s bad enough, but even worse, hissuperiors let him get away with it, with utterlydisastrous results. And this implausibility is thekey turning point in the alternate history(although it is not the point of divergence fromreal history — that comes earlier). But onceyou swallow this, the rest of the story follows amore or less p lausible (though highly unlikely)trajectory.

On a more subtle level, the story is perhapstoo sanguine, presumably in the interest ofspeeding things up. New weapons aredeveloped quickly and work perfectly the firsttime used; complicated maneuvers are pulled offwithout a hitch. Our heroes get tricked a fewtimes, but plans don’t get derailed by justgeneral fuckups. And I suspect Harrison vastlyunderestimates the logistic difficulties of thestrategies he invents. The last book ends withsome massive political changes being imposedon the British Empire, which I’m sure wouldreally have been enormously more difficult thanshown.

As I said, Harrison is no Turtledove, but Ithink you might enjoy the series as lightweightfun.

From: Milt Stevens January 5, 20066325 Keystone Street, Simi Valley, CA93063-3834 [email protected]

In Alexiad V4#6, Joseph mentions as part ofhis review of The Best of Xero that RobertSilverberg was among the writers of theseventies who quit SF forever and ever ormaybe for several weeks. Nope, he didn’t. Youmay notice he hasn’t missed a worldcon sincethe early fifties, and he is still a member ofFAPA since 1949. At one point, he cut back onhis writing, because he was a workaholic andwas working himself to a frazzle. He limitedhimself to only one huge novel a year. By now,he sits around on his three acre estate in theBerkeley Hills and wonders whether he isretired-retired or only sort of retired.

Later in the review, Joseph is incorrect thatDick Geis sold the rights to Science FictionReview to some group, and then the publicationflopped. He considered selling it, but the dealwas never completed . The rub was that Geiswanted $900 a month as a license fee. If youpaid Geis that much, you couldn’t even havebroken even on the publication, so nobodyactually made an offer.

All I know is that I boughtsemiprozines titled Science FictionReview with columns by Geis andDarrell Schweitzer.

Under the heading of media myths, Josephsays “When you were young you knew that thestuff inside golf balls was poisonous...” Gee, Inever knew that when I was young or even whileI’ve been not so young. Not that I’ve ever reallywanted to swallow a golf ball. Is swallowinggolf balls some sort of a new teenage craze?

In the letter column, I noticed somesecondary comments on the idea of giving BettyBallantine a lifetime achievement award at theworldcon. I commented on this matter when itfirst appeared in Argentus, but maybe I shouldrepeat myself. Being guest of honor at theworldcon is a lifetime achievement award. Ianand Betty Ballantine were pro guests of honor atNoreascon 3 in 1989. I think the matter hasalready been taken care of.

Carol Clarke mentions a comics seriesInfinity Inc. which features the children ofclassic DC heroes. I remember another serieslike that, The Inferior Five. One of thecharacters has all of his father’s super strengthand X-ray vision, but he is honestly sort ofclumsy. That’s why he’s known as AwkwardMan. At one point, Awkward Man waslamenting that his grandpa was considered acrackpot for predicting the destruction ofKrypton. Actually, grandpa was a crackpot andthe planet was still there. Naturally, the InferiorFive face equally inept bad guys.

Joseph informs me the information I waswondering about appeared on Trufen. Fancythat. I’ve subscribed to Trufen for quite awhile,but that obviously doesn’t mean that I read it.Trufen seems to be mostly political garbage, andI try to ignore all political garbage. In theory, I

might read something if the subject lineidentified it as something which might interestme. That idea doesn’t work worth beans inpractice.

Five people have written LoCs to every issueof Alexiad since you’ve been publishing LoCs.I know I’m not one of them, because I didn’teven receive the first issue. I checked the fileson my PC, and my first LoC seems to be on thethird issue. I don’t know what happened to thesecond issue.

The faithful loccers are E. B.Frohvet, Alexis Gilliland, RobertKennedy, Trinlay Khadro, and MiltStevens.

— JTM

From: Martin Morse Wooster Jan. 4, 2006Post Office Box 8093, Silver Spring,MD [email protected]

Many thanks for Alexiad 24. I attendedCapclave this year, and agree with AlexisGilliland that it was a pretty good littleconvention. After all, it was held in the hotelclosest to my apartment. That’s a very fine placefor a con! But Alexis notes that the programbook for Capclave wasn’t done until the Fridayof the con, and wasn’t availab le until Saturday.I should also note that the Splendid CollectibleChapbook of Howard Waldrop stories, whichexcited at least one Australian to join theconvention, still hasn’t appeared nearly threemonths after the con. No doubt there have beenexplanations at WSFA about why this chapbookhasn’t appeared , but since I’m not a member ofWSFA, and thus can’t be expelled from theGillilands’ house, I have no idea why thechapbook hasn’t appeared.

Marty Helgesen: of course the most famousp e r s o n t o i d e n ti f y h e r s e l f a s a n“African-American” because she was born inMozambique was Teresa Heinz Kerry. I thoughther calling herself “African-American” was aspectacular act of tone-deafiiess, that showedthat even Bold Spirited Feminists like herselfcan, well, do some really stupid things.

Thanks for your review of Disinformation. Ishould say that as the indefatigable researcher,I didn’t write the book and I don’t agree withsome of Miniter’s conclusions. For example, Ioppose the Iraq War and oppose the rationalefor the Iraq War (that there were WMDs in


Iraq). But my job was to give my client the factsand let him draw his own conclusions. Forexample, it is fair to say that a) lots of peoplethought that Saddam had WMD s, including UNinspectors Richard Butler and Rolf Ekeus b)Saddam acted like he had WM Ds. It seems thatintelligence agencies took ambiguous evidenceabout WM Ds and smoothed out the ambiguities.

As for The World Was Going Our Way, I’dlove to know what the evidence was that theSVR was spreading disinformation about BinLaden having been paid by the CIA. Also, whatdo you think of Nigel West’s criticism of thisbook — that, unlike volume 1, it’s very hard totell what Mitrokhin’s evidence is vs.Christopher Andrew putting in speculations notbased on Mitrokbin material? I gather there isfar less Mitrokhin and far more Andrew involume 2 than in volume 1.

Andrew is a very good historian.I would find it amusing if he wereable to trick G. Gordon Liddy intohaving him as a guest on his popularradio talk show, because in hish i st o r y o f t h e A m e r i c anintelligence services, For thePresident’s Eyes Only (1995),Andrew cites Liddy’s antics as partof the inadequate understanding ofintelligence displayed by the Nixonadministration. But yes, it wouldbe better to show the Mitrokhinnotes “raw” and have Andrewfootnote them.

The Dan Brown item reminds me that whenI was in Scotland, the production of The DaVinci Code was filming in Roslyn Cathedral,which is apparently a Nexus of HiddenInformation. Now where did Mark “DeepThroat” Felt tell Bob Woodward the sordidsecrets of Watergate? In a garage in . . .Rosslyn. Coincidence — or conspiracy?

Yes, but where does BonniePrince Charlie, Master of theMasonic Blessing of England, whotransferred it to GeorgeWashington, come in? And whatabout the Babylonian Conspiracy tohand Silicon Valley over to thesaucerians? Inquiring minds wantto know.

— JTM

From: Dainis Bisenieks January 9, 2006921 S. St. Bernard Street, Philadelphia,PA 19143-3310 USA

Watch who you call erud ite, John Thiel! Iam not erudite. No . I have a jackdswaccumulation of knowledge not uncommonamong fans, plus a certain urge to understandsome matters and to make them clear without uundue verbiage. The natural length for some ofthese can be very short indeed. I recallwondering, long ago, how many words wererequired to point out that in The Lord of theRings, light was associated with good and

darkness with evil. More to the point, I seizedon the fact that the persons of the story singsongs and tell tales, on occasions when they didthe most good. Tolkien himself was found toilluminate the relation of work and play in “Leafby Niggle” . . . he reconciled the grasshopperand the ant.

It was no less to the point that the storieswere about heroes, who were remembered forthe best of reasons. In a later work, Le G uin’sThe Farthest Shore, an old man asks a youngman, “Which of the heroes is yours?” And theyoung man has a good answer. Howextraordinary!

How would I answer? The names that cometo mind are Flora Macdonald and JoshuaSlocum.

When [Thoralf Sørle] saw thethree men he stepped back and alook of disbelief came over hisface. For a long moment he stoodshocked and silent before hespoke.

“Who the hell are you?” he saidat last.

The man in the center steppedforward.

“My name is Shackleton,” hereplied in a quiet voice.

Again there was silence. Somesaid that Sørle turned away andwept.

— Endurance, Alfred Lansing

There is, by the way, an absolutely charmingbook Much Entertainment by Virginia Maclean,“A Visual and Culinary Record of Johnson andBoswell’s tour of Scotland in 1773” (N.Y.,Liveright, 1973). I will not elaborate; those whoseek it physically are alerted to the oblongformat, shared (incidentally) with The Eating-in-Bed Cookbook of Barbara Ninde Byfield,another precious possession.

But to return to our sheep, I mean to“erudition”: now for instance Christian Meier’sbiography of Caesar, of which I’ve managed toread some chapters, is a work of erudition. Heknows, and makes clear, what Romans thoughtof themselves; what kind of box they thought in,and how far Caesar was out of it.

On the other hand, he does not, as FletcherPratt did in his book, give an introductory

account of Vercingetorix in the style of theNorse saga. Nowhere does he dramatize:

He sat down. The startled senators,charmed dumb by reason where they hadexpected force, glared emptily, all ofthem sure they did not want that bill norany other, none of them able to findanything wrong with it. Then up sprangCato, yammering like a beagle. Hecould see it all; this apparently rationalproposal was the thin edge of a wedge.This Caesar was bribing his way into thegood graces of the populace with theRepublic’s money. And for whatpurpose? Yah! TO MAKE HIMSELFKING!

Alas, none of Pratt’s solo fiction is as goodas his historical writing. The style of The Wellof the Unicorn is opposed by the protagonist’scomplete lack of color.

I have at last seen the 50 th AnniversaryEdition of The Lord of the Rings, enough to readthe new front matter. Only then did I realizewhat lay behind what had puzzled me in 1965,when the revised second edition appeared: whythe revision did not include correction of certaintypos such as “described” for “descried”.Tolkien’s check copies were the first printings,in particular of FR, in which those typosoccurred. When the printers were asked to doa second printing, they said to one another,“Oop s! But let’s not tell anyone!” and set thewhole book anew, introducing those errors andsome other little changes. This remainedundiscovered for the longest time.

I was in a position to make the discovery asearly as 1959. M y first readings had been oflibrary copies of the American edition, wellknown to have been bound by Houghton M ifflinfrom sheets printed in England. Then, in 1959,I got a secondhand set from England of whichFR (and RK as well) was a first printing Whathappened, however, in Our Time Line, was thatI shortly gave the books to a young womanwhose elfin charm captivated me. Her responseto the books was everything it should have been;toward me she remained cool and eventuallymarried someone else. The marriage soonproved inharmonious; her letter telling of thispointedly asked nothing and offered nothing; butI took it upon myself to keep up a supply ofimaginative literature (Little, Big and To SayNothing of the Dog being among the highpoints). There was a hiatus; after my wife’sdeath I learned of her divorce. I can at leasthope that we can bring one another somehealing even if we remain apart (separatedgeographically by some five hundred miles).

I gave a set of LotR to a youngwoman whose e lven charmcaptivated me. But I am not theEmperor Claudius; the young womanis my niece, see.

Anyway, in the other leg of the Trousers ofTime I would have noticed, and I would nothave kept the knowledge to myself.


It is interesting that one error, “Elrond andHalfelven” (in Boromir’s account of theCouncil) is corrected.

The first-edition test is represented on myshelves by Betsy’s tattered copies of TT and RK;FR had fallen prey to a borrower and wasreplaced by a secondhand purchase, an oddvolume not breaking a set and the only one withthe dust jacket that some so dislike.

The earlier piecemeal correction of thebooks is a sad muddle. At a bookshop I spotteda copy of FR with an unfamiliar cover: it wasQPBC `95, and “Elrond and Halfelven” (inBoromir’s narrative) was still there! But “bride-price” and “descried” were OK. The exactcontrary is the case in the 1969 fourth printingof the Second Edition (British editio) which iswhat I ended with after several more sets left myhands. A later round of corrections isrepresented by trade paperbacks that I gotsecondhand; the Tolkien Estate is rich enoughwithout further contributions from me.

In the weekly Latvian newspaper appears acolumn by Frank Gordon (a longtime resident ofIsrael; he had been a journalist in Riga), devotedlargely to the iniquities and chauvinism ofRussians past and present, and the efforts of afew good men and women to declare the truth.His view is that the evils of Stalin’s rule werefully on a par with Hitler’s and should receivethe same attention. He tells of an exposé byMikhail Davidson in an Israeli-Russiannewspaper of the uranium mines in SovietTajikistan in which thousands of German POWsslaved away, none of whom ever emerged to tellof it. For their bosses and executioners theGermans had built a little town, Taboshar, in theBavarian style. Not far away was the refiningand enrichment facility of Chkalovsk, whichseems to have corresponded to the “Atomabad”of Francis Gary Powers’s map. No mention ismade of the place with the huge radiation spill;that must be some other place.

Atomsk? I have read the thriller, publishedaround 1947, by a certain Carmichael Smith, inwhich an American spy and saboteur infiltratessuch a facility and causes an explosion andradiation spill which was to severely discouragedevelopment of the Bomb. Tough luck — weknow that in reality the Soviets carried on at allcosts.

As you know, “CarmichaelSmith” was really the CIA advisorPaul Myron Anthony Linebarger,who was of course also known asCordwainer Smith. Atomsk isavailable on line as an ebook fromLinebarger’s daughter for $9.95:

http://www.cordwainer-smith.com/atomsk.htm

It is known that the Soviets kept theirGerman and Japanese PO Ws for years andyears; sadly diminished numbers ever returend.The figures for Stalingrad , not exactlyrepresentative, are known to me. There was acertain justice in putting prisoners to work, butno mercy and no sense in compelling them towork under inhuman conditions. A

correspondent in Komsomolsk-on-Amur lives(last I heard) on Pervostro itelei Avenue —“First Builders”, a name redolent of Sovietism.But a great many of those first builders wereJapanese POWs.

“Jeopardy” seems to mention BenjaminFranklin in either a question or an answer atleast once a week. Can this be deliberate? Iwas thinking of this only the other day, and Ituned in a few minutes late, just in time to hearthe name!

It’s his three hundredthbirthday. All right, for fourhundred: 72.

What was Ben Franklin’s agentnumber for Br itish Intelligence?

— JTM

From: Rod E. Smith January 17, 2006730 Cline Street, Frankfort, KY 40601-1034 [email protected]

In re. Exploring the New World: I knew itwasn’t long before the first “I can do it too!”trip. I’m still surprised that was so soon. Buteven major looting took time to organize, andproper exploitation longer still.

Carol Clarke: I loved Infinity Inc., and feelit was sabotaged by the changes madethroughout DC to accomodate the Crisis. BTW,the villain was Brainwave (and the heroBrainwave, Jr.) rather than Brainiac.

R e a d i n g s o m e o f y o u r o t h e rrecommendations, we seem to have similartastes.

Robert S. Kennedy notes that Dan Brownwill use Freemasons as villains in an upcomingbook. A rogue “secret branch” were majorvillains in several of the Wild Cards books.

Marty Helgesen notes Caucasians born inAfrica attempting to claim African-Americanstatus. On a related note, in one of my stories Ihave a dark-skinned man claiming to beCaucasian, because he was born in the CaucasusMountains.

Consider, for example, theRussian version of Kafka’s “TheMetamorphosis”: “One morning, asGrigori Samsov was waking up fromanxious dreams, he discovered thathe had been changed into a giganticArmenian.” Russian slang for peoplefrom the Caucasus is tarakan,“cockroach”. So this means thatall white people are bugs.

— JTM

JTM comments about the problems ofbuilding a new bridge across the Ohio River inLouisville. I actually worked on one of thoseprojects, about 15 years ago. There just isn’t anygood place to do this. Locations which meet thecriteria for not disturbing existing homes orinfrastructure are too far from town to helpmuch. I haven’t done that kind of work in a longtime, so I don’t have any inside informationabout the current effort, but I suspect thedesigners just wound up choosing the least badalternative.

From: Sheryl Birkhead January 12, 200622509 Jonnie Court, Gaithersburg, MD20882-3422 [email protected]

Greetings — now I’m sure I have at leasttwo issues of Alexiad here somewhere — butsince I just “found” the October ish, I’ll goahead.

It will be heartbreaking and interesting to seewhat happens to/with New Orleans. On the onehand, it is a flood area; on the other hand it is aunique culture. No matter what happens, it wasunforgivable what happened (or did not). We’llsee.

I just noticed a Reeses cup that says“Caramel” — luckily, such a combo doesn’ttempt me. I’m going cold turkey — nochocolate as chocolate — but I am a chocoholic,so once I start again . . . sigh.

Repeat after me: “My name isCheryl B and I am a chocoholic.”Then you can have a Klondikedouble chocolate ice cream bar.

We have the Grand M aster Award, but Iwonder if a lifetime Hugo might have to begiven posthumously. Ummm — not exactly aplus!

My sister (who is not a chocolate fan) neverseemed to like breakfast — ao my mother wouldbake a $300 cake (moist, heavy dark choc!cake), ice it, slice and freeze it. For somereason that became a frequent breakfast on therun (the cake issometimes called a mayonnaisecake — but we use Miracle Whip).

My neighbor has a Prius and loves it. MyMatrix (solely internal combustion) is stillgetting 30-36 m pg, so I’ll settle. I’d looked atthe Prius but needed a car now and they weredoing some heavy changing in design, and Ididn’t want to wait the extra few months.

Trinlay — hope you can (or am I too late?)put art in the con Randy Cherry contacted you toparticipate.

To those eligible — remember, it is time,once again, to start thinking about Hugonominations. If you nominate, stick to thecategories you know, and in those categories,fill in all the blanks — spread that egobooaround!

And nowadays, with the conhaving nomination forms on the


Internet, there really isn’t muchexcuse for any member not beingable to nominate. But the numbersof those who do are so low.

— JTM

From: Lloyd Penney January 25, 20061706-24 Eva Road, Etobicoke, ON M 9C2B2 [email protected]

It’s time for my usual catch-up efforts.They’re often successful, especially whenresponding to a zine that has an advertiseddeadline, as you do. Here’s some fast commentson Alexiad, WN24.

I haven’t heard much from any of the bids,mostly because we haven’t supported any ofthem. There’s been little information coming outof Montreal; they’ve almost been secretive, andthis comes from some Montreal fans. I amhopeful that with local conventions starting in afew months, there will be more info comingfrom Anticipation. I might also wind up gettingsupportings for Chicago in 2008.

There haven’t been any new bidsin the past year or two, but I thinkit may be because of the shift totwo years lead time. Perhaps byLACon there’ll be something.

— JTM

Henry Welch didn’t seem all that happy withDitto in 2005, but it does seem that those whodid go had a weekend to remember. With all thefood to be enjoyed, perhaps fanzines were asecondary interest that weekend? I will finallybe able to get to a Corflu . . . with it being intown this year, I can at least say that.

My loc…there should be something aboutnominating for this year’s Auroras. They arebeing awarded this year at Toronto Trek, thelocal mediacon. But, no ballots yet. I expectthey may not appear until March or April. Ithink the idea of having to have passports to getacross the border is being shelved in favour ofsome kind of identity card, with a bar code ormagnetic strip, and it’s been put off to 2008,iirc.

Sue Burke mentions a Star Trek fanfilm…I’ve been told about a similar fan film tobe shot in Toronto, and I’ve been asked if I’dlike to participate. Sure, why not? Overact infront of a camera? I am so there . . .

It’s not much, but I didn’t have much time.I can try to promise to do a little better the nexttime around.

From: Sue Burke January 27, 2006c. Agustín Querol, 6 bis - 6 D, 28014Madrid, SPAINwww.sue.burke.name

Leonor de Todos los Santos de Borbon yOrtiz was baptized at 1:10 p.m. Saturday,January 14, 2006, at the Zarzuela Palace byArchbishop Antonio Rouco Varela with waterfrom the River Jordan using the 12th centurybaptismal font reserved for future rulers of

Spain. It was an intimate affair attended by onlya hundred people, including family members,heads of Spain’s government, the doctors whoattended the birth, and a whole lot of newsmedia. The name Todos los Santos (All Saints)is traditional for royals in Spain, but unlikeother relatives, she did not get a long string ofadditional middle names. The fat-cheeked,fuzzy-headed, blue-eyed future queen, who sleptthrough almost the entire ceremony, goes simplyas Princess Leonor. Her godparents are KingJuan Carlos I and Queen Sofíía.

JTM thought that the other pretenders to thethrone might have some interesting comments.Maybe they did, but no one cares. When he washead of state, Generalisimo Francisco Franconamed don Juan Carlos as his legitimatesuccessor, and though Franco is still dead (Ihave visited his grave to be sure), his ghost isstill alive and busy; if you know where to look,you can see it often.

If that were not enough, the SpanishConstitution, Article 57, paragraph 1 says (mytranslation): “The Crown of Spain is theinheritance of the successors of His Majesty donJuan Carlos I de Borbon, legitimate heir of thehistoric dynasty.” So to change the lineage,you’d have to change the Constitution and/orstart another civil war.

And the Act of Successionlimits the succession to the BritishThrone to the heir of KurfürstinSophia. That hasn’t stoppedJacobites one whit; I see themgoing on about what King Franciswill or won’t do . . .

(By the way, Article 56, Paragraph 3 says,“The personage of the King is inviolable and isnot subject to responsibility.” This means thatno matter what he [or she] does, you can’t takehim to court, much less throw him in jail. TheKing is above reproach and the law.) Thebaptism, carried live on television, captured25% of the viewing public.

Speaking of television, Channel Cuatro justfinished showing the series “Roma,” theHBO-BBC epic super-production. Dubbed intoSpanish, of course. My husband, who is ahistory buff, watched it and reported there wasa lot of sex, violence, and nasty politics. Everynow and then, I’d pause in my writing andwander through the living room, and thatseemed to be true. We live in the former RomanEmpire, and I can testify that these days there issomewhat less sex and violence, but the politicsare still pretty brutal.

My favorite TV show is “Cuentame comopaso” (Tell Me How It Happened), the story ofa Madrid family during the late Franco years,www.cuentamecomopaso.net/. In a recentepisode, they recreated the 1973 assassination ofLuis Carrero Blanco by Basque terrorists. At thetime Carrero was the president of Spain (Francowas semi-retired), and he was scheming withthen-Prince Juan Carlos to make Spain ademocracy when Franco died because don JuanCarlos wanted to reign over a free people —plans that the Prince managed to keep from

Franco. His Highness was meeting in secret withpolitical activists to arrange a peacefultransition, and they were being smuggled intohis palace in the trunks of cars or disguised aspizza delivery guys on motorcycles wearinghelmets.

The show “Cuentame,” however, deals withfamily problems, though often tinged by thetimes. The father struggles to support his familydespite the corruption that dictatorships seem toengender. The pubescent son is hopelesslygirl-crazy, though the girl he loves is pro-Fascistand the boy leans toward the liberal politics ofhis family; his grandfather was executed byFascists during the Civil War. In this season,the overarching issue was that theirneighborhood faced demolition to build theM-30 freeway. At the last minute, theneighborhood’s patron saint, San Genaro,caused a spring to bubble up and make theground unstable so the road had to be builtelsewhere. At least, that’s how the residents ofthis fictional neighborhood tell people ithappened; the viewer may believe a lessmiraculous version. There is quite an aquifer inMadrid — hence its name, which means “manysprings.”

The patron saint of my neighborhood is theVirgin of Atocha, www.dominicos.org/atocha/,who is also the patroness of the royal family.The 7th century statue is carried in solemnprocession through the neighborhood in earlyNovember, dressed in splendid robes made fromthe wedding gowns of various queens of Spain.Although we are not Catholics, my husband andI go to the procession to applaud and cheer asshe goes by. The current mayor of Madrid isoverly fond of public works projects, and younever know when you may need friends in veryhigh places.

And right now someone is suingbecause a new state historicalmarker in Louisville mentions theappearance of the Virgin Mary atLourdes. [“That Dreyfus, such anice boy; but oy, such troubles hehas, I wouldn’t wish them on myworst enemy!”]

— JTM

From: Richard Dengrove January 28, 20062651 Arlington Drive, #302, Alexandria,VA 22306- [email protected]

As with all the Alexiads, I enjoyed AlexiadDec. 2005 because there were so many commenthooks.

This first comment is in reply to somecomment hooks by both of you. It concernsArabs. I disagree with Lisa on why the Arabshave come here. I am not certain they haven’tcome here to work and build, like the Hispanicshave. I do not know how things are inLouisville, but I see plenty of Moslem Arabsliving and working in the D.C. area.

Also, I have seen a lot of signs ofassimilation which aren’t reported in the media.Some have been striking. I remember seeing an


Arab boy grooving to rock with an iPod to hisear. He was wearing those awful baggy pantswith the low crotch and his t-shirt read “SaudiUSA.”

Another sign was a young woman I saw at amall a year or two ago. She was wearing ahijab, the kerchief which, among M oslems, issupposed to be a sign of modesty. Also, she waswearing a stylish pantsuit, which clashed a bitwith the hijab. What really clashed, though, wasthe enormous padded bra she wore on her verypetite figure.

Another sign of assimilation, I have heardabout. My friend Larry is far more OrthodoxJewish than I am. He had his son in Jewish dayschool for a time. Right now, however, one ofhis son’s close friends is a Palestinian kid,named Baha. Larry doesn’t seem to mind it.That, I guess, is the way the area is.

Another sign of assimilation takes a d ifferentapproach. W hen I was at Toastmasters’ OfficerTraining recently, the woman who taught thesecretary and treasurer’s course wore a hijab.Also, a rather flowing pantsuit. I associateflowing clothes with the Middle East. Thatwould show that she wasn’t assimilating exceptfor one thing. Because her skin was whiter thansnow and her accent distinctly Midwestern, Ihad her pegged as an Anglo. It was the otherside of the coin of assimilation. She was anAnglo assimilating Arab ways. Probablymarried to an Arab.

Many of us are assimilating Arab culture,though to a much much lesser extent. Hummusanyone?

By the way, she didn’t seem to be a doormat.In fact, she was an articulate speaker and gave alively course. Go figure.

This is not to say that there isn’t terrorismand Arab fundamentalism isn’t on the rise. Also,this isn’t to say I wouldn’t be bitter, like BatYe’or, if I were an Egyptian Jew.

In fact, I suspect that assimilation mightbring on terrorism. Arabs, like all of us, aresubject to conflicting forces. In their case, bothWesternization and tradition, i.e., intense actionand intense reaction.

Having had my say about Arabs, I figure theabove sets the tone of my letter. The idea behindit seems to be to tell people they are wrong andcorrect them.

Something that will, of course, make meincredibly popular. In the case of the seriesRome, I am going to give this criticism: Joe, youshould have included a program, like for plays,to keep track of the characters. Any plotsummary would have to be confusing becausethere were too many characters in Rome.

I bet this criticism is going to make meespecially popular because you have finishedyour plot summary of Rome, and are going on toreview other shows, books, etc.

Also, I want to criticize you, Joe, formentioning Yarbro’s Ragozy Francisco deSaint-Germain and not mentioning this:according to A.E. Waite, the real CountSaint-Germain, the actual person behind legendand fiction, was associated with the nameRagozy.

Waite believed the good count when he said

he was the son of Prince Rakoczy ofTransylvania. Since legend claims that the goodcount lived thousands of years, it is easy in theearly 21st Century to see how someone, withthis information, could turn him into a vampire.

If the real Comte de St-Germain, the king’s minister of war,had gone to Ankh-Morpork, no onewould have noticed, and who wasthis Hungarian poseur anyhow?

Why should you have given this informationwhen you were just mentioning the name inpassing as a lark? People, like me, who arehypercritical do not have to give reasons forbeing hypercritical.

Another criticism is that the Norwegianwhale ship Sir John Ross was not the only timethe Norwegians took to Anglo names. Theadministrative center of Svalbard, a Norwegianpossession, is Longyearbyen. It is named after aMr. Longyear. He was an American who had acoal operation there at one time.

Of course, it doesn’t matter that you d idn’tsay that there weren’t other examples besidesthe Sir John Ross.

Like, for example, the SirJames Clark Ross.

You, Joe, aren’t the only one I am go ing tocriticize. I am going to criticize Trinlay Khadro.In fact, I can criticize her more easily. I didn’tsay that skull size was a sign of intelligence. Isaid that was what they said in the old days.

Of course, misinterpreting words is easy. Inthe old days, people would have criticized mefor saying that size had nothing to do withintelligence. People are looking for faults. Seekand ye shall find.

I myself have done my own misinterpreting.I have twice gotten angry about an offendingpassage, re-read it, and found it was notoffending after all.

Then there is E.B. Frohvet’s comment to me.While I agree with him, even on my firstreading, I still will find fault with that commentnonetheless. I admit that teenagers have beenmaking up new slang, music, etc. forgenerations to piss off their elders. I did it topiss off my elders. On the other hand, I was verytaken aback when they took umbrage at it.

I guess that’s a criticism.Also, I guess that’s it for criticisms this time.

Correct me if I’m wrong.

From: Marty Helgesen January 31, 200611 Lawrence Avenue, Malverne, NewYork 11565-1406 [email protected]

Reviewing the latest Flashman book Joe saysthat when Henry M. Stanley appears he does notsay, “Sir Harry Flashman, I presume”. Thatreminded me that some years ago inMINNEAPA Doug Hoylman asked if anyoneknew what Livingstone replied to the originalquestion, adding that it was not, “You certainlydo, young man.” I looked it up and , as I recall,

found a statement that it was “Yes, that is myname”. If that was what I found, it may havecome from an account by Livingstone.Nowadays the web makes it easy to find thingslike that. Here is an excerpt from How I FoundLivingstone by Sir Henry M . Stanley:

“So I did that which I thought wasmost dignified. I pushed back thecrowds, and, passing from the rear,walked down a living avenue of peopleuntil I came in front of the semicircle ofArabs, in the front of which stood thewhite man with the grey beard. As Iadvanced slowly towards him, I noticedhe was pale, looked wearied, had a greybeard, wore a bluish cap with a fadedgold band round it, had on a red-sleevedwaistcoat and a pair of grey tweedtrousers. I would have run to him, only Iwas a coward in the presence of such amob — would have embraced him, onlyhe being an Englishman, I did not knowhow he would receive me; so I did whatcowardice and false pride suggested wasthe best thing — walked deliberately tohim, took off my hat, and said: —

‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’‘Yes,’ said he, with a kind smile,

lifting his cap slightly.“I replace my hat on my head, and he

puts on his cap, and we both grasphands, and I then say aloud:

— ‘I thank God, Doctor, I have beenpermitted to see you.’ He answered, ‘Ifeel thankful that I am here to welcomeyou.’”

The review of Storms, Ice, and Whales is anoccasion to mention that several years ago at alocal whaling museum I saw an old, black andwhite silent movie documentary (with a soundtrack of instrumental sea chanteys added) of areal whaling voyage on an sailing ship. Thewhole thing was interesting, but what impressedme was a real Nantucket sleighride pulled by aharpooned whale. I hadn’t realized there weremovies of any of them.

When we were in San Antoniofor WorldCon we went to themuseum there and discovered thatthey had a movie of a buffalo huntby Indians. It had been recreatedfor the filming, but nevertheless itwas a real hunt by real Indians.

Commenting on Trinlay Khadro’s letter, Joeasks what she does about phishing e-mails abouther eBay account. I forward phishing e-mailsa b o u t m y n o n-ex is ten t a c c o u n t t [email protected]. Similarly I forward e-mailspurporting to come from PayPa l [email protected]. I have those addresses in allof my e-mail accounts so it’s easy to do and itmight help the companies to find and prosecutethe phishers.

Trinlay comments on Rodney Leighton’smention of “that old saw about all knowledgebeing found in fanzines”, “I heard it was All


knowledge is contained in fandom.” ApparentlyCharles Burbee originally said, “All knowledgeis contained in fanzines”, but the expressionlater was expanded. Even before the Internetthere were fans who were interested in clubs andconventions but not fanzines.

And now they ’re themainstream, while fanzine fans arethe fringefen.

She asks about the fundamentalists’ problemwith evolution. Young Earth Creationists, whothink the Bible gives an exact chronology of thehistory of the universe with no gaps say there’sno time for evolution to have occurred, but, sofar as I know, they are a minority. It seems thatone major objection is not to evolution in itself,but to the claims by some writers and,apparently, some teachers and textbooks thatevolution eliminates the need for a creator at all.A standard oversimplified reply to that claim isthat the survival of the fittest does not explainthe arrival of the fittest.

Robert S. Kennedy mentions beinginundated by pornographic emails. I used toreport spam offering pornography by using theM a k e a R e p o r t f o r m a thttp://www.obscenitycrimes.org to send theURLs contained in porn spam. I have the reportform itself bookmarked. The people there willfile a complaint with my local U.S. Attorney. Ihaven’t done it recently because all the pornspam I’ve been getting has long strings of lettersand numbers in the URLs. In the past I got somewith my e-mail address in the URL, apparentlyso the senders could see who responded even ifhe didn’t buy anything. It occurred to me thatthose long strings could include a codedpersonal identifier so I just delete those. If I getany without an identifier I’ll forward them.

The last phishing spam I gotbegan, “Your account was take by athird part!” I know the standardof literacy in America is nil butthis is too much for even thecredulous people who sent moneyto help Malgorzata Wojtyla get thedeposit of her husband the latePope out of Italy to believe.

No, the reason the idea of the book FightingSail being a biography of Fulton led me to thinkof a temporally dislocated Ralph Kramdenarguing against Fulton was Kramden’s frequentstatement to his wife, “Don’t steam me, Alice!”

I see from Al du Pisani’s letter that theproblem of judges usurping legislative power —rewriting laws and amending constitutions underthe increasingly transparent pretext ofinterpreting them — is a world wide problem.

Here are some belated comments on theAugust issue, which I somehow missedcommenting on at the time:

At the end of a review of a book about thepossibility of alien life and extraterrestrialintelligence E. B. Frohvet says the author“suffers from the usual open-minded person’sinability to grasp that nearly all of organized

religion would reject the idea outright regardlessof the evidence. The Vatican will declare thesubject needs twenty years of study and thatonly elderly white male theologians arecompetent to have an opinion.”

Catholic theologians have already said thereis no reason why God could not have createdother intelligent species throughout the universe.A modern theologian discussing the questionwrote, “Cardinal Nicolo Cusano (1401-1464)wrote that there is not a single star in the skyabout which we can rule out the existence oflife, even if different from ours.” At the popularlevel, over the years I have seen manyquotations by Catholic writers from the poem“Christ in the Universe” by Alice M eynell(1847-1922), an English Catholic poet andsuffragette, which contemplated the possibilityof God becoming incarnate in many formsthroughout the universe. It concludes,

But in the eternities, Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O, be prepared, my soul!To read the inconceivable, to scan The myriad forms of God those stars unrollWhen, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

Sheryl Birkhead asks what Wikipediaactually stands for. According to Wikipediaitself, it got the name because it uses “a type ofsoftware called a ‘wiki’, a term originally usedfor the WikiWikiWeb and derived from theHawaiian Wiki Wiki, which means ‘quick’.”

Richard Dengrove says that people becomeatheists because of the evils in the world. Aftermentioning a few evils he writes, “To believethese things aren’t the case takes faith.” ButChristians do not deny that evil exists. We saythat God permits the evils and we try tounderstand why. In one sense we will neverunderstand it, at least not in this life, but wedon’t understand all of the physical universeeither. Why should we think we can understandthe infinite God who created it?

I don’t even understand otherpeople.

— JTM

From: AL du Pisani January 31, 2006945 Grand Prix Street, Weltevredenpark1709, Republic of South [email protected]

I am well. Not as good as I had hoped, butstill things are not too bad.

I had a wonderful holiday over Christmas. Ispent the best part of three weeks resting out atmy family’s shack by the sea. They were allthere, and it was a good time to catch up with allthey are doing.

Back at work, and unfortunately, things arecontinuing their old miserable way. I wantthings to change, if necessary by taking thegeographic cure. But I have as yet been unableto find a new job. It looks as if I would have to

find something else to do, as there is no marketfor my current skill set.

In South Africa, the current news is the localgovernment elections of 1 March. Since the newyear, election posters have gone up all along theroads, and in some places a second round ofposters have gone up. The ANC is campaigningon the ticket of “Give us another chance”, andtheir opponents on the ticket of “You have hadyour chance, now it is time for somebody else.”

The core issue at hand is service delivery:The ANC controlled municipalities have had alot of trouble delivering the services they hadpromised, with large amounts of moneydisappearing in the process. This have lead toriots, with people toyi-toying in the streets andburning tyres.

At the same time, our new Deputy Presidentgot into a lot of hot water, when it came out thatshe used Government resources to go overseasand take a holiday at the taxpayers’ expense. Tothe tune of R700 000. (Enough to buy a threebedroom house in my area of Johannesburg.)This, while it may have been legal andaccording to the rules, was not the behaviourthat somebody who claims to be all for the poor,was expected to show.

We seem to be stumbling into darkness, butcarrying some light. I hope and pray that weemerge into the light once again.

Sounds like you’re having anAmerican-style election.

— JTM

WAHF:Lloyd Daub, with various items ofinterest.


CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVEby Paul Gadzikowski.

“How the Brigadier Met theEnglish Colonel”, or:

Flashman and the Frog(Part Four)

It was the old Brigadier who was talking in thecafé.

I see where the Soviets have renamed theircity of steel. Ah, Stalingrad! It was a ruin then,but I would gladly raise a glass to the braveRussians there. They suffered so, with little toeat and drink — you are a true friend, and a trueNorman, to order this excellent Calvados!

You must know, then, that barely had mywounds gained during my desperate and daringincursion into Indochina healed, but that I wasdispatched to take a special message to ourNormandie-Niemen Squadron, upon the steppesof Russia. But when I had returned to Moscowto get my papers, the distinguished ambassadorsummoned me to his office, with most desperatenews. “Gérard,” he said, “In the city ofStalingrad, under siege by the Boche even as wespeak, is a French cipher machine, buried underthe floor of the consulate when the staff wasevacuated.

“It must be recovered if possible, destroyedif necessary. There is but one man I know ofwho can essay this. Can you do it, Gérard?”

There was but one answer I could make. “Iam at your orders, Monsieur le Ambassadeur.”

Within the hour I was on a train south. Thegallant Russians made my path as easy as theycould, but the journey was still arduous. It wasupon the fourth day that I reached the far bankof the frozen Volga, and there my fortune,which had been good that far, turned mostexcellent.

The hardest part of hiding in that “comfortwomen station” the Japanese had was not beingable to have one. The girls had to be ready atany moment, you see, and their clients wouldcome in at all hours of the day and night. Notthat I was in more than ordinary danger. Theywere Koreans and Chinese to a woman, you see,hated the Nips, and never would have turned mein. But that was all they could do. If any ofthem had actually tried something, well the Nipofficers could always use sword practice.

I did get a good-bye romp when that one girlfigured we could make a break, and we gotGérard out of his hidey-hole under the officersclub. If I’d left him it would have looked bad,you see. The three of us got into China, whereshe took up with some Nationalist general, andwe got flown out by that Yank lout Chennault.

Eventually I got home again, reported in tothe Firm, and hoped to settle down. I shouldhave stayed with the comfort women, I wouldhave been in less danger.

Some ass in the Foreign Office had beenworking with the Chechens during theirRevolution, and was absolutely persuaded thatthey would make splendid fighting material. Igot dispatched there with a letter to his oldfriends urging them to rise up against the nastyold Nazis.

Now the journey there was comparativelyeasy, but of course all his old friends had beenliquidated as agents of imperialism. I lookedaround for a few days, made the acquaintance ofa young widow who spoke a little Russian andneeded some consolation, and then took offwhen the German offensive got near.

Flying was a little tricky, so I had to go bymotorcar. During the first day’s trip, my driverstopped for a baggy figure in uniform, whichturned out to be a sniper on leave. Once she gotthat winter coat off she was quite young andshapely, most willing to help an Ally.

All would have been well had Olga not beengoing to Stalingrad. There, as we were sayinggoodbye on the shore of the Volga, my lucktook a turn for the worse, as it usually does.

I heard that all too familiar voice of doomring out, “Why if it is not the CommandantFlashman!” I tried to put on a smile as I turnedto confront him. “Gérard,” says I with insincerewelcome. “What brings you here?”

The brave Commandant Flashman was mostwilling to be of assistance, and had the aid of abrave Russian soldier to help us get through theBoche lines. And so we demonstrated again theGrand Alliance of the Nations U nited . . .

— Not edited (or “edited”) by Sir Arthur ConanDoyle or George Macdonald Fraser

Co-Editors: Lisa & Joseph MajorCo-Publishers: Joseph & Lisa MajorWriters, Staff: Major, Joseph & Major,

Lisa

Art: What we are mainly looking for issmall fillos. Your fillo will probably be scannedin and may be reused , unless you object to itsreuse.

Contributions: This is not a fictionzine. Itis intended to be our fanzine, so be interesting.

Material in Alexiad is copyright © 2006.All rights reserved. Upon publication, all rightsrevert to the original contributor, but we reservethe right to use any item more than once, unlessotherwise specified by the contributor. Allletters sent to Alexiad become the property ofthe publishers. Any material by the editors isavailable to other fanzines if they provideproper credit and send a copy.

Available for The Usual (letter of comment,trade, contribution). Sample issue availableupon request. Back issues $1; subscrip tion$10/year. Alexiad is also availab le by email ineither text or Adobe Acrobat .pdf format.

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