The Astarapomp Dossier: Introduction

I work in Collections in the Microbiology Department at Grenhaven University. Mostly cataloging. Which is a pretty big job since our records go back over 150 years and stuff has gotten a bit, well, jumbled is putting it mildly.

Dr. Meredith Barnes was a pretty big name in Microbiology. She had a diverse range, though the majority of her work focused on rotifers and ciliates. She was also an artist. Did a couple of Haeckel-style plates of her rotifers and other microbes. You’ve probably seen a few of them if you’ve ever been by the campus, especially the Beech Science Building. The main hall by the computer lab has a permanent gallery of her work. She was pretty good friends with Walter Garstang, and I think she might have even illustrated a few of his poems from Larval Forms. I swear I’ve seen one of her drawings accompanying "Oikopleura, Jelly-Builder". Have to see if I can find it. Maybe someone at the MUGLi can help me (That’s the Merryweather Ulsten Grad Library for those of you who don’t go here).

Dr. Barnes passed away back in 2013, leaving behind a huge legacy at Grenhaven. And also several hundred boxes and filing cabinets of papers, slides, specimens, journals and other scientific delights. For the last few months, I’ve been digitizing her collection of microscopy photos for a project on Zooniverse. We were going to have workers enter the info on the photos into a searchable database. It’s a lot of work. There’s over four decades worth of slides- thousands of them. And even working a full day with two assistants, I can only do so much.

Well, hopefully we’ll see that project soon. But anyway, as I was going through the stacks and stacks of photos, I found a couple of odd envelopes crammed at the bottom of one of the cabinets. They were beaten up pretty hard. Had a lot of water damage. A few were stuck together. I don’t think anyone had looked at them in years. Maybe over a decade. Most likely she tossed them in there and forgot about them.

I figured they were just some old rough drafts for papers and was going to see if maybe the Museum Library would like them for the archives. But then I opened the first one. I don’t quite know what to make of these things. There are letters and drawings and even a few photographs. All from some guy named Thomas, or “Thom” as she wrote it on the envelopes. I can’t even find a last name anywhere.

I showed them to my supervisor. He figures they’re notes for some kind of weird fantasy she must have been working on. A series of paintings or something. I know she was a fan of pulp fiction. There’s a whole box of Planet Stories and Weird Tales in a corner of her office (could be worth quite a bit if her estate will let us sell any). The third floor stairwell in the Marine Collections has a poster illustration for The Moon Pool by A. Merrit that she designed in the style of Hannes Bok.

For a while the science department heads talked about donating them to the archives at the MUGLi. Maybe even setting up a special exhibit in the Hackmann Room. Then suddenly last week they changed their minds and said I should just throw it all away. There’s talk about how this “weird fantasy will damage Professor Barnes’ reputation” or something. I really don’t know what’s going on. But I am most definitely not going to let something this unique just disappear into the dumpster. So I’m posting it here.

There are a lot of envelopes to go through, and I’ve still got research to do and papers to write on top of the Zooniverse stuff. So posting might be sporadic. But I’ll try to get as much of this up as I can.

Hope you guys enjoy.

I'll start off with a couple of odd scraps I found in a little magazine envelope on top. A few of them have been partially burned. No idea why.

If I have some time, I might take these down to the Linguistics Departmetn and see if anyone can figure out what those symbols mean.