From: potter@csusac.ecs.csus.edu (Carl Kolchak)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Marty Helgesen / Book identification request
Summary: White Star, White Circle, etc...
Keywords: "Nwyllans Do It In Other Peoples' Bodies."  -- SF Con Button
Date: 31 Jul 92 01:46:46 GMT
Followup-To: alt.dev.null
Distribution: usa
Organization: INS, Inc.

Marty Helgesen wrote:

> From: MNHCC@CUNYVM.BITNET (Marty Helgesen)
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
> Subject: Book identification request
> Date: 30 Jul 92 14:17:46 GMT
> Organization: City University of New York/ University Computer Center
> 
> Can anyone identify the book described in the following paragraph?
> I have no recollection of this book, but am posting the request for
> someone else.  He says he read it probably about twenty years ago.
>
> "In some future Earth time, society is structured by rigid class
> distinctions based on a complex intellectual, emotional, and physical
> testing process.  Status is labeled by color classifications--blue,
> green, orange, yellow, etc.  A stranger appears and rises rapidly
> through the testing process to the highest level, something like the
> top 0.001 percent of the Earth's population.  At the end, it turns
> out that he is an alien, but by mimicking the makeup of a human
> sufficiently to pass the highest of tests, he become human."
>
> Thank you for your help.

The book is  "WORLD OUT OF MIND," by J. T. M'Intosh.    (This is 
often spelled as "J.T. McIntosh," and you can find copies of the 
same book with different writer-names pasted on the spine, depending
on publication date and country of origin; JTM is a Brit/Scotsman.)  
 
"WORLD OUT OF MIND" has seen one U.S. hardbound edition that I know
of (and was a Doubleday SF book club selection, about 35 years back,
if memory serves) so finding a hardbound copy isn't terribly hard.
( Dustjacket for that edition was dark blue, with an Emsh cover 
illustration in red-orange.)   << does anybody give a hoot, when 
I describe cover illustrations?  It's how I find things on my own
shelves, on the rare occasions when I'm in the same city/state as
my collection! >>
 
There have been several undistinguished paperback reprints, although
none in the last twenty-five years of which I'm aware.
 
----------  WAR STORY ALERT  --- BORING HISTORY BELOW ----------

   About twenty years back, when I was eking out a precarious
living as a re-typer of other people's scripts at Universal, I
proposed "WORLD OUT OF MIND" as an SF movie.
   I was encouraged to write a treatment, and a script, on spec.
(Yeah, yeah, I know; but I was on salary, not a WGA member at the
time, and I enjoyed doing it, anyway.)   No one Upstairs liked
it well enough to pursue a rights acquisition, and it got tossed
into That Vault From Which No Script Returneth.
   However, I distinctly recall that, subsequent to my presentation,
when I was asked for copies of the original book as well as the script,
the three paperback versions I'd found in used-book stores to use as 
ammo ( just in case I could con anyone into reading more than the first
page of the script ) were leapt upon, scooped up, and forever lost to
my ken.   They got passed around and read, and everyone said, "Yeah,
good story.   This would be a fun movie.  Too bad Sci-Fi's passe." 

(Another division was, at the time, finishing up a theatrical movie
called "CYBORG," which shows that *some*one in the Management didn't
mind SF that much.  It's instructive to note that "CYBORG" was recut
to use as a TV-movie, and never released; remember the oval instrument
dials in the opening credits? )

( Of course, this wasn't an isolated instance.  I had similar experiences
with Williamson's "DARKER THAN YOU THINK" and Russell's "SENTINELS FROM
SPACE," although I was never encouraged to go ahead and write the script
for the latter; the Management *knew* that if that one ever got out the
door in movie form, the entire Bible Belt would come with torches and
clubs, and tear down the Black Tower.  At least, that's what I got as
their reason for not going ahead with the project! )
 
Dammitalltohell, anyway.   I just realized what LucasFilms, Ltd, could 
do with a script of "DARKER THAN YOU THINK," and their own immediately 
available FX technology.    If anyone from LucasFilms is reading this, 
go find a copy of "DARKER THAN YOU THINK," by "Jack Williamson."
After you've read it, and seen what a *great* movie it would make, 
call up Professor Will Stewart in New Mexico, and option the rights. 
You will *not* regret it!  You can practically shoot the book as a 
script, just the way it is.....

-----------------  HOT AIR MODE  ----    OFF    ----------------------

Anyway, before I left on a tangent, this was about "WORLD OUT OF MIND."
W.O.O.M. is a pulp novel, with pulp plotting and character development;
but the stuff in it makes it interesting, and a good read, even though 
the writing style is forty-year-old-British-pulp stuff, rather than 
our own home-grown version.   If you see a copy, give it a try.  
Think of the stuff you LIKE from "ASTOUNDING" in the forties; it's got
that kind of flavor, with the fifties-"Wyndham"ish kind of seasoning.

And it would *STILL* make a fun movie.


-- 
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