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From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: thriller?
Message-ID: <1501@mtgzz.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Dec-85 14:15:01 EST
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Posted: Fri Dec 20 14:15:01 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Dec-85 05:25:45 EST
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 >>Lets not for get Alister MacClean (sp?).
 >
 >But you can't go wrong with _The Satan Bug_ and his other
 >books before 1980 or so.

Interesting thing about SATAN BUG, he did not write it under his own
name.  That and THE BLACK SHRIKE were published under the name Ian
Stuart.  I only found out well after I read the book that it was by
MacLean.  I read it shortly after the film came out (1965).
Incidentally, I was a little disappointed with the book in the motive
for what was going on.  The film was in some ways not as good as the
book, but I thought that at least the villians' motive for the goings
on was more satisfying in the film, but the book was a better story
overall.  At that time people thought that nuclear weapons were pretty
much the ultimate weapons and the film was a real eye-opener as to how
much more dangerous (powerful, easy to smuggle, easy to place)
something like the Satan Bug or the other weapons from Morden (in the
film Research Station #?) would be.

Incidentally, H.  G.  Wells wrote the oldest story I know about the
idea of SATAN BUG (He said, carefully avoiding saying exactly what
SATAN BUG is really about.  Anyone who already knows what SATAN BUG is
about will recognize which Wells story I am referring to from its
title alone).  It lacked a good ending, but all the other essentials
were there.  Much of what Wells wrote was well ahead of his time.  (I
haven't traced it down, but I have heard that in THE WORLD SET FREE,
he also described bombs that would destroy whole cities.  I think I
heard that he called these "atomic bombs."  Both of these stories
would probably have been written before 1920.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper