American Gods

Neil Gaiman, American Gods (London, 2001).

Part 1, Shadows
1
Low Key Lyesmith is Loki Liesmith but who is Sam Fetisher?

Shadow is asked whether he has black ancestry and doesn't know but he is black on TV.

COMING TO AMERICA 813 AD (pp. 58-60)
Would Norse sailors pray to the all-father or to Aegir? See the combox here.

COMING TO AMERICA 1721 (pp. 80-88)
This is a good short story. It informs us that pixies were originally called "piskies."

Obviously there is more to the novel than this. I have watched Season 1, Episode 1, of the TV adaptation and have reread the book to p. 94 of 501.

This Blog This Month

One post about a novel.

Three posts about a film nominally based on a novel about Stieg Larsson's characters.

Eleven posts occasioned by a novel based on a TV series.

One post about a TV series.

This summary.

Seventeen posts.

Addendum: eighteenth post, about another novel, which has been adapted as a TV serial, here.

Adam Adamant Lives!

Adam Adamant Lives! should be a prime candidate for revival in films or in an Alan Moore graphic novel.

Part of the origin story was that the title character, who had been in suspended animation from 1902 to 1966, had already been known as a popular hero before his suspension. A young 1960s woman who had been a fan of Adam Adamant the historical figure becomes a close up fan of the real guy here and now. What could be better?

There could be several series set in:

the Victorian and Edwardian periods;

the '60s;

the future, as Adam and the villainous Face go back into suspended animation.

Apparently, Adam's finances were unexplained but that could easily be fixed with an inheritance and/or a government agency investigating his suspended animation.

The Two Versions Of Thrush

In The Man From UNCLE TV series:

a woman who appeared in a single episode claimed to have founded Thrush and was not contradicted;

Thrush was not an acronym.

Thus, within the TV series, these have to be accepted as the facts of Thrush.

However:

David McDaniel's carefully crafted and ingenious account does far more justice to the size and complexity of Thrush;

it is easy to assume that that woman in a single episode was deluded or lying.

Indeed, it is strange that this character and her claim appear only once and therefore are missed by anyone who did not see that particular episode.

On TV, a single Ultimate Computer was constructed and destroyed before it could be used. We may deduce from McDaniel's account that more were built. The UNCLE Chronology which claims that the prototype Ultimate Computer was built in 1898 goes beyond McDaniel's account and fits UNCLE into the expanded Wold Newton universe. However, McDaniel does state that Thrush pioneered information technology. See Thrush History II.

The Search For Thrush Central

(i) In The Man From UNCLE TV series, Thrush Central was merely referred to.

(ii) In The Rainbow Affair by David McDaniel, UNCLE learns that Thrush Central is tripartite and mobile with three Ultimate Computers.

(iii) In The Hollow Crown Affair by David McDaniel, "...U.N.C.L.E. misses raiding Thrush Central by mere minutes." See The UNCLE Chronology here.

(iv) In The Final Affair by David McDaniel, UNCLE destroys the three Centrals and invades Thrush Island. When Solo asks a Thrush guard who is on the other end of a phone line, the guard replies "My boss," and assents when Solo inquires, "The Boss? Acting Central?" (p. 87) UNCLE captures the island. End of Thrush as an international organization.

Two Sequences

From James Bond's first encounter with SMERSH in Casino Royale by Ian Fleming to UNCLE's eventual destruction of Thrush as a global organization in The Final Affair by David McDaniel is one long literary sequence although it might not be easily recognizable as such.

The highlights are:

Bond's defeat of SMERSH;

Krushchev's disbandment of it;

Blofeld's recruitment of former members of SMERSH and of similar organizations into SPECTRE;

Bond's destruction of two versions of SPECTRE;

his assassination of Blofeld in Japan;

his reinstatement in the Secret Service and continued conflict with the KGB;

the introduction of Thrush on TV;

the elaboration of Thrush in original novels by David McDaniel;

the eventual destruction of Thrush.

There is a second sequence:

SPECTRE originated in a screen treatment;

from there, it moved not only into Fleming's novels (see above) but also into the James Bond films;

in the films, SPECTRE's numbered members were controlled by a mysterious Number One;

this numerical system was duplicated by the totalitarian Village in The Prisoner TV series;

the Prisoner realized that he was Number One and destroyed the Village.

In Casino Royale, Bond bankrupted Le Chiffre who was then assassinated by SMERSH. This tradition of the evil organization eliminating its own failures was continued both by SPECTRE and by Thrush.

Three Organizations

There are three versions of SMERSH:

a real WWII counter-espionage organization;

a fictional organization introduced in Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel;

an organization described in a dodgy dossier that was handed in to The Sunday Times and that influenced Fleming's presentation of the fictional organization in his fifth James Bond novel.

(This explains, if it does not excuse, Fleming's claim, in an initialed author's note, that From Russia, With Love presents an accurate account of SMERSH.)

There are perhaps three versions of SPECTRE:

a fictional organization in a screen treatment by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham;

a fictional organization introduced in Fleming's novelization of the screen treatment;

a larger fictional organization introduced in the first Sean Connery James Bond film.

There are two accounts of Thrush:

it is introduced in The Man From UNCLE TV series;

it is creatively elaborated in David McDaniel's original UNCLE novels.

Since Fleming had planned a James Bond TV series and also had some input into the UNCLE TV series, there is a direct line of descent from SMERSH through SPECTRE to Thrush. Furthermore, former members of the disbanded SMERSH joined SPECTRE and former members of the WWII SMERSH might well have joined Thrush.

Thrush In McDaniel's Novels

I think that The Man From UNCLE TV series and novels developed separate terminologies. Thus, "Thrush Central" on TV but "the Council" and "satrapies" in the books, although David McDaniel pulled it all together and gave Thrush a history.

Ward Baldwin, the "Satrap" of San Francisco, was the same age as Thrush. Thus, it had always existed in his experience and he was seventy five when to his surprise it was destroyed in 1970. However, he had been primarily interested in the scientific research aspect of his work for the organization and his life continued without much change after 1970.

McDaniel in effect created characters and an organization that had never been seen in the TV series.

Confirmations

In the 1960s, when I was a fan of the James Bond novels, the James Bond films and The Man From UNCLE TV series, I thought that the Ultimate Computer would be able to match a male character with a perfectly compatible female partner. David McDaniel's The Final Affair reveals that Napoleon Solo married a Thrush agent on precisely this basis. Thrush faked her death when she reported that she would be unable to turn Napoleon.

At least twice in the TV series, there were major power conflicts within Thrush. Mandor, describing himself as "the second man in Thrush" and pretending to defect, got UNCLE to close down only those Thrush bases that were not loyal to him. Two agents were to release a gas that would destroy free will in all human beings except those who were protected with them in their base. They were to be joined there by the current leaders of Thrush but decided to release the gas before those leaders arrived... Of course, UNCLE thwarted the plan in any case. The Final Affair confirms the occurrence of "...a power struggle which had shaken the whole Hierarchy." (p. 56)

Raduysya Mariye

In David McDaniel's unpublished novel,  The Final Affair, Illya Kuryakin prays on a battlefield:

"Raduysya Mariye, blagodati poliaya, Gospod s't'voyu; blagosloyenna ti mezhdu zhenami i blagosloyven' plod' chryena tvoyevo Iisus'. Syvataya Mariye, matyer' Bozhi, ya molu o nas' gruishnikh' ninui, i v' chas' smyerti nashyey. Amin'." (pp. 94-95)

I recognize the prayer because of:


the positioning and repetition of "Mariye";

the positioning of "Iisus";

the phrase "matyer' Bozhi," which looks like "mater (mother) of Someone";

The James Bond novels, which tell us that SMERSH means "SMERt SHpionan," "Death to Spies";

"smyerti," which could be a genitive plural of "smert."

When a few words have been identified, others seem to follow, e.g.: "chas' smyerti nashyey" = "the hour of our deaths"?

Thrush History II

According to Ward Baldwin's reminiscences in The Final Affair:

the First Council was only five men;

the early Hierarchy used Hollerith cards to maintain a central information service about professional criminals in London at the end of the nineteenth century;

the Hierarchy became international in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, partly thanks to the Great War;

the Thrush symbol first appeared on a blazer badge in Chicago in 1923;

the first and fourth decades of the twentieth century were periods of internal reorganization and of a broadening power base;

the Hierarchy profited from both sides during WWII;

the Hierarchy is information, which cannot be destroyed.

We want to read more. David McDaniel transformed an impossibly powerful and well-resourced conspiracy into a barely plausible and fascinating organization with an unexpected history and a unique, complex and intricate structure.

Thrush History

The UNCLE Chronology.

According to this Chronology:

the founders of Thrush first met in 1895;

they built the prototype of the Ultimate Computer in 1898;

they were first called the Circle of Life, then the Krafthaus;

they became "Thrush" in 1919;

Madame Nemirovitch, who joined Thrush in 1922, later claimed to have founded it;

Thrush kept a low profile and possibly helped the Allies during WWII;

the UN and UNCLE were founded in 1946;

Thrush was in major disarray and UNCLE nearly raided Thrush Central in 1968;

the Final Affair was in 1970;

conjecturally, Napoleon Solo became Harry Rule 1972-1982;

Justin Sepheran revived at least part of Thrush in 1983.

These are just the events and dates that I happen to be interested in.

Nothing Ends But It Changes

Nothing ever ends. Having years ago read David McDaniel's The Dagger Affair, in which he introduces the Technological Hierarchy, and having just read McDaniel's The Final Affair, in which UNCLE at last destroys the seventy five year old Hierarchy, I should now read the intermediate volume, The Rainbow Affair, in which McDaniel introduces the idea of the three Ultimate Computers. For those of us who watched The Man From UNCLE TV series and wondered about Thrush, McDaniels provides very satisfying answers about the history and structure of the organization.

Thrush and Patrick McGoohan's Village are two successors of Ian Fleming's SPECTRE. In fact, Thrush is a synthesis:

SMERSH was a state organization for world domination;
SPECTRE was a private organization for private profit;
Thrush was a private organization for world domination;
the Village was - what?

Bond defeated, and Krushchev disbanded, SMERSH;
Bond destroyed SPECTRE twice, then killed Blofeld;
UNCLE destroyed Thrush;
the Prisoner destroyed the Village...

The Village imitated the SPECTRE practice of numbering its members and concealing the identity of "Number One." Which state or other organization ran the Village? The question becomes irrelevant as the Village becomes an allegory for society.

The Final Affair

SPOILER ALERT for anyone who has not yet read The Final Affair by David McDaniel.

No wonder Thrush was so difficult to destroy. It was necessary first to locate and simultaneously capture three mobile Ultimate Computers, then to locate and attack Thrush Island. (There is a SPECTRE Island in one James Bond film and a Thrush Island in this one UNCLE novel.) Even then, national THRUSH leaders will try to re-internationalize the organization. This makes sense of Return Of The Man From UNCLE.

 The biographical details of the main characters as given in this novel differ from the details as given in the recent prequel film. (See here.) In the novel, Solo was still in school in 1949, not leaving the US Army and joining CIA in 1945, and Kuryakin came from the Russian navy, not from KGB.

Three Sequels

Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy has three sequels:

an unpublished manuscript by Stieg Larsson;
two novels by David Lagercrantz;
a film with the same title as Lagercrantz's first novel.

In that third sequel, Lisbeth, now a vigilante, even wears either an eye-mask or white face paint that resembles a mask: an interesting transformation of the character into a standard series avenging heroine.

Meanwhile, I enjoy rereading Larsson's trilogy.

Salander, Vigilante

Some one-off characters are potential series characters, e.g., Frederick Forsyth's Avenger. That is what happens to Lisbeth Salander in the film, not the novel, The Girl in the Spiders' Web. In this version, she regularly attacks men who have abused women and raids their bank accounts for the benefit of the abused women.

Whereas the Swedish TV dramatizations of Stieg Larsson's Millennium novels are recognizable adaptations of Larsson's texts, the Spider's Web film is simply different from the novel after which it is named and should have been given a different title.

As such, it is an interesting adaptation of the original characters.

The Girl In The Spider's Web Film

Stieg Larsson wrote a published trilogy and an unpublished manuscript.

David Lagercrantz has written two published novels based not on the unpublished manuscript written by Larsson but only on the characters created by Larsson. For comments on the first of these two novels, see here.

The film, The Girl In The Spider's Web, is only nominally based on the first novel by Lagercrantz. Thus, it is at two removes from Larsson's trilogy. Lisbeth has become a vigilante against men who hate women. Thus, Lisbeth's known character is fused with the familiar image of a screen vigilante. Bruce Wayne is personally motivated to fight against all crime whereas Lisbeth is motivated to fight against a particular type of crime but this differentiates her from the original Lisbeth who took action against particular men but did not set out to wage a war against all women-hating men.

The Fox by Frederick Forsyth

Etruscan is indecipherable. Hackers do not have to decipher top secret passwords, just find out what they are, but how do they do that? Is hacking on the scale described in The Fox possible? Is anyone doing it?

Two novels by Forsyth end with a big political change:

the restoration of Tsarism in Icon;
the overthrow of Kim III in Korea in The Fox.

On the other hand, The Fox, like Wells' The Time Machine and The First Men in The Moon, ends with a return to life as normal because the Fox loses his hacking ability.

Instead of SMERSH, the Russian President now contacts a London-based billionaire who hires criminals. The climax with the elimination of the sniper and then of the Russian intelligence chief is neat.