Rheumatoid Disease and
My Science Fiction Writing Era
by Perry A. Chapdelaine, Sr./Anthony di Fabio

 

    At age six I read my first book, Samuel Langhorne Clemens’ Tom Sawyer, and a little later, my second, his Huckleberry Finn. Right then and there I wanted to be a writer, though I wasn’t sufficiently mature to know so for about forty more years .
    What I did know at age six was that the Mississippi river was quite real, being but a few blocks away, and we kids, even at a younger age, sneaked off to it during hot, Minnesota summer days to swim bare-naked. Sam Clemons knew all about boys along the Mississippi who hid such activities from their parents, although he couldn’t have known us personally as we came along some years later.
    The good Lord wanted me to have crippling rheumatoid disease so I could learn how depressing and painful the condition is. Never to be without pain! Always dependent upon drugs! Joints curling up and twisting beyond belief! Ever-increasing separation from friends and loved ones!
    Guess he also wanted me to find the solution to this great and painful crippler!
    Of course, I didn’t find the solution myself! You see my eldest son’s wife’s friend from 250 miles away had visited Jack M. Blount, M.D. in Philadelphia, MS and had been cured of the same condition ruining me.
    Dr. Blount, M.D. also had had the disease, and he’d learned its solution from Roger Wyburn-Mason, M.D., Ph.D. an English nerve specialist.
    My terrible affliction started during a period of extreme stress. I was teaching mathematics full-time at two universities, one all Black and the other all White. In fact, I was the only integrated faculty member on both staffs. This was during an intense integration battle over power and turf between Black and White administrators and overly-active students. Interestingly, the two University Presidents obeyed the Federal judge’s orders to “cooperate” by simultaneously and illegally firing their first and only integrated faculty member -- me!
    Hot Buttered Soul! (2meg download) is a fictionalized version (to keep from being sued) of what took place during those hectic five years.
    My first wife and I had had ten children, five boys and five girls. In Samuel Clemens’ day this tribe would have been honored and even useful. You can pretty well guess that such a family nowadays piles on quite a bit of uneeded stress!
    But that was not all: I was also administering a half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation as Senior Project Director, reviewing mathematics manuscripts for Barnes & Noble and McGraw-Hill, doing chores on a farm, and scratching my head for some other means of making more money so my tribe wouldn’t starve. That’s when the great idea came along to acknowledge my writing weaknesses and embed those weaknesses in a science fiction story, “To Serve the Masters.”
    Back when I was six and seven years old, and reading Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, my first and second grade teachers had explained about subject, verb and predicate. I learned that simple English grammar lesson well. They did not explain that there were a whole lot more Latin words that vainly attempted to classify and describe an “English” sentence and that to learn to write one must know all those other tongue twisters as well as a synthetic Latin grammer structure overlying an American English structure that was -- quite literally -- formulated from every other language in the world.
    To this day -- as some of you will immediately recognize -- I do not understand American-English-Latin grammer, and therefore have never really learned to write.
    But thank God for Samuel Clemens, because he, like Winston Churchill, could dangle a participle and twist the tail of grammatical intent with the very best of us!
    To make long verbiage shorter, that first-of-my-whole-life-completely-made-up-written story -- stemming all the way back to when I decided to be a writer, but didn’t know it, at age six -- sold at once to the science fiction editor, Frederick Pohl of "If magazine".
    The very next story also sold, to John W. Campbell, Jr. in "Analog Science Fiction" magazine.
    I was hooked! At last I was aware of knowing that I wanted to be a writer! All science fiction stories written by me are offered here free of charge, although, as you’ll note, two of my hardcover novels, Spork of the Ayor and The Laughing Terran, are also still available through my son, Randy Chapdelaine, at his AC Projects, Inc.
    Science fiction was not always popular. Just as complementary/alternative medicine was a minority experience at the start of The Arthritis Trust of America foundation (1982: 30% public attendance), and is now a majority choice (2005: 65% public attendance), so science fiction was an academic no-no and is now most popular.
    During the great American depression era, I’d had several expensive (25 cents each) science fiction pulp magazines torn up by my study-hall monitor just because their covers had thinly clad females over a background of rocketships and spaceguns. You can nowadays find those exact same stories in hardcover bindings in virtually every high school and college library in the United States -- probably the world -- not to mention their stolen story lines in the hugest box-office motion picture productions. Usually the scantily clad females are left off these high school library hardcovers for some reason, but nevermind: they really had nothing to do with the stories inside the pulp covers.
    Beginning with Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who wrote a fantasy or two, on through Grimm’s horrible fairy tales, and onward through Astounding Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, If magazine, and others, I learned that John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding Science Fiction (soon to be named Analog: Science Fact or Faction), was by far the dean of all science fiction writers of that early era. I idolized him, and when he died pressed one of my sons, Perry A. Chapdelaine, Jr., M.D., my English friend George Hay, L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, and Forrest E. Ackerman to help in putting together The John W. Campbell, Jr. Letters, (5meg download) Vol.I. Later I put together The John W. Campbell Letters with Isaac Asimov and A.E. van Vogt (1.6meg download) Vol. II. These are Campbell’s letters that contain tens of thousands of fresh, creative science fiction story ideas, and also the same that were used to train a whole generation of science fiction writers who’ve had such a major impact upon the theatre, education, engineering and science. I have enough of Campbell’s letters boxed away to print another five or six volumes, if only the funding were available.
    There’s a crater on Mars named after John W. Campbell, Jr. in memory of his great influence on our present-day society.
    Both John W. Campbell, Jr. and science fiction/fantasy writer A.E. van Vogt were my friends, as were a number of other great and wonderful science fiction thinkers of that same period. The Battle of Forever (5.2meg download) by van Vogt is one of his finest fantasies. Toward the latter days of his life I got his permission to publish The Battle of Forever. Some hardcover novels are still available through my son, Randy Chapdelaine, at his AC Projects, Inc. (email address: wulfgar2099@msn.com)
    Although I’ve provided free books and articles in both the treatment of arthritis and of my old science fiction writings, I could only provide samples here from these last three books.
    Another book, Arthritis (4.2meg download), by Anthony di Fabio and Gus J. Prosch, Jr., M.D., can be purchased through this foundation or through any book store. Arthritis summarizes a great deal that this foundation has learned since 1982 about treating and curing arthritis. The article “Foreward”, found in the "Articles" section, tells what this 350 page book contains.
    Although I’d’ve preferred the pen-name “Mark Twain,” when writing Arthritis, some other pulp writer had already glommed onto it, so I used my birth name of “Anthony di Fabio.”
    Although so-called crippling, “incurable” arthritis interrupted my science fiction writing non-career, almost 100% of my writings nowadays deals with the art-of-getting-well. It’s amazing to me how the Good Lord made me sick just to get me well so I could begin to explain to others how it’s done! All the things I’d been and experienced in my earlier life led up to this calling, providing me with intense motivation, a modicum of skill and certainly an abiding mission to reveal truth in medicine!
    I’ve looked at the face of pure evil, and, for the most part, it is called “establishment medicine!”
    Oh yes, I’d almost forgotten! What was the cause for my rheumatoid arthritis? Stress, abysmally poor nutrition, generalized infection!
    I’ve learned that it’s simply not true that an arthritic has something wrong with his/her immune system and needs to knock it around a bit more to hopefully “modulate” it.
    Mark Twain would have made great sport of this foolish idea, most likely pointing out that many a brave soul has been successfully modulated into their grave! Like the camel with too many straws, and is overburdened, the human body has an immune system that is quite well at doing its job, and is doing its job, but has also become overburdened with things to do.
    Remove those straws one or several at a time, and the camel’s back repairs itself, the human body heals.
    Whatever those causes are -- poor nutrition, infection, stress, mercury poisoning, pollutants, etc. -- tackle them, and you’ll be gratefully surprised at how well and happily your body will respond.

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