H. J. Popowski

John W. Campbell Revisited

Posted: 07/28/2008

John W. Campbell, who wrote under the name Don A. Stuart, was the long-time—1939-1971—editor of Astounding Stories (later renamed Analog Magazine).  During the decades of his editorial career, he ‘discovered’ Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, E.E. Smith, Ron Goulart, A.E. van Vogt, Phil Graham, and L. Ron Hubbard, to name only a few.             But it was Campbell’s editorializing I remember most.  Every month, Analog would have a new Campbell editorial, guaranteed to warp your outlook on life.  Because John Campbell made it his policy to champion the Devil’s Advocate side of any issue.  And he did it with ruthless logic.  For doing so of course he has been stigmatized as variously (depending on who is doing the reading) a racist, a neo con, pro-slavery, pro welfare, war-mongering, peace freak.  He loved each and every slur.  Because if he wasn’t being pelted with fruit and garbage by a torch and pitchfork carrying mob, it meant he wasn’t being read.  And if he wasn’t being read, no one was buying Analog.             I recently found an excerpt of one of Campbell’s letters.  In it he writes to Lurton Blassingame, Hollywood writer, founder of the American Library Foundation, literary agent for Frank Herbert and Rosemary Taylor, about the craft of writing fiction.  The letter is worth a read:   “The real suasion power of fiction lies, and always has lain, in the non-logical solution to the old logical paradox, "Epaminondas, the Cretan, says `All Cretans always lie.'"  The more fiction is kept at the level of fiction, the more the reader is forced to accept that any conclusions he reaches from the words of a professed liar are his own, personal conclusions, and that he, not the author, has reached that conclusion.  Jesus used parables –fictions— because what any listener derives from a fiction is the listener's own thought. And that sticks far deeper and tighter than the ideas of an external mind.  Properly done, you could produce a profound anti-Nazi feeling in the reader by telling a story 100% from the viewpoint of a dedicated, fervent Nazi.             Here I fear Bob[ Heinlein] is going to induce considerable anti-patriotism in a lot of readers by telling a story from the viewpoint of a 100% dedicated patriot. Therefore, the points with which I agree with Bob in full make me uncomfortable when presented in this overly-homiletic fashion. And there are points with which I disagree very strongly —including, as a matter of fact, his fundamental thesis-point. That shooting-war is, was, and forever will be, amen.             That thesis produces a decidedly down-beat, hopeless, what's-the-use-of-this-old-cycle-again feeling. And I have reason to believe it's false.  Bob bases his proposition on "A living organism that does not grow, dies. Therefore the existence of two or more organisms in the Universe inescapably implies physical combat."  Not true. It does imply competition —but not necessarily physical. Primitive organisms do, in truth, have to grow physically or die; higher organisms have discovered ways of growth that are nonphysical, and so can cease physical growth. We do not need new territory, if we can develop new dimensions. The saurians tried the route of unlimited physical size —and were licked by small mammals, who tried unlimited adaptability instead. E. E. Smith, in his Lensman series, suggested other directions of growth. Smith's "Lensmen" could have handled the "Bug War" with neatness and dispatch; the "Bugs" were ruled entirely by a few brain-Bugs. The Lensmen, by controlling mentally a few of those directive intelligences, could have made all the physical weapons of all Bug Warriors totally futile —because intelligence was concentrated so completely that the whole race could be paralyzed by reaching a few control centers… The physical aspect is absolutely necessary…If you assume…that it is both necessary and sufficient, then we might as well quit trying now, because physical powers we already have, and there's no place else to go. We can "make lace" —we can grow Bigger and Better Brontosaurs— but there is no higher level of reality to explore. Physical war is inevitable . . . if only physical techniques are real. They are real; Rome did destroy Carthage physically.  But the Glory of Rome wasn't destroyed physically; the Rome that was Rome —the real, dynamic entity— was dead, and had been dead for centuries when the Goths and Vandals started carving for dinner.  A prefrontal lobotomy doesn't destroy the physical man, any more than the loss of a finger does. But. If you've ever had the experience of dealing with a lobotomized . . . he's dead. Deader than any corpse. France wasn't destroyed physically. The Germans, English, and others tried hard, but they didn't achieve their intent.  The United States did more to kill France than any other nation . . . and we weren't even trying! . . . But when you discover weapons vastly more efficient than your teeth, you stop biting. When you find techniques of destroying an enemy that are more efficient than cutting, burning, or blasting him . . . you stop that method.  War as we've known it is about through. There are more efficient techniques.  Brain-washing isn't physical torture, you know . . . but it's very effective. Men stopped killing off the enemy tribe . . . when they learned how to enslave them. The new weapons aren't piddling little thermonuclear bombs; those are ineffective. Spankings for primitive tribes, and small children, yes. But for older children, a tongue-lashing--when well done--is more dreaded than a spanking. It's a weapon that cuts deeper.             For more mature tribes . . . being made to recognize their own stupidity is more effective than being spanked physically.             Without the proposition that we are going somewhere now . . . the upbeat push that fiction needs to fulfill its job of stimulating people to try for something better than we have, or have had. Regards, John W. Campbell, Jr.”

The Guns of Kitty Feller I

Posted: 07/25/2008

This week’s GGP (Gratuitous Gun Porn) features the Kathleen Mahoney Feller’s Colt 1884 Lightning Magazine Rifle chambered in the non-standard 32-40 Winchester cartridge.  The usual chambering was the 32-20 but Kathleen wanted something wi9th a little more power.  Whether she purchased the rifle in the non-standard chambering from Colt or had Ruckerman do the work in Yankton, it remains the rifle she used for table meat for the rest of her life.  She also used it to defend her children on at least one occasion—but that’s part of another story entirely.  Henry was allowed—ordered—to use the Lightning instead of his bigger 405 to save damage on the meat.  And it was also the rifle he used in his war against the coyotes.   The 32-40 was introduced in 1884 as a target cartridge in the Ballard Union Hill Rifle No 8. In that loading it drove a 165gr lead bullet in front of 40 gr of black powder at a little over 1400 fps and established a reputation for fine accuracy.  In 1886 Winchester and Marlin added it to their lever action and single shot lines.  Discontinued in the 1930s, Winchester renewed manufacture of this cartridge in the 1980s, offering it as a chambering in the John Wayne Commemorative Rifle.  When used in a strong action the 32-40 is the equivalent of the venerable 30-30 as well as most other modern high powered cartridges out to 300 yds.  As it is it was popular for medium game up to large deer.  And for small to medium game and varmints it did very well out to moderate ranges.   The Colt Lightning Rifle has had a rebirth due to the rapid growth of the Cowboy Action Shooting sport and is now being manufactured by several makers, foreign and domestic, in a moderate price range.

A message from Jeane

Posted: 07/23/2008

Jeane Heimberger Candido graciously sent a review of All A Young Man, which because of the space limitations had to be cut to the requisite 100 words-or-Less. Not that I need a great deal of ego building or anything, but here is the review in its entirety:  All A Young Man Could Ask For is the first of two volumes (Haya Safari is due in autumn of 2008) that makes the reader a second self in the life story of Henry Feller. (Not his conscience because Henry is not a saint, but given the challenges, opportunity, and temptations of the times, always walking the safe side of the Ten Commandments could deprive a young man of an unguarded leap turning to a splendid adventure.)    Henry is born of two spirits: the old German immigrant who found the brutal hardships of the bitter northern Great Prairie better than the rigid caste system of the old country, and the emerging American spirit of the post Civil War Period—robust, sometimes ruthless, and opportunistic making men and women in a like mold—no excuses, alibis, or apologies. He had good examples in his grandfathers and their comrades who had honed their military steel and sharpness to build the railroads, the hotels, the farms and commerce to settle the great rolling grasslands. Opportunities to get by were found everywhere even to have their way with the easterners, the Congress, the conglomerates, and Europeans who would play them for hicks and fools. If they were not self-made men, they certainly understood that they must meet their Creator half way in the process of building the kind of inner man that made them the even match for the times. As broad as the Prairie was, Henry mastered his place in it to his satisfaction at quite a young age and left to find his way in the world as a journalist. He never looked back. One challenge led to the next to the hard side of the experience—hip deep and muzzle to muzzle. On one side the insurrections of China, the Philippines and Cuba, and on the other the U.S. military presence and unyielding authority of Pershing and MacArthur—men up and coming into their own places in history. Henry approached every man and woman at eye level gaining respect and giving it on the same measure as it was proved to his satisfaction. And so when the assignment came to accompany the former President Theodore Roosevelt on the great African Safari, Henry had the brass—and with reason—the judgment to see the legend for what he was and to write about his weaknesses as well as superlative strengths. Henry had come a long way in a very short time—those times counted for two and three years to one—but it was all a proving time for the journalist caught in the enemy’s camp in a remote corner of World War I and Africa that would be Haya Safari. I have known Howard Popowski for over twenty years.  He is a master story teller, musician (fifer for the acclaimed Camp Chase Fifes and Drums), historian, and writer. But of all these, I think I love historian/story-teller the best, because he could always enrapture us with the tiniest, unknown facts that were to prove pivotal to the stories of great men and women, and their achievements. He is a husband, a  marksman, father of a Marine, grandfather and generous friend. Of that last quality I can firmly attest.   It has taken fifteen years of constant nagging by his wife Judy and me to get these books into print. But the result is spell-binding for its quality writing, research, and understated humor. The reader is so absorbed in Henry’s time that real time flies by and we come back only reluctantly. At the last page we wish there was more. Henry is the kind of explorer and adventurer that would always be the center of attention.   Jeane Heimberger Candido, artist, journalist, re-enactor, and author of The Redemption of Corporal Nolan Giles, Shepherd’s Song, My Bloomin’ Insanity, and due out this winter Pages in Read Ink: Mysteries of Then and Now.

Mentors Three

Posted: 07/18/2008

It isn’t often in a life that one get’s to say thanks to a professor/mentor for being such an absolutely tyrannical pain in the tuches.  Such was Doctor Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian. We crossed paths at Defiance College way back before there was hair and parted ways shortly thereafter: Mitch to Glassboro State (now Rowan); I, to be tumbled around by life through about eight careers.  But it was Mitch—that miserable, slave-driving, profane, nasty, exasperating, uncombed, unkempt, verbally castrating, SOB—who lit the spark.  He was the odd-man out.  He was the one who asked “How the Hell did all you El-Ed teachers ever get a degree without taking this course?”  He was the one who said “Read Romeo and Juliet for Monday. Only read it as a COMEDY!”  He was the one who gave the ULTIMATE PRAISE: “Yeah. You got it!” Mitch’s book, LESS THAN WORDS CAN SAY, 1979  (still available, along with his other books, at THE UNDERGROUND GRAMMARIAN webpage) is one of the first shots across the bow of the clueless PC garbage barge.   It was true then…it’s still true now. I only wish I could have written this while he was still alive to read it.  To let him know just how damn grateful  I am.  But life’s a bitch.  And then you die.  Mitch did.  In 2002.  Requiem in Pace, sir.  May your Guinness never be empty.  May your Gaulois always smell like a Parisian sewer.  You were truly a teacher.   I was also, in my undergraduate years, a student of Doctor Robert Boehm.  Bob Boehm was a Civil War “buff” who went beyond the accepted role of academia and actually tried to discover the small bits of history that escape all  the present day crop of PhDs who simply have their Chinese GAs read a book about it.  Bob actually built a 4’ x 8’ CW gaming board, with grids and horizons and all of the present day crap on it.  But without the computer enhanced play. Considering he did it before 1960 ( I mean THE BOARD GAME was already in place when I showed up in 1961).  And he was not afraid to find out how hard it was to hit a target with an 1861 Springfield.  Bob shot NSS-A with the 111th Ohio.  Perhaps some of this ‘above and beyond’ interest was due to the fact that he was a GI (mortarman, 103rd Infantry Division) during the Big War, and he got his PhD from Western Reserve in the same batch that turned out another GI Bill post-grad of some repute, Bruce Catton.  In any case, Bob, once he found out I was really, really interested in the Civil War, took me into his home and we played his CW Game on THE BOARD.  And he introduced me to some really neat people, like Della Moats, whose father, Francis Adams,  wrote the history of the 21st Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and who was “Daughter of the Regiment” for all of the GAR reunions and Army Bean Dinners  of the 38th Ohio, and a personal friend of Kate Sherwood (wife of General Isaac Sherwood) founder of the GAR Auxiliary, to boot.  Bob Boehm would have been the first one I’d send a copy of each of these books to for a critique.  Alas, I cannot.  Bob died in Lakeside, Florida, on January 5, 2007.   I and a thousand other of his students will miss him more than words can say.   Another of my mentors was Doctor Eugene Royer Andrews.  He was the foster son of  Lt-Col. Kevin McCann, who married Ruth Royer in  1948.     In the year I was finally finishing my degree (after a thirteen year sabbatical between semesters of my Senior year) Gene--who was happier than a clam to have two students in his Contemporary American History Class who actually had not been too stoned to remember some of the subject matter (Hey, it was the 70s!)--offered us a chance of a lifetime.  Kevin McCann was working on sorting Dwight Eisenhower’s personal papers when he died and the task had been passed on to Gene by the Official Biographer to complete.  The answer I gave when asked if I would like a chance to help doing the sorting is not printable, even in a blog.  But it IS where I got the context of Henry Feller’s reply to Kevin McCann.  I could also tell you how I met Eisenhower at Kevin and Ruth McCann's gift shop in Gettysburg—but that’s another story entirely.      Gene Andrews died in Toledo, Ohio, on March 12, 2007.  Via con Dios, Compadre.

Winchester M1895

Posted: 07/18/2008

Henry Feller’s constant companion from the time of his graduation from Mitchell Common High School until 1916 was his Winchester Model 1895 lever action rifle in 40-72 caliber.  This is the rifle he had Winchester rebuild for him, twice.  The first time was in 1906 when he had the factory rebarrel the rifle to the then new .405 Winchester cartridge.  The second time was when he had the factory change the stock to the later straight butt-plate design.  It was also the rifle he carried most often on the Roosevelt Safari—just like Kermit and Theodore who both had 405s built for the expedition.   The 40-72 Winchester was the least popular of the cartridges introduced with the M1895 because it suffered greatly from the competition with the new smokeless powder cartridges of the same period.  The 40-72 used a 330 gr lead bullet and 72 gr of black powder to garner about 1400 fps velocity.  However, Winchester maintained the cartridge on its production list until 1936.   Here is an interesting link for this piece.  Produced by the Buffalo Bill Historical Organization http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUMmbhD8ffs   We’ll get to Henry’s other guns next.

First Circle

Posted: 07/18/2008

Before we really get rolling, there are a number of people who have helped along the way.  Anne Pici, formerly of the English Department (and recently retired) at the University of Dayton, who did the initial copy-editing on these books—and hopefully on the next several.  My long suffering wife, Judy, known to most as She-who-must-be-obeyed, who reads and edits and tries—usually unsuccessfully—to keep me in track.  Writer, historian, friend, nag, Jeane Heimberger Candido and her husband Richard.  Jeane has spent years navigating this unrepentant Congregationalist through the labyrinth of Catholicism.  Her books are on Amazon.com and her latest is available on her website www.pagesinreadink.com (and no, that’s not a misspelling).   And there are a number of writers living and otherwise who I have admired over the years:   W.E.B. Griffen a writer who spins a good yarn and who simply cannot write a single book about any topic.  With Mr. G. it’s ten or nothing.   Ursula LeGuin, another writer who writes muiltiple novels on the same story.  But I’m most addicted to her essays and short stories, my favorite being Telling Lies.   Herman Melville, by my way of thinking the greatest American writer.  He managed to compress a thousand years of religious dispute into a single soliloquy and demonstrated that good and evil are not necessarily cut and dried.  He also is the writer who found national success only to fall from grace and spend the rest of his life trying to publish anything else.   One of the most interesting books on my read list is Terry Southern’s Blue Movie.  It shows what porn could be like if the brain was the main organ in use.  However, as a primal scream warning, don’t bother with the Warhol directed movie of the same name.  It demonstrates what can happen to a good book when a small mind tries to animate it.   Finally, there is Doctor Jerry Pournelle, regardless of which of his co-authors might be attached.  Over the years his work keeps recycling through.  His Sci-Fi is a good light read, but his political science essays are meat and potatoes.   And there we have some of the circle of acquaintanceship sets that brought me here.  We continue along these lines later.

Haya Safari going to the printer	Posted: 07/14/2008
FYI  Just signed off on the galley and the rest of Henry Feller's life is going to the printer.  Should be available in 3-4 weeks.

This week's Gun Porn

Posted: 07/12/2008

Let’s start with those arms featured conspicuously in my books   The Smith & Wesson #3 top break revolver actually predated the ubiquitous Colt Single Action Army by three years, being introduced in 1870.  The .44 caliber ‘American Model’ was adopted as the Army’s first center-fire cartridge revolver after the Ordnance Board had suggested modifications from the original .44 Rim Fire chambering (the same cartridge used in the Henry Rifle). The .44 RF Henry, used a 210gr flat point, or a 216 gr lead conical bullet driven by a charge of 26-28 gr of black powder—considerably more of a man-stopper than the .36 or .44 round balls of the day.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:S%26W_New_Nodel_3_Frontier_1791.jpg     Major George W. Schofield of the 10th Cavalry (Colored)—the younger brother of General John M. Schofield, who had commanded the XXIII Corps during the Civil War and was the head of the Ordnance Board--wrote S&W explaining some of the modifications he had made to his basic #3 American.  In 1875 S&W adopted Schofield’s changes in the hope of a lucrative military contract.  The #3 ‘Schofield Model’ was officially designated as the Model of 1875, and 3,000 were purchased (Major Schofield getting a percentage of each).   Unfortunately, the problem was with the ammunition and not the firearm.  One of the requirements laid on by the Ordnance Board was that the revolver be capable of using the .45 Long Colt cartridge as found in the 1873 Single Action Army (SAA).  For some reason beknownst only to S&W, they developed instead the .45 S&W cartridge for the M1875.  The .45 S&W was slightly shorter than the .45 Long Colt and as a consequence the S&W round would chamber in the M1873 but not vice-versa.  Not a smart move on the part of S&W.  The Schofield went out of service by 1878, though it stayed around in other forms such as the .44 Russian (purchased and later made under license by the Russian government) to be the long-term rival of the Colt SAA.

No pajamas but always armed and ready

Posted: 07/11/2008

Well, the galley proof changes are in and I can treat myself to a long pull of Doctor Bombay and try to figure out what to say and do on this-here blog here.  I promise I will try to stay away from political comments--there are thousands of other blogs that do a better job of it daily.  Nor is religion open for discussion.  However History, ALL HISTORY, is.  One of my majors was American Cultural History--the others were Museum Science and English, just so you know.  Most of those who know me are surprised that I was not a Military History Major.  Let's just say that came along on its own. What interests me most is the cross-sectional view. I believe it was Ursula LeGuin who said a novel is a diagonal slice in time across a culture opening it for microscopic viewing.  That's why I write novels and not textbooks. I once wrote a series of articles for the Camp Chase Gazette Magazine on the foundations of the culture of the participants in the Union army.  In other words, what made the Union soldier behave the way he did?  The largest single entity that made the Union soldier who he was, was not the armaments, or the equipment, or the tactics, or the strategy.  It was the fact that seven generations of Americans between 1820 and 1920 were all educated using the same basic system and the same foundational text books.  McGuffey's.  The highest ranking General to the lowliest conscripted private--given he was not just off the boat and spoke English--were all educated and all knew and applied the same core of data--aphorisms, venerations, dogmas, tenets, on and on--in exactly the same way.  They could all quote the same rubricks.  They all understood one another.  They had all been there and done that--fortunately there were not T-shirts. To me that set of ponderables is far more interesting than the bare fact that the .58" Minie bullet leaves the muzzle of any of the Models of 1855 Springfield Rifle-Muskets at 850 fps (or whatever) and has an effective range of 600 yards when driven by the standard infantry powder charge of 60 grains (grains 'gr' is a standard of measure in ballistics, there are 7000 gr in a pound, so the charge spoken of is 60/7000ths of a pound, not 60 individual grains of powder, which, by the way, would make rolling cartridges a pretty tedious job) of FFg black powder. YAWN!! It's all of that little sideways-sort-of stuff that I find intriguing.  At one time it was pointed out to me that it amounts to a circle of acquaintanceship.  And I suppose it does, as far as that goes.  Which will be a good place to start in again on the next post.  But right now I've got another book to write. Catchya Later