loves Jubal except his creator-who is now co-editor, because we wore him out
with gripes and late stories and plot entanglements so that he married a sweet
innocent woman and now forces her to do all the work. No one can hate her
character, Illyra, who is as unreconstructably lovable as Lynn.
Except when she imported these deleted stare-eye Bey-sibs and their boss stole
away from me a character I’d begun to think of as mine: Prince Kadakithis. Wait
till Lynn sees my plan for the Final Solution to the Beysib Problem: Throde
draws a picture of an M-l tank and Lalo makes it real.
Oh-Kadakithis is played by Roddy McDowall at age 24 and in a blond wig, did you
know that? That’s the way he sounds when I read my TW stories aloud at
conventions. I keep seeing Lee J. Cobb as Tempus, but I haven’t asked Janet who
she sees. All right, “whom,” then.
One big (A: Happy B: Unhappy C: Both of the foregoing D: Neither) Family
It is enormous fun, living here in Thieves’ World. We are a family. Bob and Lynn
have to be mommy and daddy, obviously, and I am always Uncle Andy to anyone who
knows me; the nickname started when I was seventeen. (You don’t expect
uncomplicated relationships in TW, do you?) There are the wayward sons, Joe and
John (Halde-man and Brunner), who started with us and haven’t been back; and the
grievously wayward prodigal, Gordy (Dick-son). There’s our sweet and gentle
sister Carolyn/C.J. in Oklahoma and the evil and shadowy sister. Nightshade
Janet, up in New England. Her I “met” by mail years ago, when I wrote her a fan