Gone with the Gods by Andrew J. Offutt

Author:Andrew J. Offutt [Offutt, Andrew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Novelette
Publisher: Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
Published: 1974-10-01T05:00:00+00:00

I spent the next two months collecting and collating material on my activities from articles in newspapers, scientific and popular journals and worse; the range was from the Washington Post and the Louisville Courier-Journal to The Morehead News and the L.A. Free Press; from the Smithsonian through Escapade and “specialized” journals such as Fate magazine. I said material on my activities.

Right. Except that none of the writers knew that the strange finds were my works. I was at first surprised to discover a lot of things I hadn’t put there. But I smiled, realizing that I — carrying out the weird genius-plan of Marcus D. Ventnor — had fostered much of what we now call spinoffs.

That required two months, as I said. Then I wrote the book, with photographs. (Oh, they’re excellent! Most of them I took on location while time-tripping. They are for the most part extraordinarily clear.) The actual writing of the book was the tedious part; writing that damned manuscript took three long weeks, man, and four more to edit and type it up pretty. Good writing, as Snoopy once observed, is hard work.

I didn’t have to worry about finding a publisher; Ventnor was waiting for the ms. with glowing eyes and dangling tongue. He rushed it into print, the bastard, using not the name I’d used as author — my own, for a change — but the French pen name you now know so well, Andre de Vrees. I dragged out our contract — and learned that I’d been a lot more excited about the advance and the prospect of my extended tripping into the past than ever-shrewd Ventnor. No wonder the advance had been so fat! It wasn’t an advance against royalties at all; it was the sale price. Just as he owned the temporal traverser, Ventnor owned my book, totally.

You know what came of it. The book made a mint. Ventnor and the (invisible!) writer were hailed, kudoed, attacked, castigated. It was a work of genius; it was charlatanry. It was the discovery of the age; it was the work of the Anti-god.

It was also bought by nearly everyone in the United States. And overseas. It was also Ventnor making the money and the appearances on Today and Carson and Cavett, not me. Then there was the big television special; one hour long and a full page in TV Guide. MGM bought movie rights and immediately contacted and contracted Charlton Heston to play the part of the man from outer space the book postulated had visited Earth, so long ago.

“Mark, you slimy bastard, you’re RICH!” I roared at the fat, hawk-nosed, bald man across his own desk — brand new, brushed walnut. “You’re rich! You’re famous — dear god, why NOT share some of it with me — it was all MY work!”

Ventnor sighed exaggeratedly. “But my idea, Harve baby. And, as I pointed out to an equally screechy Ben Corrick just yesterday, my money financed the project. Come, look at it this way. I hired him to make it possible; I hired you to plant the evidence and write the book.

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