The Synopsis Treasury Read online

  Case in point, Williamson’s synopsis about the shape-shifting replica human bears a resemblance to John W. Campbell’s now-famous novella, Who Goes There? published two years prior. Particularly where Williamson wrote, “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.” In the novella Who Goes There?, Campbell (writing as Don A. Stuart) introduced an alien that could replicate other creatures in their exact likeness by absorbing them. He thus introduced one of the most frightening creatures in the history of literature. While that story had inspired the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World, the creature had been completely reimagined into something easier for special effects of the time. But in 1982, Universal Pictures more faithfully adapted Who Goes There? into John Carpenter’s The Thing, now a cult classic. One of the only similarities between the two adaptations is referring to the creature as “the thing.” In 1950, Williamson referred to his creature similarly: “He still apparently has his own body and his own mind—though vague thoughts of the Thing creep into his consciousness now and then.…”

  “The shape-changing story still looks tempting,” Williamson said about this synopsis. “It could make a good horror novel. I don’t recall any response from Fred. Getting a story going requires a nice fit of several elements. The idea itself. A feeling in the writer that it expresses something he wants to say—often it can symbolize a solution to some unconscious conflict. A confidence that a market exists. Writing is communication. That requires an audience, the expectation of a feedback, hopefully in the form of a contract, a check, and the sense of an appreciative readership. We are social beings. Writing gives the satisfying sense of belonging to society. Maybe the idea just didn’t ring a bell with Fred.

  “My own novel, Darker Than You Think (1940) was another early adventure with the shape-changing theme. My hero becomes a giant snake, a pterodactyl, finally a werewolf.”

  Apparently none of the story ideas in these letters led to a finished novel, but his ongoing relationship with Frederik Pohl resulted in many novel collaborations in the years to come.

  Pohl passed away in 2013.

  —CSH

  Dear Fred,

  Your suggestion for an atomic murder story has had me thinking, and I’m beginning to think that something might be done with the idea that might be very successful—perhaps even with such a market as the SEP—if it were developed along the proper lines. But, since I haven’t had much experience in this field, I’d like your reaction to this:

  The hero is a young nuclear physicist, who has just left his job at Los Alamos, probably because he didn’t like the bureaucracy in charge or had ideas about the future of atomic energy in conflict with those of the AEC—point of entry here for the theme of the story, whatever it is to be.

  Anyhow, the hero is spending his first night outside at a tourist court in Santa Fe, waiting for his wife to join them—she has been on a trip east or something, and they’re going to his new academic or private industrial job together.

  Sleepless that night, his thoughts flashing back to her and to his reasons for leaving the weapons project, he sees a blue flash in the room. Doesn’t think much of it, until an hour or so later he is nauseated, sick in the bathroom. Then he knows it was a real dose of radiation.

  He has no Geiger counters or any other equipment of the sort, but he does have a loaded camera, and he takes that to a friend of his in town, a young doctor who was formerly with the Manhattan project, but is now in private practice. The doctor takes blood count, urinalysis—lets hero listen to radiation from his own body clicking in counters. Develops film, which is blackened. Doctor tells him he has a heavy dose, probably lethal, wants him to report to the hospital on the hill.

  Hero, however, knowing that very little can be done for him, wants to know who killed him, and why. He realizes that in the absence of a cyclotron or something of the kind, the radiation must have come from a sample of fissionable material, which could only have been stolen from the project.

  Thinking along those lines, he is already afraid to report what has happened. Anybody in position to steal plutonium would also be in position to learn of the report—and he knows what the consequences of that might be.

  Borrowing a Geiger counter from the doctor, the physicist returns to the tourist court. The counter shows strong radioactivity still coming from one wall of room. Entering adjoining cabin, now empty, he finds “hot” lead bricks used to beam the deadly radiation at him. Murderers, however, have removed rest of equipment and themselves. He sets out, with counter, to run them down.

  The reason he can’t ask for aid from the Security Service guards or the FBI is that he soon uncovers additional information to confirm his fear that the criminals are expert scientists, who have planned to use the stolen plutonium to blow up the whole Los Alamos laboratory, and the fear that any alarm would make them do so at once.

  The doctor, who has been helping him, is soon murdered—preferably with a massive dose of radiation, which kills him at once.

  The wife, arriving, is abducted by the enemy (or perhaps has already been abducted, which is why she didn’t meet him) and when she does turn up she is loaded with an appalling confession that she and the doctor and her husband had engineered the whole plot themselves, for private profit.

  Finally, as the desperate and dying physicist runs down the plotters, he finds that the scheme was engineered by an efficient and brilliant Russian spy: a fanatical, cold-blooded man with military experience, who has been masquerading as an artist with a studio up in the hills as near as possible to Los Alamos. His assistants include a German physicist who has been broken in the concentration camps, and the fellow-traveling American in the project who stole the plutonium for him, a few grams at a time (this last a pretty soft-headed, contemptible character.)

  While the actual detonating mechanism of a Bomb—besides the relatively small mass of plutonium required—is too massive to steal, these people have built detonating equipment of their own, installed in a mine shaft near the studio, which is all set to blow the top of “the hill” and leave America deprived of the atom bomb in the war for which that detonation will be the signal.

  The physicist, working alone, will be required to prevent that explosion and recover the stolen plutonium.

  The Geiger counter is one useful bit of equipment in the investigation—since the enemy have contaminated themselves and their equipment with a good deal of radioactivity, in the course of their effort to murder the hero.

  Motive for that was, in the beginning, just a mistaken fear that he was on their trail. When he came down from the hill and moved into the tourist court where some of the plotters were staying, they thought he was after them. They rigged up equipment to give him lethal shot through wall, and then departed.

  Later, when the clever major learned what had happened, he worked over the abducted wife with his expert secret police methods, to get her to make confession involving hero, in order to throw pursuit off trail until he can blow up the laboratory.

  In the end, after the explosion is averted—it wouldn’t be a bad idea if all the villains had got a fatal dose themselves—doctors at a hospital give hero a fair chance to recover (he hadn’t got quite so much as he supposed.)

  (Alternative development—that the radiation blast in the tourist court was entirely accidental, resulting from a test of some of the equipment, and that the Red major has since carried stoically on with his plot, despite the fact that he, too, is dying—I rather like that, as giving an impression of the stern devotion of Communists to the Cause.)

  What do you think of that? I’m undecided, myself, about using communists for villains, and about the plot to blow up Los Alamos—which all looks pretty trite and melodramatic. But on the other hand, the greatest actual danger to the secrets of the bomb is from Reds, and the best use of a stole
n bomb would be to blow up the bomb factory.

  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 ideal
istic 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.