This generated reflection on three issues addressed by Anderson and others. Such issues occupy the AB section of a Venn diagram. For present purposes, A = Anderson whereas B = Bond and others.
Three Common Issues
understated Holmesian references;
fictional collective villains;
the question, "Who is the ultimate enemy?"
Major Collective Villains In Twentieth Century Fiction
SMERSH in the early James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the later James Bond novels;
SPECTRE in the early, and one later, James Bond films;
Thrush in The Man From UNCLE TV series;
Thrush in David McDaniel's UNCLE novels where the Technological Hierarchy was founded by former lieutenants of the criminal genius, the Professor, and is now coordinated by three Ultimate Computers;
the Village in The Prisoner TV series.
The two SPECTREs are different whereas the two presentations of Thrush are meant to be compatible. This gives us five classic villainous organizations. Poul Anderson's equivalent organization is "the gang," with its undersea HQ. See also What We Expect.
Four Questions
Who was the Professor? McDaniel does not tell us...
Who is Number One? In the cinematic SPECTRE, Blofeld. In the Village, the Prisoner.
Where is Thrush Central? McDaniel tells us that it is triple and mobile.
Who is the ultimate enemy? The Prisoner realizes that it is himself. Anderson's UN-Man realizes that it is "man himself."
Action-adventure fiction meets philosophy.
14 comments:
Paul:
Oh, for crying out loud. I looked at the David McDaniel Wikipedia entry you'd bookmarked, and discovered in addition to some of his U.N.C.L.E. novels, I'd read something else of his: "Quiet Village." It's about a group evolved from the Boy Scouts (none of them are still boys by this time), working to rebuild civilization in a world largely depopulated by pandemic. They're not precisely mercenaries, but if you need them to clear out "rats" (bandits), there are expenses....
"We can send a patrol down for twenty dollars a man. Under the circumstances, I wouldn't send you fewer than four. You will be expected to board them and their mules and re-equip them for the trip back. Also, any pay earned by a Scout who is killed in your service goes to the leader, and the leader will bring it back to us. I would suggest you hire five. [Your town] should be worth a hundred dollars."
David,
And the pandemic could have been caused by Thrush in an attempt to Remove some Undesirables.
Paul.
Paul:
Not particularly likely. I should've mentioned that the story takes place in the year 2638, about 300 years after the disease outbreak. I devoutly hope Thrush wasn't still going strong into the 2300s. The wrecked civilization is referred to as "star-spanning" — if that's literally true, any extraterrestrial colonies were probably devastated as well, though it may just be that they didn't yet have the technological base, even after three centuries, to come check on Mother Earth.
David,
Have you read THE FINAL AFFAIR? If so, what did you think of it?
Paul.
Paul:
I was unaware of it until you posted the link, so I haven't had time to read it yet. I rather look forward to it; I liked the two or three of McDaniel's U.N.C.L.E. books that I have read.
David,
Look out for a cameo by another TV series character. Clues: fight scene; umbrella.
Paul.
Kaor, DAVID and Paul!
Haven't never read any of the U.N.C.L.E. books by David McDaniel I am unable to adequately comment about them. What I did think after I saw the comments about the Boy Scouts was to recall how Poul Anderson apparently thought well of the Boy Scouts as they used to be. TWILIGHT WORLD, for example, has a character saying that one of the most useful books his village had after the nuclear war that wrecked the world was the BOY SCOUT MANUAL.
And we S.M. Stirling having a troop of Boy Scouts who were stranded in the wilderness after the Change using the knowledge, customs, traditions, etc., of the Boy Scouts to help stay civilized and found a new culture of their own.
"The Little Monster," "The Season of Forgiveness," "The Faun," "Wingless on Avalon," were some of the stories Anderson wrote for BOYS' LIFE, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America.
Sean
Paul:
Not quite halfway through The Final Affair. I found the cameo you mentioned, but I'd never heard of that series. Still, my Google-fu was strong enough to identify him from the name "Hiram" and the umbrella used like a rapier. I wondered if "T. Hewett" and his ladyfriend "Kish" were also cameos from TV, movies, or literature, but drew a complete blank with those names.
I'd like to point out, too, that the chapter title for that scene — "It's Clobberin' Time!" — is itself a shout-out, being the battle cry of Ben Grimm, the "Thing" of the Fantastic Four. And one of the biker thugs is called Thing....
Hilariously, Mr. Waverly appears not to be up to speed on American sports, as he says, "I'm sure even Joe Namath strikes out occasionally." For the record, Namath played football, and "strike out" is a baseball term.
Two coincidences with resonance to Poul Anderson, by the way:
1. Solo expresses the wish to die at an advanced age of being murdered by someone's jealous husband, a desire Nick van Rijn has also stated.
2. The recognition code "Basingstoke," also used by Flandry for his meeting with Miriam Abrams. That one struck me as downright eerie, since A Stone in Heaven was published after The Final Affair was written, and TFA was never published. Then, though, I looked up "Basingstoke" and learned it's used as a signal in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore. If I were more into British theater, I would've known that already....
David,
I thought that Solo said that about Namath but I will have to check. I am delving through the text for nuggets. McDaniel gave Thrush a life of its own.
Paul.
David,
Could you look out for a passage where (I think) someone uses a phrase referring to the "vacuum" after the destruction of the Hierarchy?
Thanks,
Paul.
Paul:
If anyone used the term "vacuum," I missed it. The period after the destruction was described by Mr. Waverly as follows:
"There will be no lack of work for us in the next few years, gentlemen -- each surviving Satrap will see himself the Man of the Hour, inspired to weld the shattered segments into a new whole with himself at the head. This will inevitably lead to differences of opinion, and likely gang guerilla warfare in a few thousand locations, as well as independent operations on somewhat smaller scales than before."
I was fascinated by the following statement (which in fact immediately preceded the paragraph I quoted above):
"There are some known Thrush operations which show no criminal taint, and it is not a crime to belong to Thrush -- merely highly questionable. We can only watch their future activities with the controlling mind behind them gone."
Also, there's another shout-out to Conan Doyle: "Thrush Island," the fall-back base, was at one time known as "Uffa" ... which is mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Five Orange Pips" as an island on which "the Grice Patersons" had "singular adventures" that Holmes investigated in 1887.
One side note about McDaniel's writing: The Vampire Affair, though entertaining, makes a gross error by claiming that references to the Mongol Golden Horde were actually references to a golden hoard which Thrush is, in TVA, busily looting. McDaniel ignored the fact that no one in Transylvania or the Golden Horde's stomping grounds at the time of the term's origin had English as a first language, and thus the homonym wouldn't exist back then.
Incidentally, it's hilarious to me that the evil organization in the spy spoof Get Smart had a more menacing-sounding name — "KAOS" — than the one in the comparatively serious The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. (KAOS is explicitly NOT an acronym, and neither is their opposition, CONTROL.)
David,
Thank you for looking. It is probably nothing. I try to find any remembered - or misremembered - phrase that I might be able to post about. See recent posts on the Personal and Literary Reflections blog. McDaniel has made me reflect back on what Fleming wrote about SMERSH and SPECTRE.
I can imagine McDaniel deliberately and mischievously changing "horde" into "hoard," knowing that it was absurd.
The cinema Bond coexists with UNCLE because he appeared in the sequel TV film.
Paul.
Paul:
I remain unable to post on any of your blogs save this one. The following comment was meant for your Personal & Literary Reflections post where you mentioned eliminating agents who failed.
One The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode featured competing Thrush bosses who were brothers ... and repeatedly tried to get one another killed so the survivor could rule both their territories. The only thing they agreed on was not letting their dear mother know they were members of a criminal organization. Then they learned she was the Thrush supervisor who'd come to investigate why there were so many foul-ups in their districts (caused by their backstabbing each other). She ordered them executed as failures -- I particularly remember one of them begging [approximate quote] "Kill us painlessly, Mama!" (But blood was thicker than water after all, and she tried to help them escape. I think she got shot in the process, and I don't recall if her sons got away.)
David,
The problems of posting are unaccountable. SM Stirling managed to comment on the Logic of Time Travel blog.
Thrush: what a horrible organization although McDaniel tried to humanize some of its members. He picked up the idea from TV and ran with it.
Paul.
Post a Comment