The Synopsis Treasury (5 page)
Read The Synopsis Treasury Online
Authors: Christopher Sirmons Haviland
Tags: #Reference, #Writing; Research & Publishing Guides, #Publishing & Books, #Authorship
I suggest that you read it, then go over it with editorial pencil in hand, noting on the face of the manuscript exposition or discussion which you wish to cut down, incidents which you want added, etc. Or, if you prefer, take it as it is and make your own changes.
I would like to see this story published. It was an attempt on my part, only partially successful, to do something as “Odd John”. To my way of thinking, science-fictionists have become gadget crazy, and are perfectly willing to accept any improbability as long as the author postulates some sketchily-explained “invention” in the sphere of physics. (I’ve done it myself!) Here is a story with no gadgets, in which the author has hooked together a lot of the erratic data which orthodox theory rejects, and tried to fit it into a single comprehensive philosophy and history.
By the way, as I did the research for this story (the data cited pp. 15-26 and circa p. 49 are all factual) I became convinced that, although my story was fiction, the basic idea, or something very like it, was true. Or, at least, closer to the truth than orthodox theory. In particular I came to believe that modern anthropology and modern psychology were mutually contradictory—irreconcilable.
“Patterns of Possibility”. I suggest that you mark this one up in the same fashion as “Lost Legacy”. It is probably too long, especially in some of the discussions between Frost and Howard Jenkins. The episode about the “angel” might be cut entirely, although personally I think it is needed to round out the theory.
“Beyond Doubt”. This manuscript is in the hands of Julius Schwartz. I could write to him and ask him to send it to me, then forward it to you, but it seems simpler to leave him in the status of agent. May I ask that you telephone him, FO 5-0965, and say that I said for him to give it to you, that we had agreed on terms, and that, if you take it, he will receive the usual commission.
This story is hardly science-fiction at all in a serious sense. Rather, it is intended as a double satire on politics and on dogmatic science. I think the prologue and epilogue are a bit heavy-handed and should be shortened, or eliminated. This story is intended simply to amuse. It amused me to write it; if it amuses you—fine; the readers will probably be amused likewise. If it does not amuse you, let’s forget it.
It probably bears the names of Caleb Saunders and Elma Wentz. That should be changed to Lyle Monroe and Elma Wentz. I own the story, but the double credit line is necessary.
You will find herewith a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return of these manuscripts. That will be necessary in any case, for revision—unless you prefer to make your own revisions.
Kindest regards,
Robert A. Heinlein
19 November 1940
Dear Mr. Heinlein:
Enclosed herewith are your two manuscripts, “Patterns of Possibility” and “Lost Legacy”.
Julie Schwartz has given me “Beyond Doubt”, which I have read, and am accepting as it stands. I shall have the check for it in about a week, and shall give it to Julie.
“Patterns of Possibility” I did not much like, and I will not devote much space to it, as I am considerably more interested in “Lost Legacy”. The story was inconclusive, and I don’t think any amount of rewriting could correct that, unless the whole present plot and setting were discarded, and a new story built around the time theory.
As for “Lost Legacy”, I should like you to rewrite it according to the following suggestions:
Chapters I-V. From a literary and dramatic point of view, these are satisfactory as is. However, they do not definitely enough set the period of the story—which is hinted to be in the future, at some time between this year and a dozen years from now. I would like you to definitely “date” it at, say, 1950; to show what material changes have taken place in the life of the nation in the way of new means of transportation, communications, amusements, and so forth. This would mean bringing in some of the “gadgets” which you appear to have intentionally eliminated. I think, though, that it will improve the story; certainly it will make it more palatable to a science fiction audience.
The hook, as you say, could well be speeded up, but the manner of speeding it can be left up to you.
Chapter VI, I think, should be excised entirely, if you can present the story told in it in any other way. Under any circumstances, it should be told as briefly as possible—and should not be in diary form. Chapters VII and VIII, being principally exposition, should be cut drastically also.
What I said of Chapters I to IV applies also to IX and X. Chapter XI need not be changed at all.
The two final chapters, XII and XIII, need considerable more action and development. This is particularly true of the fight with Brinckley. In the preceding sections of the story, you have hinted at a wide-spread conspiracy of people of Brinckley’s type; would it not have been necessary for Huxley and the others to fight the others, as well as Brinckley?
My error—I confused Chapter XIII with the latter half of Chapter XII. Only chapter XII requires rewriting; the other makes a very good ending as it stands.
I hope that the rather condensed suggestions above will be sufficient for you to work on. It seems unwise to be more explicit, though, since a full exposition of my opinions for improving the story could scarcely be achieved by correspondence and a fragmentary one would be sure to be misleading. About all I can do is to give directives as broad as those above, and trust to your ability as an author to fill in the missing detail.
If you have or encounter in the course of the rewriting any specific questions which you think I might be able to answer, I of course will be glad to try to clear them up.
Although I should like to see your revised version of “Lost Legacy” as soon as possible, my schedule on long novels is full up to the July issue. I’ll be wanting copy for that around the end of February; that gives you more than three months in which to complete the job.
Cordially yours,
Frederik Pohl
November 25, 1940
Dear Mr. Pohl,
Thank you for your courteous and detailed letter of November 19th.
I am very pleased that you decided to take “Beyond Doubt”, not so much on my own account as for my collaborator. It is going to do her good to see her name in print. I agree with you on “Patterns of Possibility”. I was learning to write at the time; it is not well plotted. Perhaps someday I will make better use of that time theory.
I am glad that you are able to give me a little more time in revising “Lost Legacy” than I had anticipated. I could turn it out as a rush job right now; since you are in no pressing hurry for it, I shall wait about a month, completing work that I have on hand, then tackle it slowly and leisurely, giving it the loving care that I want to give it.
I find myself in complete agreement with you on most points as to how to make it take hold properly. In the few cases where your opinions and mine do not agree exactly there is so little difference of opinion that I shall have no trouble in following your wishes. For example I don’t think the story needs gadgets from a dramatic standpoint, but they won’t hurt the story, so gadgets there shall be. As you know from my other work, I can think of gadgets if I need to. Anyhow the readers expect them.
Let me say that you are the kind of an editor I like to work with—and there are some in the business for whom I can not say that! Not being financially dependent on writing I can permit myself the luxury of having nothing to do with editors whose manner in dealing with writers I do not like. I appreciate very much the serious effort and good taste that you bring to the task of working on a story with a writer.
Cordially yours,
Robert A. Heinlein
January 11th, 1941
Dear Mr. Pohl,
Herewith is the baby—”Lost Legacy”.
I think you will find that I have complied with your editorial instructions as to re-writing it to the letter. However, I am getting it in at this early date in order that additional changes may be made, if you wish them. I wish to turn out an entirely satisfactory piece of work. I have not enclosed postage for return as there is no need to send the manuscript back for such additional changes as may be needed. I can work from the carbon copy, and your instructions.
The manuscript is not very pretty now; many of the changes were made on the face of the original manuscript. I had two reasons for that. In the first place I wanted you to be able to see how much had been cut from the overly verbose and tedious chapters, and to see what had been added in the way of action, plot complication, dialogue—and gadgets. I added all the gadgets I thought the story would stand from a literary standpoint, but I can add them indefinitely, if you still want more of them.
The second reason is that I am a slow typist. Re-copying simply to improve the appearance of an untidy but perfectly legible script is tedious and rather expensive in time wasted.
Chapter VI, the dream, has been shifted from diary to third person, and has been cut at least half. Inasmuch as the key to the rest of the story and all the basic ideas are contained in that chapter I do not believe that it can be cut much more without destroying some of the force and literary value of the story. But you’re the doctor—let me know. Chapters VII & VIII have been greatly trimmed as well, and I believe that they are now satisfactorily fast story.
Chapter XIII, the fight with Brinckley et seq., has been greatly expanded in accordance with your instructions. I added about the amount of action and dialogue to this chapter that I had struck out of exposition in earlier chapters (leaving the total length of the story about the same). This action could be spun out for any desired additional number of words, but I don’t favor doing so. It is packed with implied action now as well as a great deal of additional explicit action, which gives the story a fast pace in its conclusion which I think is desirable in any story and which can be lost through too detailed treatment. I think the story should rush pell-mell to a conclusion once Huxley makes the decision to fight Brinckley personally.
In any case, here it is—with time left to chew over any remaining details.
I enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope. The airmail stamp is a gentle hint—I am always anxious to hear editorial reaction at the earliest convenient date.
Cordially yours,
Robert A. Heinlein
17 January 1941
Dear Heinlein:
“Lost Legacy” arrived okay, and I decided to scan it hastily—and read it attentively. Which is another way of saying that no additional changes will be necessary. I’ll take it as it stands.…
Cordially,
Frederik Pohl
From the Frederik Pohl Correspondence collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries at Syracuse University.
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James Gunn
(photo by Jason Dailey)
James Gunn has worked as an editor of paperback reprints; as managing editor of Kansas University alumni publications; as director of KU public relations; as a professor of English; and now is professor emeritus of English and director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. He won national awards for his work as an editor and a director of public relations. He was awarded the Byron Caldwell Smith Award in recognition of literary achievement and the Edward Grier Award for excellence in teaching, was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America for 1971–72 and president of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1980 to ’82, and has been guest of honor at many regional science fiction conventions, including SFeracon in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, and Polcon, the Polish National SF convention, in Katowice. Gunn was presented with the Pilgrim Award of SFRA in 1976, a special award from the 1976 World SF Convention for Alternate Worlds, a Science Fiction Achievement Award (Hugo) by the 1983 World SF Convention for Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction, the Eaton Award in 1992 for lifetime achievement. SFWA’s Grand Master Award in 2007, and was a Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention in 2013. He was a KU Mellon fellow in 1981 and 1984 and served from 1978 to ’80 and 1985 to present as chairman of the Campbell Award jury to select the best science fiction novel of the year. He has lectured in Denmark, China, Iceland, Japan, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union for the US Information Agency.
Gunn is also the distinguished author of numerous science fiction novels and shorter works, including
The Listeners
,
The Dreamers
,
The Witching Hour
,
The Joy Machine
(with Theodore Sturgeon),
Crisis!
,
The Burning
,
The Magicians
,
Station in Space
,
The Immortals
(on which the 1969 TV movie and 1970–71 TV series
The Immortal
was based), and his current novel
Transcendental
. He also edited a series of science fiction anthologies intended for use in teaching courses on the subject, published as a six-volume work entitled
The Road to Science Fiction
.
The Synopsis Saga
When I started writing novels in 1952, the only way I knew to write a novel was to start at the beginning and work my way sequentially to the end. There was no point in writing a synopsis, since I had no prospect of getting a contract to write a novel until I had written it. After the first two, I started writing my novels as a series of novellas or novelettes, the way Isaac Asimov wrote The Foundation Trilogy, like tinker toys, each new one attached to the one that came before. Sometimes I would discuss work in progress with an editor on my annual visits to New York, and sometimes that would result in a contract before the work was finished. The only occasion on which that required a synopsis was when I submitted to Fred Pohl a couple of chapters of my novel-in-progress
Kampus
, when he was the science fiction editor at Bantam Books, and he told me he’d give me a contract for it, but he wanted a synopsis. “But you never wrote a synopsis,” I protested. “I just need it for the editorial committee,” he replied. “You don’t have to follow it.”
Later in my career as a novelist, however, I found other ways to write a novel. I wrote the final chapter of
The Millennium Blues
and then went back and wrote the preceding eighteen, and I did write a synopsis in hopes of getting a contract. That was when I had a reputation as a writer who had published more than a dozen novels. A few years later, when I felt as if I needed to spend my remaining writing time in greater assurance of publication, I began to seek contracts before the project was barely started, particularly for my non-fiction projects. Generally a brief summary of what I intended to accomplish was enough, as it was for the six-volume
The Road to Science Fiction, The Science of Science-Fiction Writing,
and
Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction
(with Matthew Candelaria). But
Reading Science Fiction
(with Marleen Barr and Matthew Candelaria) took a full prospectus and table of contents.
When I started my most recent novel,
Transcendental
, I decided to seek a contract on the strength of a prospectus and the first and final chapters, but even a Grand Master award and forty-one previous books was not enough. Times had changed. Editors no longer had the ability to negotiate contracts without going through an editorial committee and getting the approval of the sales force and the accounting department. One editor said, “We can’t sell this kind of intelligent science fiction anymore.” I may have made the mistake of quoting T.S. Eliot and Geoffrey Chaucer on the first page.…
Eventually, I submitted four chapters to Elizabeth Anne Hull’s
Gateways
, her tribute volume to her husband, Fred Pohl, and asked her to pick one. She said, “I want them all,” and when Tor Books editor Jim Frenkel went over the manuscript he wrote me that he’d like to see the novel when it was finished. That worked better than anything else—it’s always good to find an editor who wants to see a novel. And so—I really liked the synopsis that follows, and I’ve followed it pretty faithfully, including the sequel now in progress, but it took a complete manuscript and an editor who wanted it, to make it work.
—James Gunn
Transcendental
A Book Proposal
Transcendental
will be a novel about a journey through a colorful world some thousand years in the future when humanity has colonized many planets in the galaxy and met a number of alien species with whom, after some difficulties in communication, it has learned to coexist in relative peace and harmony but at a price: limitation on innovation to prevent any species from gaining a dangerous advantage over the others and leading to a possible galactic competition or even outright warfare that, with planet-busting techniques, threaten the destruction of intelligent life in the galaxy. That stasis has been endangered, however, by the rise of a new religion that speculates about the discovery of an artifact on a remote planet, perhaps left by an ancient race. The artifact, the religion states, has the ability to enhance the mental and physical ability of any creature who submits itself to it, or to destroy if the creature is unfit or not a true believer. The religion, Transcendentalism, offers actual transcendence.
The novel will be about a kind of hajj by a group of pilgrims, as they make their way across a galaxy and then across a planet to reach the artifact. Modeled after
The Canterbury Tales
, the novel will offer a variety of characters and their individual stories focusing on the question and need for transcendence, as the protagonist, a skeptical adventurer, gets to know them and analyze their motives, including his own, through the personal conflicts that brought them to this dangerous journey and its problematic conclusion. The protagonist, the narrative slowly reveals, has been hired by a powerful organization—he does not know whether it is alien or human—to infiltrate the group and try to identify among its members the one who may be the prophet of Transcendentalism, the discoverer of the artifact who may already have undergone the transformation; and, if the process is real, to see that humanity acquires it ahead of other species. Transcendentalism and the possible Transcendentals that may result threaten the political equilibrium that has preserved the galaxy until now. Violence, romance, and death, from outside and inside the group, come as a inevitable accompaniment of their journey, and one revelation follows after another, all of it focused around the great SF theme of transcendence, as the protagonist is gradually transformed from a disillusioned skeptic into a believer in humanity and its quest for transcendence.
The novel ends as the protagonist reaches the goal and submits himself to the process he had originally scorned, but we do not learn whether he achieved transcendence or death. A sequel (Transubstantial?), or even a trilogy, is possible.
In addition to the theme of transcendence, the novel will deal with the theme of stasis versus change. The questions to be answered during the progress of the novel are: who hired the protagonist? who is the prophet? who (or what) doesn’t want the pilgrimage to reach its goal? The answers to these questions, and others, will undergo many transmutations as sides and motives are unveiled.
A parallel might be drawn to Joseph Campbell’s “monomyth” in
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons upon his fellow man.”
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