And live alone in the bee-loud clade

Last night's meeting of the Old Entomologist Writers' Group and Tagmosis in Basal Hexapod Taxa Working Party was standing room only, followed later by falling-down room only, for word had leaked out that Another Kiwi would be reading a newly completed chapter from his work-in-progress, Rise of the Cladists.

Historic events are seen through the eyes of two academic clans, entwined by intermarriage. While some siblings seek common ground with the cladists as they infiltrate editorial boards of influential journals and the election panels for endowed university chairs, others resist. So far in this magisterial re-telling of the cladistic revolution, the characters have little inkling that Hennig and his cadre of cladistic taxonomists -- with their ruthless ambition, their unbending discipline and their single-minded mastery of committee protocol -- will one day crush the old guard of Linnean systematists underfoot, and wield unfettered power over the field of biological classification. Academic politics and the workings of Wagner's dendrogram algorithm have never been more exciting!

Caminacules: Weir in ur punch-cards, eatin ur chads!

I have advised AK, however, to tone down his portrayal of the Fortey character. It would not be good if the real Fortey saw through AK's roman à clef, for the last person who dissed him was subsequently eaten alive in unexplained circumstances by anthropods from a class that went extinct 250 million years ago.

The atmosphere in the Old Entomologist was electric when AK reached the pivot of Chapter 7, in which Victor blurts out the taboo word 'symplesiomorphy' and the dinner guests react in their different ways to the shifting allegiances he has inadvertently exposed. The atmosphere would probably have been less electric without the Van der Graaf generators on the bar, but I had to put them somewhere while the Frau Doktorin was spring-cleaning.

Did someone say "Van der Graaf Generator"?

Fans will be delighted to learn that when it is completed, Rise of the Cladists will only be the first volume of a trilogy tetralogy pentalogy, with future titles provisionally including A Dance with Taxonomists and A Feast for Crown Taxa.

The Tetralogy of Fallot turned out to be not as exciting as I expected.

UPDATED with bonus yoga-pose slugs for Kathleen.
These are the Caminalcules, originally created in a cladist's laboratory for teaching purposes in the re-education camps, but they escaped into the wild and became a common pest of salted pineapples.

Also this post needs more Allegorical Paintings of Cladists Rescuing Taxonomy from the Decadent Linnean Establishment.