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David McDaniel

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David Edward McDaniel (June 16, 1944-November 1, 1977) was a US science fiction author. Perhaps his best-known work is The Vampire Affair (1966). He wrote 7 novels set in the world of the TV series The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

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Biography

David McDaniel was born in Toledo, Ohio. He studied (subject) at San Diego State University, then moved to Los Angeles to be near his mother. While living in Los Angeles he joined Science Fiction Fandom, using the pseudonym Ted Johnstone. This makes him one of the few authors to write under his real name but conduct his social life under a pseudonym.

(More details to follow).

David McDaniel died sometime in the early morning of November 1, 1977. A friend found him hanging by the neck several days later, and associated evidence suggested accidental death from Autoerotic asphyxiation.

Professional Career

McDaniel sold two stories while still an undergraduate. Pulp writer Noel Loomis was teaching a course on writing at San Diego state, and offered an automatic A to any student who sold a story. McDaniel found a boy's magazine whose requirements he could meet, and sent them two stories. They accepted both.

  1. A young English boy sees Vikings about to attack his village. He rouses the village and helps drive off the Vikings.
  2. A short space story about a teen boy, with both problem solving and character development.

McDaniel came to write books in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series at least partly because of a prank. He got some patches with the [[Thrush] logo through a friend who worked for MGM Studios. Then a group of his friends sewed the patches on dark suits and they showed up at a theater where Robert Vaughn was playing Hamlet. Afterward they stood politely in line to greet Vaughn, and equally politely insisted that they were from the "Public Relations" department of Thrush. There were several more "Thrush runs" to various places where they could startle people who weren't expecting a group of fictional villains to show up.

McDaniel also created an acronym for Thrush: The Technological Hierarchy for the removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity. McDaniel called in to a talk show where UNCLE producer Norm Felton was a guest and insisted that Thrush existed. Felton of course denied this, and McDaniel asked what "Thrush" stood for. Felton said it didn't stand for anything, and McDaniel said, "No, it's the Technological Hierarchy for..." Felton's reaction was "The Technological Hierarchy for What?" McDaniel used that line in his first UNCLE novel, The Dagger Affair.

McDaniel loved to play with ideas. He would sit around with friends and toss ideas in the air to see where they landed. One of these discussions was about how to sell to Ace Books[1]. Henry Stine pointed out that most of the books had "of" in the title. "Pirates of Zan", "Star of Danger," etc. This inspired McDaniel to start a novel about a lost cache of weapons. He didn't have a good name for the aliens, so he used XXX as a placeholder. McDaniel finished the novel but still hadn't come up with a name, so he sent it in that way, using the title The Weapons of XXX. Terry Carr, a junior editor at Ace, liked it, but the chief editor, |Don Wollheim wasn't convinced, so they returned it. But Ace landed the contract for the UNCLE novels a month or so later, and Carr remembered Weapons of XXX and knew McDaniel was a big UNCLE fan[2], so he asked McDaniel to submit a novel. The result, The Dagger Affair, was one of the biggest sellers in the series.

See http://www.manfromuncle.org/mcdanielbystine1.htm for an account of how McDaniel came to write books in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. series. His last novel, The Final Affair, was to have been the last book in the series. But he was several months late finishing it, and by that time the series was no longer on TV. The Final Affair was never professionally published, but permission was obtained from MGM for a limited press run and grey market copies can be found from time to time.

Bibliography

  • The Dagger Affair (#4)
  • The Vampire Affair (#6)
  • The Monster Wheel Affair (#8)
  • The Rainbow Affair (#13)
  • The Utopia Affair (#15)
  • The Hollow Crown Affair (#17)
  • The Final Affair [3]
  • Number Two, also known as Who is Number Two, the second book in the series based on the TV series The Prisoner
  • The Arsenal Out of Time, a science fiction novel
  • "Quiet Village," a short story set in the same fictional history, published in Analog in 1970 and reprinted in the collection There Will be War, edited by Jerry Pournelle, Tor Books, 1983.


Notes

  1. ^ At the time, Ace was the largest publisher of Science Fiction paperbacks, paid the lowest rates, but was the easiest "port of entry" for a would-be SF author.
  2. ^ Carr knew about the "Thrush runs": they had gained a certain notoriety in SF Fandom.
  3. ^ Not numbered in the series, published with permission by a small press.
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