Kolya's Son

Zine
Title:	Kolya's Son
Publisher:	Oddbalz & Mayhem Press
Editor:
Author(s):	LRH Balzar & Pat Foley
Cover Artist(s):	Warren Oddsson
Illustrator(s):	Warren Oddsson
Date(s):	1994
Series?:	yes
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Language:	English
External Links:	Archive of Our Own
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cover by Warren Oddsson

Kolya's Son is a gen 168-page Man from UNCLE novel by Pat Foley and LRH Balzer.

The art is by Warren Oddsson.

a 1995 flyer for the series up through v.7

Summary

A story set back in time, but should be read after Collection: Year One. June 1961: A young Soviet agent, trapped in an existence he could no longer endure, whispers to Alexander Waverly, "Please help me. Let me come work for you." Two weeks later, he was abducted and 'murdered'. He was dead. He was free... But that was the easy part. America was in a Cold War. America was not ready for Illya Kuryakin . . . But then, neither was Illya Kuryakin ready for America.

Series

In published order:

• The Dutch Blitz Affair
• The Defector From Leningrad Affair
• The Collection: Year One
• Kolya's Son
• My Brother's Keeper
• The Collection: The Summer of '65 Affair
• The Northern Lights Affair
• Haunted Nights
• The Changeling
• The Time Bomb Affair

Reactions and Reviews

1996

How I spent my Christmas vacation? I read zines. Piles of zines. Maybe read is an exaggeration; I scanned piles of zines[ ...] I also read Kolya's Son and Summer of '65, both UNCLE zines, one a novel the other a collection of long short stories, both straight. I'm not even a really big UNCLE fan, but these were damned good reads. They definitely light the emotional buttons usually associated by my admittedly weird psyche with slash — emotional commitment, physical intimacy (though not sex) between men, father and son relationships, and strong doses of hurt/comfort. What really set the UNCLE stuff apart from the slash was the depth of the stories. I'm not talking relevancy or intellectual depth, but more the completeness of the story.

2000

Set in the summer of 1961, this is a story about Illya Kuryakin's first weeks in the United States. He is convincingly portrayed as a traumatized young man desperate to escape from the Soviet intelligence agencies that have controlled him since childhood.

As Alexander Waverly deals with the U.S. intelligence bureaucrats who are reluctant to allow a Soviet to become a North American U.N.C.L.E. agent, a confused and mistrustful Illya is sent to live with an American family with ties to his past. The anti-Soviet mentality of the early 1960s is realistically depicted, as is Illya's psychological turmoil as he struggles to adapt.

Although Napoleon Solo does not appear in the novel, interesting characters abound, including the members of the Graham family with whom Illya is sent to live, and two U.N.C.L.E. physicians, one favorable to Illya and the other opposed.

This is a well-written, believable novel about a neglected topic in U.N.C.L.E. fan fiction : Why and how did Illya come to the United States? It paints a convincing picture of what the experience may have been like for him.