During college he wrote stories as Morris Kenniston, later choosing the name for the protagonist of his novel The Messenger of Zhuvastou. He used fiction to shape identity through the invention of characters, then applied the habit to his own life. Pen names provided partitions to various rooms in the mansion of his mind. Due to his habit of playacting as a child, his father called him “Lord Barrymore,” after the actor. Dad’s sister told me he occupied so many roles with such fervor that his true self gradually disappeared, and in later years she didn’t know him anymore. He became whoever and whatever he believed himself to be at the moment—father, husband, salesman, neighbor, or John Cleve.
As Dad told me, he preferred being a big fish in a small pond: the president of his college fraternity, the only educated man in Haldeman, the top salesman in eastern Kentucky. The professional world of science fiction offered a similar limitation of scope. In 1970 and 1972, Dad published two science fiction novels, both serious examinations of near-future America. His stated goals were simple—he wanted to change the world by warning citizens of a violent and corrupt future. Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards is set in America under a Christian-based government with a heavily armed police force. Law enforcement seeks couples in the act of illegal sexual congress. If caught, the man is summarily executed. After sterilization, the woman becomes a prostitute for corrupt government officials. A reluctant member of the Federal Obscenity Police leads a revolution.
The protagonist of The Castle Keeps is a writer named Jeff Andrews who lives with his family in the house in which I grew up, on the same hill and dirt road. The interpersonal family dynamic was equally familiar—an autocratic man who demanded obedience and swift apology from his wife and kids. Here the similarities ended, and my father imagined our country’s bleak future—unsanitary water and crops poisoned by pesticides. Police officers wear body armor and carry heavy arms with which they attack citizens. The world is running out of resources, particularly oil. Jeff Andrews grows a garden, stockpiles arms and food, and homeschools his children.
I read The Castle Keeps at age fourteen. My father asked if I’d noticed the first and last words of the book, “Dad” and “home.” He told me he’d written them on purpose—for me. The protagonist’s son leaves rural Kentucky for the big city, where he works as a truck driver and begins to write fiction. I never planned to follow in my father’s footsteps, nor did I seek to fulfill the prophecy of his novel’s characters. Nevertheless, at age nineteen, I left Kentucky for New York City, where I got a job as a truck driver. I wanted to be an actor but instead began writing fiction seriously.
Both of these early novels garnered fleeting attention and quickly went out of print. Dad was extremely disappointed with the reception, blaming the cover art and inadequate promotion. He expressed a bitter belief that years of research and revision had failed to provide a strong reward, financial or critical. Though Dad believed his social commentary had come to nothing, The Castle Keeps and Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards are his best-written books. Together they anticipated the post-9/11 militarization of local police, the rise of anti-government militias in rural areas, corporate influence on federal policy, the creation of the Tea Party, and the rightward shift of the Supreme Court.
These books, along with a handful of short stories, established my father’s credentials and earned him entry to the Science Fiction Writers of America. The SFWA was a nearly ungovernable organization of misfits, rebels, and contrarians known for petty grievances and brutally absurd political maneuvering. Dad served as treasurer, then became president for two years. Lumped in with science fiction was the genre of fantasy, typified by wizards, swordplay, and gods who walked the earth. Dad moved swiftly into that field, eventually publishing twenty-four novels and editing five anthologies.