Richard (Dick) Lupoff has had a long career as a novelist, writing more books than I can list here, but back in the sixties we were both devoting most of our creative energies to fanzine fandom. Insofar as lunacy is concerned, Dick and I are more or less on the same page and thus PROFESSOR THINTWHISTLE AND HIS INCREDIBLE AETHER FLYER was born, run off on a mimeograph for the Fantasy Amateur Press Association. The strip was conceived as a satire on turn of the century science fiction, and featured irascible Professor Theobald Uriah Thintwhistle, creator of the steam-powered spacecraft the Chester Alan Arthur, his empty-headed sidekick Herkimer, and their Steppin Fetchitt manservant Jefferson Jackson Clay. Clay was politically incorrect as all get-out, but so were the early 1900s, and Jefferson -- secretly a black militant!-- was the most intelligent of the trio. He also wound up as an honored celebrity on the moon, while poor Herkimer and the Professor found themselves imprisoned in glass jars.