Sharyn McCrumb - Zombies of the Gene Pool

Giles-Party-of-Three, as the waitress called them, was tucked into a pine-paneled alcove decorated with Bob Timberlake prints in rough wood frames. They were trying to read the hand-lettered menus by the light of the candle in a red jar, which doubled as a centerpiece on the oilskin tablecloth.

"This looks like a seance," said Marion, watching their shadows flicker against the pine wall.

"It is," said Erik Giles. "I'm about to raise a number of ghosts."

He waited until the waitress had taken their order and had gone to fetch the drinks before he began. "You want to know where it is that I have to go, but in order to explain that I'll have to backtrack." He began to trace patterns on the tablecloth with his knife. "Do you know much about science fiction fandom?" "I read science fiction," said Jay. "Does that count?" "No," said Marion. "Erik means the organized subculture that grew up around the genre. It began in New York in the thirties when the people who had been writing to the letters columns of the pulp science fiction magazines began writing to each other instead. Then clubs sprang up, and people began to publish amateur fanzines, reviewing books and arguing about topics of science or technology. By the fifties, it had become an end in itself."

Professor Giles smiled. "By then, there were people who scarcely bothered to read the genre, because they were so busy with the social aspects of fandom."

"I missed all that," said Jay. "I was into crystal radio sets as a kid, and after that computers. So you two were fans?"

Marion blushed. "If you grow up as a social misfit in a small town, it can be a very attractive option. I was smart when girls were supposed to be bubblebrains, and I wasn't very pretty in high school, which is a real burden for the teenage ego. Fandom is good about accepting people for being kind and clever, without caring about age, sex, race, or appearance."

Erik Giles looked thoughtful. "Why was I in fandom? I wanted to be a writer, I guess, and these people encouraged me. It's easy to get 'published' in fanzines. Of course, later I realized-" He shook his head sadly. "Well, it doesn't matter. I was explaining the reunion, wasn't I? Have you ever heard of the Lanthanides?"

"Sure," said Jay, reaching for a bread stick. "The lanthanide series is a group of fourteen elements on the periodic chart, consisting of lanthanum, cerium, samarium-"

"Hush! We're discussing literature, not chemistry!" said Marion. "I think that Erik is referring to a group of writers back in the Golden Age of Science Fiction." Erik smiled. "I'd put the Golden Age a little farther back than that group of chowderheads. The early forties, maybe. Whereas, the Lanthanides began publishing in-"

"1957?" asked Jay Omega.

"About then," Giles agreed.

Marion stared at him. "How did you know, Jay? You never read that stuff!"

Erik Giles laughed. " 'What do they know of literature who only literature know?' " he said, misquoting his beloved Kipling.

"Jay guessed correctly the date of the Lanthanides' fiction debut because he was right about the origin of the term. The group's name was chosen from a chemistry book, and the lanthanide series begins with element number 57, which is the year the members thought they'd all be published authors."

He sighed. "It took a bit longer than that, of course, even for the luckiest members, and some of them never even got published."

"Pretty good name for a science fiction group, though," said Jay with a glint of mischief in his eyes. "The lanthanides are the rare-earth series of elements."

The older man nodded. "Yes, that was the real reason we chose it. We thought rare earth described our visions rather well. And, of course, the name itself-Lanthanides-is from the Greek lan thanein, meaning to be concealed, which is perfect for a secret society of adolescent crackpots."

"Now, wait a minute, Erik. Those writers were-" Marion gasped. "We?"

He smiled modestly. "Yes, I was a member of the Lanthanides. Of course, back in 1954 we were just a bunch of redneck beatniks in Wall Hollow, Tennessee."

"Tennessee?" echoed Marion. "Wasn't Brendan Surn one of the Lanthanides? I thought he was from Pittsburgh."

"He was. And Curtis was from Baltimore, Mistral was a Brooklynite, and Peter Deddingfield and I grew up in Richmond. But the year that the group was formed, most of us were in our early twenties, and our job prospects were middling. It was 1954. We didn't want to become the men in the gray flannel suits, and nothing else was paying too well. Anyway, we weren't ready to settle down.

"Dale Dugger and George Woodard were just back from Korea and Fort Dix, New Jersey, respectively. A couple of us were just out of college-with or without degrees-and a few were tired of the jobs they did have. We all knew each other the way science fiction fans do-through correspondence and a mimeographed fanzine-and we decided to get together. Nobody had anything better to do."

Marion frowned. "This is not an era I've done much reading about. It's the beginning of Sixth Fandom according to S-F fannish history. I'm familiar with Walt Willis and the Wheels of IF… Lee Hoffman and Quandry… Wasn't there a fanzine associated with the group?"

"Alluvial. George Woodard still publishes it. Or at least something called that. Of course, none of the rest of us have contributed to it in years."

"I never knew Stormcock was a member of the Lanthanides."

Erik Giles smiled modestly. "I wrote The Golden Gain while I was there." His fingers trembled a bit on the hilt of the table knife, and he suddenly looked old.

"So you formed a commune?" Jay prompted.

"Slanshack!" murmured Marion, correcting him.

"Back then, with Joseph McCarthy's witch hunters hiding under every bed, I don't think we would have called it a commune, but by your generation's standards I guess it was. We called it the Fan Farm. Actually, Dale Dugger's daddy had died while Dale was overseas, leaving him a hardscrabble farm in the east Tennessee hills, and we decided that life didn't get any cheaper than that, so we all packed our belongings and typewriters, and descended on Dugger's farm. We planned to live on beans and hot dogs while we each wrote the science fiction equivalent of the Great American Novel, and then we figured we'd all drive away in Cadillacs and live on steaks for the rest of our lives." He smiled, remembering their youthful naivete.

The waitress appeared just then, balancing three plate-sized skillets on a tray. "I have two prime ribs and a broiled-flounder-no-butter."

"The fish is mine," said Erik Giles. "Doctor's orders."

Marion attended to her dinner for a few minutes, but her thoughtful expression indicated that she was more interested in the conversation than the food. "So you actually lived with Surn and Deddingfield in-what did you say the name of the place was?"

"Wall Hollow, Tennessee. That's where the post office was, anyhow. Dugger's Farm was seven miles up a hollow. It was beautiful country. Green-forested mountains that looked like haze against the sky.

"The Green Hills of Earth," murmured Marion.

"No," said Giles, catching the reference. "He wasn't there. I didn't meet him until the late sixties."

"Well, your crowd didn't do too badly," said Marion, thinking it over. "Maybe you didn't leave the farm in Cadillacs, but you certainly produced some giants in the field of science fiction."

"Peter Deddingfield," nodded Jay. "Even I've heard of him. I loved the Time Traveler Trilogy. "

"He writes in a very literary style," said Marion, offering her highest praise. "Critics have compared him to Herman Melville."

"Well, I like him anyway," said Jay.

Marion frowned. "And Brendan Surn is the greatest theorist in the genre. I think he's required reading in NASA. I always think that he looks like a snow lion with that white mane of hair and his white beard. Who else was in the group?"