The Synopsis Treasury (3 page)

I’ve already written to inquire about making a visit to Los Alamos, but I’m no longer sure that is desirable—after all, even if I know all about the hill and what happens on it, only a limited amount of the material would be available for use as fiction or otherwise, and I certainly don’t want to have to submit the manuscript to censorship. Probably, within limits, the less I know about Los Alamos the better.

The above treatment would set all the action off the project. I know Santa Fe more or less from having lived there a year, and could easily visit it again to pick up a bit more color—there might be an interesting contrast in setting the terrible secret of the bomb against the innocent gaiety of that old town at Fiesta time.

Part of my stimulus for the above comes from James Benet’s article “Murder with a Meaning” on the suspense as opposed to the whodunit novel in the ’49 Writers Year Book, and I had thought of looking over one or two of the books he mentions in search of a model.

I’d be grateful for any suggestions.

Yours,

Jack Williamson

27 November 1950

Dear Fred,

(This morning, in fact, I wrote out a fairly detailed plot for an entirely different story, in brief: A space ship lands on Earth, after a long interstellar flight. The things on it are protean—shape-changers. That is, they are highly evolved unicellular creatures, which can form temporary multicellular bodies, through a temporary specialization. They have a regular life-cycle; in one phase, they eat and multiply as a semi-liquid mass of individual cells; in the more static phase, they can live in temporary associations.

(These shape-changers eat the first human beings who find them, and then replace them with replicas for scouting purposes. These replicas are complete and functional, even to the functions of digestion and memory. The story is written from the viewpoint of an eaten man—who doesn’t know that he has been eaten. He still apparently has his own body and his own mind—though vague thoughts of the Thing creep into his consciousness now and then, and his body has a surprising way of coming to life after it has been killed, regenerating limbs, etc.

(This hero is embarked on some sort of dangerous quest with which the reader can have a sympathetic interest. Perhaps the ship fell in an Asiatic desert dominated by Russia. The mechanisms and the science that made them constitute a prize of enormous value, for either military or peaceful ends. The hero might be a lone American geologist or explorer who finds the ship ahead of the Russians, and who then attempts to learn and claim the secret of it for America—opposed by more powerful later arrivals from Russia and perhaps from other nations. One of them doubtless a beautiful girl.

(The hero, after being eaten and duplicated, is killed by the rival groups, but he comes back to life. He does things while he thinks he is asleep—such as flowing into a hideous slime and eating the girl, who later reappears as another replica.

(The shape changers have some interesting scheme of their own for dominating the world through the use of replicas. Perhaps they invent some sort of fiction to impose on the psychology of men as they are learning it, and set up or plan to set up their replicas as a race of supermen. The fiction might be that the ship left Earth thousands of years ago, from the predeluvian civilization, and that it has now returned with the knowledge that will bring about the millennium.

(The ending comes about from the circumstance that the actual voyage was long, that the unicellular things have been weakened by it or perhaps undergone some weakening mutation which slows and finally halts the vital cycle of their shape-changing. That is: the duplicates last longer than they should between dissolving for eating and cell-division. Finally, the replicas become permanent—the shape-changers become the things they have destroyed.

(When I plotted that, I was looking around for something that would make room for the Van Vogt sort of surprise and suspense, and it seems to me that this idea has most of the ingredients of a good Van Vogt story.… What got me started along this line is the Simak serial in
Galaxy
, which is pretty good Van Vogt up to the middle of the second installment, when for some reason he lets the cat out of the bag—a mistake, as I see it, which Van Vogt would never have made. Maybe I’m wrong of course; actually the rest of the serial may be very good, but that is the point where I quit reading and started trying to think up a better story of my own.

(What do you think of that set-up, for either Campbell or Gold—and Orrin, too, I hope? It looks more interesting to me right now than
Lethal Agent
—though I still think a little creative effort would make
Lethal Agent
just as interesting, whenever I get in the mood to do something with it.)

Anyhow, I think it’s probably best not to send the rough of
Lethal Agent
to Orrin at this time. If he’s willing to spend his time on a rough draft, it would be better to wait at least until we have rough draft of something nearer publishable shape—Campbell’s suggestions, as well as my own revision ideas, would lead to a story that has very little to do with this rough.

Enclosed also is another letter from Campbell, which arrived this morning. He’s upset over the
Galaxy’s
reprints of serials from his magazines. I’ve written him the best letter I could. This is a pretty delicate matter. I’m anxious to keep the good will of Street & Smith, and also of course to retain and reclaim all the pocketbook rights possible. There seems to be no legal question here, but he implies that Street & Smith may become difficult over rights again. Anyhow, I’m sending along this letter and my reply for your information, and of course I’d like to have them returned.

Best to Judy and Ann.

Yours,

Jack Williamson

30 April 1951

Dear Fred:

Since I finished
Seetee Ship,
I’ve been working on a plot for a novel about the “feelies.” The entertainment industry that follows the talkies, based on the new science of psionics, which makes it possible to pick up, record, and broadcast thoughts, emotions, and sensations. The fundamental difference, so far as the performer is concerned, is that the day of acting is over—now the performer has to live his part. (The trend of the times is already in that direction, of course, with all the movie stars who are able really only to play themselves, and the radio shows in which members of the audience are either rewarded or victimized.)

The main character is a scientist who made some of the basic inventions—including devices which make it possible to implant unconscious urges in the audience, to buy this product or in the end to vote for that politician. He received a modest payment for his patents and retired to his ivory tower, where he is at work on refinements of his theory that might eventually make it possible to reach the minds of beings on other worlds, and so end the lonely exile of man on the little island of the Earth, and join some universal communion of intelligence.

An effort at irony. In his large dreams, the scientist has neglected to follow the practical application of his work in the world around him. The story begins when he finds himself abruptly trapped by the monstrous thing he has created. (A point of the responsibility of the scientist for the social consequences of his discoveries.)

The men of General Psionics, Inc., have managed to make a trade secret out of the technique of broadcasting unconscious urges. They have pretty well crushed their competitors in the psionics field, as well as swept the movies, television, radio, most publishing and most profession sports into oblivion. They are fighting the efforts to establish some sort of legal control, by going into politics. They expect to swing the vote, to elect and control their own candidates.

The troubles of Peter Warneke begin when they realize that his knowledge of that unpatented device is a danger to them. He might reveal its existence to the public, or even sell it to one of their rivals. They pull him out of his ivory tower, and put him to work for the company—they are cautious, they try at first to charm him, to use him, before it turns out in the end that he must be destroyed.

He’s unwilling to leave his own vast idealistic project, until he is induced to receive some of the company propaganda programs, which make him a victim of his own device. He becomes temporarily a friend of the company, and comes to the new city of Quill River—which has replaced Hollywood and Radio City as the capital of the entertainment world. He is at first employed as a psionics engineer, to assist in turning out some of the new entertainments.

The particular entertainment he first deals with took its inspiration from the worship of Diana at Nemi—the King of the Wood, who reigns until slain by his successor. In the program “Public Enemy,” a cynical director has worked out an arrangement to give the public what he thinks it wants: sex, glamour, mystery, danger, wealth, triumph and disaster—all vicarious for the public, but real for the people involved. Dan Candella is the reigning Public Enemy, a glorified gangster. In a typical drama, he is permitted to pick up a beautiful girl who wants the rewards of stardom, and a man who wants the girl is permitted to pursue her and to fight Candella for the girl and for his own crown. Their thoughts and emotions and sensations are picked up and recorded on tape. Everything has to be edited, doctored up for the public—in this entertainment Warneke is assigned the work on, the girl is a cheap and selfish individual who surrendered to Candella without a second thought of the man she left behind, who was tricked into entering the contest for her and actually murdered—though of course he had signed waivers for the legal department, and his death was technically an accident.

Anyhow, Warneke doesn’t care for that sort of thing, so far from his idealistic purpose, and he doubts that the public does. He starts a campaign of protest, but gradually finds out that he is trapped—though it takes a certain amount of time and detective work for him to find out why.

That’s the situation, as well as I’ve been able to work it out. As the plot develops, Warneke and the girl he has met at Quill River become trapped themselves in the Public Enemy Program, in some such way is this:

There was another engineer, who was employed to doctor the tapes and to put in the unconscious suggestions that sold soap flakes. He got fed up with the job, and planned to go to Senator Hansen, a liberal politician who is fighting to break up the psionics monopoly and put it under legal control. He removed from the company safe a number of the original undoctored tapes—including interviews between the head of the company and the political puppets that are about to be elected by voters under psionic compulsion. Before he could reach Hansen, however, Blinn was murdered by Candella—because his change of loyalties had been discovered. The tapes, the loss of which was not immediate discovered, have been left in the hands of the heroine—who is the secretary of the producer, Frinkel.

The girl, Jenny Grant, has hidden these tapes. She is afraid to do anything with them. She is terrified. She is afraid of Candella, who has picked her for one of his future stars. She can’t help picking up the Public Enemy broadcasts, and the unconscious suggestions in that are such as to turn the gangster, who is already bad enough, into a sort of monstrous and implacable figure of evil.

When J. Marshall Sharry—the head of the company—finds that she knows where the tapes are, it becomes necessary to make her Candella’s new star—so that a pick-up can be turned to her mind, and the tapes found. The trouble is, that in her terror, she has forgotten the tapes entirely, so that even the machine can’t read the secret from her mind.

Warneke, in the meantime, is finding out the truth, exploring the trap which he comes to realize is of his own making, looking for a way out. He comes across Hansen’s name—he has been aloof from politics before—finally gets in touch with Hansen, learns that the tapes exist and that they are a lever which might be used to topple the company political machine in the forthcoming election—the people will vote wisely, when they have been told the truth. The problem is to get the truth and get it told.

Warneke learns the nature of his trap but fails to escape it. He is forced to enter the Public Enemy Program as the champion of Jenny Grant—even though he knows that all the odds will be in favor of Candella, who has been promising for some time to kill him.

(This battle between Warneke and Candella, while directed by the producer, Frinkel, and intended for broadcast, is kept as far as possible within the frame of the real situation and developed as a logical outcome of the rivalry between them that has existed from the first. Frinkel is on hand to point out that this is in the fine old tradition of shows about show business.)

In the end, despite the odds, Warneke does kill Candella. This victory turns out to be a defeat for him, however. Sharry, in fact, had been wanting to get Candella out of the way—the man was getting ideas. And with Candella dead, Jenny Grant loses her fear. She remembers the tapes and where she hid them. The machine picks up her thoughts. Sharry finds the tapes, which might have destroyed him, and burns them. It is election eve, and he is triumphant. He expects his puppets to go in, and Hansen’s forces to be defeated. Another challenger is being readied to enter Public Enemy, and kill Warneke.

But there is another record of the tapes—in Jenny’s mind. With his skill as a psionic engineer, Warneke is able to broadcast that record of the truth. He is able to present Sharry to the world, stripped of the lies and unconscious suggestions that have made a public hero of him. The election goes the other way.

I’ve been working on this for nearly a month now, and I’m still not entirely satisfied with the plot. It still seems a little loose and vague. Yet I believe that the thing holds possibilities of real interest—among other things, it might be made into a good satiric picture of the entertainment industries. I spent last week making tentative starts on the actual narrative without ever getting past page six.

I’d be very glad for any comments you can make about this. How can it be sharpened and improved? If written, what are the chances of a sale? (One way or another, I’ve got to make some money. I need some good commercial advice.)