The Wrong Professor Affair

Zine
Title:	The Wrong Professor Affair
Publisher:	North Coast Press
Editor:
Author(s):	Liza Jones
Cover Artist(s):
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	April 1998
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Language:	English
External Links:	flyer here
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cover by Ellen Druda

The Wrong Professor Affair is a 77-page gen, Man From U.N.C.L.E. fanzine by Liza Jones, published by NorthCoast Press. The zine is mainly the novella, but also includes a short story, The Lochinvar Affair. The zine's cover is by Ellen Druda.

Summary

From the publisher: "The Lochnivar Affair' has Illya Kuryakin and Napoleon Solo off to England to protect the star witness in a fraud case against a Thrush agent -- her former finace. Her step-father has other plans, however, as he arranges her wedding. Now it is up to our agents to effect yet another daring rescue, complete with swinging from the chandelier to reciting poetry, to arriving at the wedding ceremony in full Scottish attire!

In 'The Wrong Professor Affair', the main story of this novella, Illya and Napoleon are once again sent off to England where they are to rescue Professor Whyte from Thrush. The rescue goes smoothly. . .perhaps too smoothly, for when they return home, the agents learn they've freed the wrong professor!"

From the Author

TWPA is in two parts simply because that was the way I wrote it. I finished the first part and left it for a while. Then I decided I could carry it on and write a whole new episode, showing what everybody did next.

One of my problems was that I kept getting odd little scenarios that I wanted to use, but they didn't quite fit in with the plot. This particularly applied to the h/c sequences, simply because the writer can't keep beating, shooting and torturing the heroes and expect them to perform well. This was when I had the idea of using dreams. After writing a couple, I found they gave me enormous freedom to do whatever I wanted. However, I did try to give them some kind of purpose and not be totally superfluous.

The dreams also enabled me to have more fun. I hope the readers enjoyed them too.

I know my writing lacks depth, but then so do I :-).

I have not yet dared to set a story in the U.S. because I know that's where most of the audience is and my knowledge is sorely lacking. However, I am hoping to collaborate with someone soon, who can hopefully also stop my Solo sounding too British - whoops!

TWPA starts on an unmarked island (in fact its working title was "island") and stays there, although the eponymous wrong professor himself leaves very early in the story and we never really get to know him. We do meet his daughter, Rachel and albino villain, Joeseph Winterman. Rachel's a bit of a crazy, mixed up kid and Winterman is not insane.

Actually a demonstration of my laziness in writing was that I first described Winterman as having white hair and then thought, 'no, he should be young.' But I couldn't be bothered to go back and change him, so I made him albino.

Part two (called "The King of the Castle Affair") starts in New York but then I chicken out and it continues in the U.K. We meet Rachel (and her Dad v.briefly) again, plus Winterman and a new character Jen. I also re-used a character invented for Dick Whittington, an English U.N.C.L.E. agent named Theodore Hewitt. I was a bit worried about him after DW and I wanted to be sure he was all right.

Reactions and Reviews

These are my first reviews of any U.N.C.L.E. fiction for ZINES because I never have time to sit down and read an entire zine from cover to cover. Because of that, I asked Jan Davies if I might just review individual stones, and she graciously agreed.

"The Lochinvar Affair" and "The Wrong Professor Affair" were delightful surprises. I knew that Liza Jones is a competent, talented writer before I read them because I had seen her "Compiwter Affair" on File 40 and because she writes for a living. But ;) person can be a very talented writer and still not get the "feel" of U.N.C.L.E. into their stories. When an extremely talented writer with unerring comedic timing, a strength for plotting, and a talent for dialogue can also reproduce the best "feel" of the U.N.C.L.E. adventures with humorous repartee, the result is a high quality walloping good read.

The two stories appear in the same zine, and by page ten, I had that great feeling you get when you realize that you cannot stop turning the pages! I had to keep reading. I took that darn zine into the laundry room, into the kitchen, into the...well, some things should remain private., .but I could not stop reading. This is the ultimate compliment that I can pay an author. I doff my symbolic hat to Liza Jones. How docs she do it? Stylistically, Liza has a gift for timing, both comedic and narrative. The stories move along quickly, and yet characterization is never sacrificed. Solo and Kuryakin share some exchanges that sound like the best of the show's interplay between them, only better because I haven't "seen these episodes" a hundred times. I never found a single page that dragged.

Liza's "innocents" are very on target. This is a difficult tightrope to balance on. How smart can they be without detracting from the guys? How naive can they be without sounding like spoiled adolescents? How big a role can they play in the denouement without risking the "Mary Sue" label? Keeping in mind that full character development usually requires a novel-length story, and these stories were a healthy read but not novel-length, Liza's innocents were believable and well drawn, and their interactions with Solo and Kuryakin were quite realistic. The reader either likes them, or finds them irritating, depending on the author's intention, not on how well she portrays them. She also manages to let them grow and change within the story, preventing that uneasy feeling in the reader of, "Gee, real people would not do this or that."

I won't give away any plots here, except to compliment the author on the skillful way she weaves Walter Scott's "Lochinvar" into the story of the same name. If you haven't read Liza Jones' work yet, and you like gen with characterizations that are right on target, you have a treat in store!