McDaniel sold two stories while still an undergraduate. Pulp writer Noel Loomis was teaching a course on writing at San Diego State, and offered an automatic "A" to any student who sold a story. McDaniel found a boy's magazine whose requirements he could meet, and sent them two stories. They accepted both.
- A young English boy sees Vikings about to attack his village. He rouses the village and helps drive off the Vikings.
- A short space story about a teen boy, with both problem solving and character development.
McDaniel came to write books in
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series at least partly because of a prank. He got some patches with the THRUSH sigil through a friend who worked for MGM Studios. Then a group of his friends sewed the patches on dark suits and they showed up at a theater where
UNCLE star Robert Vaughn was playing Hamlet. Afterward they stood politely in line to greet Vaughn, and equally politely insisted that they were from the "Public Relations" department of THRUSH. There were several more "THRUSH runs" to various places where they could startle people who weren't expecting a group of fictional villains to show up. McDaniel referred to these actions as "Zaps". The group of fans who impersonated THRUSH agents included Barry Gold, Robert Short, Bill Mills, Evan Hayworth, Gail Knuth, Charles Lee Jackson II, and other members of the LASFS, many of whom have been included in McDaniel's novels as characters.
The acronym for THRUSH, "The Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity", was created by McDaniel's friend Dean Dickensheet. McDaniel called in to a talk show where
UNCLE producer Norm Felton was a guest and insisted that THRUSH existed. Felton of course denied this, and McDaniel asked what "THRUSH" stood for. Felton said it didn't stand for anything, and McDaniel said, "It's the Technological Hierarchy for...." Felton's reaction was "The Technological Hierarchy for
What?" McDaniel used that line in his first
UNCLE novel,
The Dagger Affair.
In a discussion with McDaniel about how to sell to Ace Books, Hank Stine pointed out that most of the books had "of" in the title, like
Pirates of Zan and
Star of Danger. This inspired McDaniel to start a novel about a lost cache of weapons. He didn't have a good name for the aliens, so he used XXX as a placeholder. McDaniel finished the novel but still hadn't come up with a name, so he sent it in that way, using the title
The Weapons of XXX. Terry Carr, a junior editor at Ace, liked it, but the chief editor, Don Wollheim wasn't convinced, so they returned it. Ace landed the contract for the
UNCLE novels a month or so later, and Carr remembered
Weapons of XXX and knew McDaniel was a big
UNCLE fan, so he asked McDaniel to submit a novel. The result,
The Dagger Affair, was one of the biggest sellers in the series, and Carr asked him to write another,
The Vampire Affair, and then signed him to a contract for six more. Royalty statements received from Ace Books showed
The Vampire Affair as the biggest seller of the six U.N.C.L.E. novels that McDaniel wrote.
Later on, McDaniel noted that THRUSH field agents were always doing stupid things and getting killed or arrested by U.N.C.L.E. agents...but THRUSH continued to exist and flourish, so there was obviously another group that
was competent. He mentioned this conundrum to a friend, Don Simpson. Simpson came up with the idea that there were three levels of THRUSH:
- The incompetent field agents who we saw getting killed or arrested every week on The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
- A group that weeded out the incompetents and made sure that only the best THRUSH agents graduated to the third level.
- A central core of highly motivated and competent people, who ran the various major groups ("Satrapies") and THRUSH Central
The Second level of THRUSH was...U.N.C.L.E. Most people in the U.N.C.L.E. organization had no idea that this was the case, believing themselves to be "the good guys". This enabled them to fight THRUSH and weed out the incompetent personnel of that organization. But the head of U.N.C.L.E. (Section 1, number 1 -- Alexander Waverly), knew. McDaniel once threatened to write a story in which Kuryakin was promoted to the Third Level of THRUSH, and had to find a way to let Solo know without blowing the "three levels" secret. Such a story could not have been published, of course; it does not conform with MGM's official "bible" for the U.N.C.L.E. universe.
Weapons of XXX was later published by Ace under the title
The Arsenal Out of Time, but the name "XXX" for the aliens remained. The book as originally written was slightly longer than Ace's standard book length at the time, so he was asked to shorten it by about 2000 words. He deleted a scene which did nothing to advance the plot but helped to humorously delineate the character of Ginger, based loosely (Tuckerized) on one of his friends. The missing scene was later published in
The Best of Apa-L #3.
His last novel,
The Final Affair, was to have been the last book in the series; however, he was several months late finishing it, and by that time the series was no longer on TV.
The Final Affair was never professionally published, but permission was obtained from MGM for a limited press run and grey-market copies can be found from time to time.
More details can be found in " The inside story of how DMcDaniel became involved in UNCLE"
[sic] at
The Fans From U.N.C.L.E. website.
