Wanderer's Tales #11 - Ancestors
Welcome to Issue 11 of Wanderer’s Tales. In this issue is Chapter Nine of Shield of the Goddess.
Welcome to Issue 11 of Wanderer’s Tales, the newsletter of Ancient Roads. Here you will find fantasy fiction set in ancient worlds, where music makes magic, and the road ahead is always uncertain. Wanderers welcome.
In this newsletter is Chapter Nine of Shield of the Goddess, the adult fantasy novel I am releasing here as a web serial. This chapter finds Shala, a fourteen year old girl, arriving at her new home in the temple of a moon goddess in an ancient city.
Chris Struble
This month’s theme is ancestors.
I chose this theme because we are approaching the time of Samhain, an ancient Celtic harvest festival that was the origin of the modern Halloween.
In Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, Brittany and other Celtic-speaking regions, October 31 - November 1 was the beginning of winter, a time when the veil between our world and the spirit world was believed to be thin, allowing the spirits and ancestors to cross over into our world. In these regions, it was a common custom to leave food for ancestors at this time.
In modern America, Halloween has largely lost its association with ancestors, but for modern pagans, the Samhain custom of welcoming ancestors has been revived. The Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead has a similar motivation.
For me at this time, I think about my spiritual ancestors, people who influenced me either by their art or by their ideas about the world or how it could be. I’ll mention just five of them here.
Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek series showed me a hopeful vision of a technological future, and sparked my interest in engineering.
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series showed me the wonder of science and the importance of knowing our place in the universe.
Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea novels showed me that good speculative fiction writing needs strong male and female characters. Her priestess character Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan was an inspiration for my character Shala.
Jane Goodall's studies of chimpanzees showed me that humans have more in common with animals than we like to admit. Goodall passed on October 1, 2025.
John Lodge's songs and performances with The Moody Blues gave me inspiration and joy for decades. Lodge passed on October 10, 2025.
One of Lodge's song of that stands out for me is Out and In, which he co-wrote with Mike Pinder. The song is about the need for cosmic perspective, and is from the Moodies’ fifth album, To Our Children’s Children’s Children, a brilliant concept album inspired by the Apollo 11 landing.
I’ll conclude by recommending a new PBS Nova series, Human, hosted by paleoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi, which tells the inspiring story of homo sapiens, the ancestors of us all. Check it out.
Who are the ancestors you think about? Are there special times of year when you think about them?
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See you on the road!
Chris Struble