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Travis |
Samuel Travis Clemmons is an "Alternate Reality Counterpart" of the man that everyone knows as Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). The two men shared similar boy hoods in their respective realities but about the time that Langhorne was signing on as a newspaper apprentice Travis was taking up with a medicine show hypnotist. The result of this divergence of pathways is that in his reality Mark Twain was slightly better known as an author while the alternate reality Marc Twain actually managed to harness the power of the human mind and succeed in performing the act of Time Travel. This inspired him to write the widely popular adventure novel "A Confederate Soldier in King Arthur's Court". Yes this is all a load of bullfeathers ... But you've got to start a Biography somewhere. The man who created the character of Samuel Travis Clemmons was born and raised in Central Kentucky. He has traveled to many of the United States, to Canada and to Europe but his wanderings generally seem to result in him closing his eyes, for the night, in either Lexington Kentucky or Chicago Illinois. The affinity for Central Kentucky is easy to understand. Lexington has the social life of a major city, combined with the slower pace of most small towns. It is also less than 20 miles from the location where the doctor helped deliver him (and then spanked his behind) which means a chance to visit with friends and family on a regular basis. His reasons for spending time in Chicago are a bit more complicated. There is the usual strategy of it being a major metropolitan area, in a central location which makes it ideal for traveling almost anywhere in the rest of the United States. Then there is the fact that an insidious College Professor stole his heart and absolutely refused to give it back. Which left Travis with absolutely no choice but to move up to Chicago and marry her. Travis is someone who loves an intricately woven tall tale (the more absurd the better). In 2000, he wrote and began performing a comedy routine called Marc Twain: The Time Traveler. This fictional debate between Twain and H.G. Wells was greeted quite favorably by audiences at several Science Fiction and Fantasy Conventions. People asked for more so Marc Twain and the Magnificent Tree was scripted and performed two years later. In order to keep his storytelling from being railroaded into following to the actual events of Mark Twain's life, he decided it would be best to create a fictional Marc Twain who had been born in an alternate realm of existence. This would allow the creation of stories which were true to the basic nature of the character without having to constantly argue with history or literature fanatics who just might want to insist that Twain could not possibly have been in this particular place at that particular time. So if a friend tells you that he's headed to a science fiction convention to meet Marc Twain ... Ask him to spell the first name before you call him a liar. |