Trilogy (Man from UNCLE zine)

For other articles with a similar title, see Trilogy.

Zine
Title:	Trilogy
Publisher:	nowayjose Press
Editor:
Author(s):	Elizabeth Urich
Cover Artist(s):	Suzan Lovett
Illustrator(s):	Suzan Lovett
Date(s):	1992
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Language:	English
External Links:
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Trilogy is a slash 142-page Man from U.N.C.L.E. novel by Elizabeth Urich.

front cover -- "Jigsaw Man" -- The pieces of this puzzle, if one were so inclined, could be cut out to complete the illustration.

From a fan: "...another of Suzan Lovett's magnificent covers, suitable for framing or enlivening the ceiling of your local domed cathedral. Suzan is one of the few artists in fandom who understand that "composition" doesn't mean anchoring that floating head to a pair of shoulders and adding a border from the Letraset catalog. This time she's designed a dramatic, big-eyed Illya, crisscrossed with jigsaw lines."

The art is by Suzan Lovett.

Part one, "Do the Walls Come Down?" was originally published in Rose Tint My World #3.

A sequel is "Quartet" in Awakenings #7.

Author's Notes

Perestroika ignored the 1983 TV movie. Unhappily, the 1983 TV movie wouldn't go away. Thus these stories slunk into my word processor. What happened in 1968. Why did Napoleon quit U.N.C.L.E.? Why did Illya quit — and why didn't Napoleon know? How did a man who admitted the difficulty of establishing a relationship with a machine end up with a computer company? And why did Illya — scientist, weapons expert, ace Enforcement agent and vicious little beast when he chose to be — make fashion design his second career (!?) Frankly, I had a much better time writing 'Perestroika.' In that novel, Illya had to lose everything to realize what he truly needed. By contrast, Napoleon had everything -- except what he truly needed Their working partnership fused two disparage but complementary sets of talents into a nearly unbeatable unit. Their intellectual, emotion, and sexual selves form a similarly complementary -- if occasionally volatile -- union. The problem (and this is the theme of 90% of '/' fan fiction) is getting them to wake up and smell the cappuccino. 'Trilogy' is the same song in a different key. Neither man lacks companionship or money. They are successful at work they presumably enjoy and lead full, if not completely satisfying lives. They can be described as 'having it all.' And yet... and yet... by the way, I write what I like to read and believe with Dorothy L. Sayers: 'It is no part of the historian's duty to indulge in what a critic has called "interesting revelations of the marriage-bed." Personally, I find a romantic clinch more sexier than a clinical description. If the latter is what you're looking for, look elsewhere. You won't find it here.

Chapters

• Do the Walls Come Down (1)
• All I Want is You (53)
• No Secrets (97)

Gallery

I don't buy slash and I don't read slash, but I do appreciate a damn fine piece of art and wanted a copy of the wall illustration done by Suzan (so I'm poverty stricken and have to 'settle' for the zine instead of the print!).

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Reactions and Reviews

Elizabeth Urich's Trilogy of UNCLE stories is out, summoning the Faithful not with pealing bell or cross and flame, but with another of Suzan Lovett's magnificent covers, suitable for framing or enlivening the ceiling of your local domed cathedral.

Suzan is one of the few artists in fandom who understand that "composition" doesn't mean anchoring that floating head to a pair of shoulders and adding a border from the Letraset catalog. This time she's designed a dramatic, big-eyed Illya, crisscrossed with jigsaw lines. And minus a few pieces. This is appropriate, since in the very first story," Do the Walls Come Down?" the author thoroughly slices, dices, purees, and juliennes the little blond half of the United Network team. Not so much physically (Elizabeth shows a restraint unusual among writers in this particular fannish subgenre — he gets raped and beaten only once) as emotionally. Justin Sepheran has devised a plan to do what his cronies at THRUSH assure him cannot be done: break up the legendary partnership of Solo and Kuryakin. The plan's a doozy, diabolically twisted even by the standards of the series.

It works, leading to a fifteen-year split that was never adequately explained in the made-for-tube movie sequel. And it works because Saint Elizabeth (patron saint of doomed Russian secret agents, for those of you who were deprived of a parochial school education) didn't indulge in the usual fannish wimp out of picking a plot-any-plot-and plugging her characters into it. Both the story and Sepheran's plan revolve around Illyas need for absolute control over his own emotions and pride in is self-sufficiency. The character reacts in away that is uniquely and typical Illya, and his personal and professional annihilation come out of Sepheran's and the author's understanding of the lone wolf image he has of himself.

Elizabeth also deserves an ovation for weaving no fewer than three separate time lines together, leaving each scene with just enough of a dangling fringe to keep the reader going, "No! Wait! I wasn't finished" for a few seconds before becoming totally absorbed in the next section.

'Do the Walls Come Down?' gave me the impression that the author and Ilya were acquainted in a past life, and he really did her dirt; she gets her revenge in the story. By the time the next installment, "All I Want Is You," opens, she's either forgiven him or collected on the ten dollars he'd owed her since their previous incarnation in Atlantis or Mesopotamia. "All I Want Is You" isn't so much a story as it is a series of cute vignettes celebrating Napoleon's and Illya's love affair (urm, you did know about these two, didn't you?).

The vignettes seem to be odds and ends from the author's mental lumberroom, mainly taking the form of sweet sex scenes and cozy chats between the two men. I had a bit of a problem with the chat part of it. The sweet nothings drop from their lips like cherry Pez, and to borrow from Paula Smith -"these are spies not Californians." This is what she had to say, long before this particular story saw print, about Fandom At Large's tendency to put too many sugar-coated words in our agents' mouths. The Ilya of the series was renowned for his close-mouthedness, and in general acted like living proof that extraterrestrials—from Vulcan-had visited prehistoric Earth and mated with human females. When, in the story, he asks Napoleon, "Are we succumbing to the current vogue of talking everything to death?" I wanted to say, "Well, guys...."

But their are heirlooms in lumberrooms, too. I loved the bit where Ilya ropes Napoleon into modeling Vanya's latest creations. Elizabeth is the only author who's been able to make me buy the concept that an ex-spy could become a top name in the fashion industry. And her idea of how Ilya would decorate his apartment, in continental neo-weirdness, where nothing is what it seems to be, was wonderfully right for the character.

We're back to action and plot again for the last story, "No Secrets." Sepheran has returned to finish what he started: more private humiliation for Illya and public obliteration of both agents' reputations and personal fortunes. Ming of Mongo has nothing on this guy. He's a truly formidable villain, and I found myself wanting to throw fits when Ilya was once again in his evil hands.

Elizabeth more than makes up for the slowness of the second story here. "No Secrets" has exactly what diehard UNCLE fans are after the personal and professional almost-telepathy that allows Solo and Kuryakin to swing into action together even when one of them is being held hostage half a day away. Tne author also puts the elegant Zee, one of the few likable characters introduced in the TV-movie, to memorable use, and reveals the secret of her background to truly dramatic effect. Elizabeth is still to UNCLE fan fiction what King James is to the Bible. The difference here is that Thou Shouldst Read Trilogy for its prose.

Elizabeth Urich writes pretty OK non-explicit stuff. Her zine last year (Peristroika) won the FanQ, but it was a warm-fuzzy type of story, not much drama to it. This year's effort, Trilogy, expands on the long story from Rose Tint #3. In fact about a third of it was the story from Rose Tint, reprinted with alleged modifications (nothing major that I could find!) Be aware that the Lovett illos in Trilogy are 3-4 color chapter-plates, not the 12-15 exquisitely shaded B&Ws as in Peristroika.

I don't buy slash and I don't read slash, but I do appreciate a damn fine piece of art and wanted a copy of the wall illustration done by Suzan (so I'm poverty stricken and have to 'settle' for the zine instead of the print!). Well, I read it. And apart from some silly bits where the two UNCLE agents sounded more like love-struck schoolgirls than men of death-defying derring-do... it was a cracking good read. Why can't the people writing non-erotic action-adventure write this way? Why? Why? Why?

Stand-alone novel, sort of; really, a collection of three long interconnected stories. Again, this zine's illustrations are beautiful (the cover is a classic), but it should come with a warning for diabetics. This is such a schmoopy, sentimental load of romantic claptrap that I can't believe I enjoyed it so much. Somehow the emotional intensity (and the banter, of course — this is Elizabeth, after all) carried the day. This is also one of a very small handful of stories that made the Reunion movie palatable; normally I simply exclude that from canon as some horrible acid trip gone wrong, but this story explains it in a way that makes sense and allows for resolution and healing. (There is also a sequel to this, "Quartet," in the m/m zine Awakenings 7, but be advised; Elizabeth herself warns about the schmoop in that one. I enjoyed it anyway, but she's not kidding. Talk about sugar shock. Yikes.)

Jigsaw Cover has the most wonderful Napoleon. Suzan's ability to age this characters but still just make them the sexist things has kept me addicted all these years.