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Get Smart #1
Get Smart!
Get Smart!
When Max Smart, that intrepid secret agent for Control, gets assigned to the Computer Caper, it's the start of a laugh-out-loud adventure through a confusing labyrinth of international spies, UN delegates, Greenwich Village coffee house denizens, and a couple of beautiful girls who don't do much to help him but do liven up the nutty goings-on.
How Max foils the diabolical plot against the Free World makes a zany tale that no self-respecting spy lover can afford to miss.
When Max Smart, that intrepid secret agent for Control, gets assigned to the Computer Caper, it's the start of a laugh-out-loud adventure through a confusing labyrinth of international spies, UN delegates, Greenwich Village coffee house denizens, and a couple of beautiful girls who don't do much to help him but do liven up the nutty goings-on.
How Max foils the diabolical plot against the Free World makes a zany tale that no self-respecting spy lover can afford to miss.
159 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1965
About the author
William Johnston
107 books16 followersLibrarian note: William Johnston has also written under the pseudonyms Susan Claudia, Willa Jay, Heather Sinclair, Ed Garth, Alex Steele, and William Howard.
William Johnston joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the Pacific. He worked as a disc jockey, advertising executive, magazine editor, and PR man before his writing career took off in 1960 with The Marriage Cage, a comic mystery that earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that book with a slew of pulp titles for Monarch Books, ranging from light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor Starr trilogy) to soft-core erotica (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing).
Johnston’s medical novels dovetailed with his first tie-in assignments -- original novels based on the TV series The Nurses, Doctor Kildare and Ben Casey. Those books, published between 1962 and 1964, were so successful that his next original medical romance, Two Loves Has Nurse Powell, was presented as “From the author of Ben Casey.”
In 1965, Johnston wrote an original novel based on the TV comedy Get Smart. The book was a huge success, leading to nine more novels over the show’s five-season history and making him the “go-to” guy for sitcom-based tie-ins. He wrote books based on Captain Nice, Room 222, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Monkees and F-Troop, among others.
But his TV tie-in work extended far beyond sitcom adaptations. He wrote books based on Ironside, Dick Tracy, The Young Rebels, The Iron Horse, Then Came Bronson, and Rod Serling’s The New People, to name a few. He even adapted the cartoon characters Magilla Gorilla and Snagglepuss into books for children.
Johnston also penned many novelizations, including the pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon and the high school drama Sons and Daughters. His feature film novelizations include Klute, The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, The New Interns, The Priest’s Wife, Lt. Robin Crusoe USN and his final tie-in project, Gore Vidal’s Caligula (under the pseudonym “William Howard”).
After retiring from fiction writing, he opened his own bar, which he operated for many years. He resided in San Jose, California prior to his death in 2010.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
William Johnston joined the Navy in 1942 and served in the Pacific. He worked as a disc jockey, advertising executive, magazine editor, and PR man before his writing career took off in 1960 with The Marriage Cage, a comic mystery that earned him a Best First Novel Edgar Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that book with a slew of pulp titles for Monarch Books, ranging from light comedy (The Power of Positive Loving) to medical romance (the Doctor Starr trilogy) to soft-core erotica (Save Her for Loving, Teen Age Tramp, Girls on the Wing).
Johnston’s medical novels dovetailed with his first tie-in assignments -- original novels based on the TV series The Nurses, Doctor Kildare and Ben Casey. Those books, published between 1962 and 1964, were so successful that his next original medical romance, Two Loves Has Nurse Powell, was presented as “From the author of Ben Casey.”
In 1965, Johnston wrote an original novel based on the TV comedy Get Smart. The book was a huge success, leading to nine more novels over the show’s five-season history and making him the “go-to” guy for sitcom-based tie-ins. He wrote books based on Captain Nice, Room 222, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter, The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch, Nanny and the Professor, The Munsters, Gilligan’s Island, Bewitched, The Monkees and F-Troop, among others.
But his TV tie-in work extended far beyond sitcom adaptations. He wrote books based on Ironside, Dick Tracy, The Young Rebels, The Iron Horse, Then Came Bronson, and Rod Serling’s The New People, to name a few. He even adapted the cartoon characters Magilla Gorilla and Snagglepuss into books for children.
Johnston also penned many novelizations, including the pilots for the 1930s-era private eye series Banyon and the high school drama Sons and Daughters. His feature film novelizations include Klute, The Swinger, Echoes of a Summer, The New Interns, The Priest’s Wife, Lt. Robin Crusoe USN and his final tie-in project, Gore Vidal’s Caligula (under the pseudonym “William Howard”).
After retiring from fiction writing, he opened his own bar, which he operated for many years. He resided in San Jose, California prior to his death in 2010.
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 23, 2016
1.120min
2.penguin reader
3.myth, same egg, ontgoing, brain. chimpnzee, inability, work
4, I have no particular sentence. However, a good point is I could know how a brain act
what I smell or hear or see. This byok was not what I wanted but it has good contents.
5. I choose this book because of its title. ''GET SMART'' what a great title this is! However, this book's contents were dissapintably because this book is not written about how you get smart.
2.penguin reader
3.myth, same egg, ontgoing, brain. chimpnzee, inability, work
4, I have no particular sentence. However, a good point is I could know how a brain act
what I smell or hear or see. This byok was not what I wanted but it has good contents.
5. I choose this book because of its title. ''GET SMART'' what a great title this is! However, this book's contents were dissapintably because this book is not written about how you get smart.
September 25, 2023
I read this some
December 20, 2020
Written prior to the series running, but based on the original ideas, this has some differences to the series, the biggest issue though is that a lot of the humour in Get Smart! is based around the vocal and physical characteristics from Don Adams, which is difficult, almost impossible to replicate on the page.
It is an OK read, but just not the same as watching the series.
It is an OK read, but just not the same as watching the series.
October 8, 2015
An original novel based on the TV series Get Smart. Maxwell Smart, a secret agent working for CONTROL, and his canine partner Fang, team up with a civilian to search for Fred, the robotic AI she invented, who has gone on the run.
Get Smart! was published only a few weeks after the first episode of Get Smart aired, so writer William Johnston had probably never seen the show. At most he might have seen the pilot at a press screening, or perhaps read a draft of the script. I gather the book was hugely successful. It was followed by many sequels, and contributed much to the TV tie-in becoming a staple of pop culture for the next few decades, and to Johnston becoming the go-to guy for writing them.
It differs from the series in a number of details:
- there is no sign of Max's TV partner, 99
- CONTROL is based in New York, rather than Washington DC
- the enemy organisation Max fights is not KAOS but FLAG
- Fang, agent K-13, a dog, plays a much larger role
- Max seems much more stupid.
Despite these differences, the book remained in print throughout the run of the TV series. I chose to imagine it was a prequel.
In some scenes Johnston has captured the feel of the show very well: one of the best is the early sequence where Max tries to answer his shoe-phone on a busy New York street. It was these few pages, found when browsing through the book, that bumped it to the top of my TV-tie-in list. Also I've been rewatching the show on DVD.
But mostly the book doesn't really feel like the TV show, consisting mainly of a frenetic chase and a series of captures and escapes. If anything, it more closely resembles the mediocre movie that followed years later, The Nude Bomb.
Being fairly stupid was always a key aspect of Max's character on screen, but the book takes it to a level of unbelievability that diminished my enjoyment.
Blossom, despite being the inventor of an AI, is nevertheless a 1960s sitcom ditz. The invention was purely by accident. I tried to imagine she was sensibly hiding her genius computer science skills from the government, but it was hard work. The TV series was much more 'modern' in its handling of female characters. Of course, since book Max is very stupid, Blossom is still the smartest human in the room.
Overall, this was fairly well-written and fun, but the relentless non-stop pace and the complete absence of believable characters and situations were wearying. I've never seen so many exclamation marks in one book before! It's good enough that I'd be interested in reading one of the sequels written after Johnston had had a chance to watch the series.
Get Smart! was published only a few weeks after the first episode of Get Smart aired, so writer William Johnston had probably never seen the show. At most he might have seen the pilot at a press screening, or perhaps read a draft of the script. I gather the book was hugely successful. It was followed by many sequels, and contributed much to the TV tie-in becoming a staple of pop culture for the next few decades, and to Johnston becoming the go-to guy for writing them.
It differs from the series in a number of details:
- there is no sign of Max's TV partner, 99
- CONTROL is based in New York, rather than Washington DC
- the enemy organisation Max fights is not KAOS but FLAG
- Fang, agent K-13, a dog, plays a much larger role
- Max seems much more stupid.
Despite these differences, the book remained in print throughout the run of the TV series. I chose to imagine it was a prequel.
In some scenes Johnston has captured the feel of the show very well: one of the best is the early sequence where Max tries to answer his shoe-phone on a busy New York street. It was these few pages, found when browsing through the book, that bumped it to the top of my TV-tie-in list. Also I've been rewatching the show on DVD.
But mostly the book doesn't really feel like the TV show, consisting mainly of a frenetic chase and a series of captures and escapes. If anything, it more closely resembles the mediocre movie that followed years later, The Nude Bomb.
Being fairly stupid was always a key aspect of Max's character on screen, but the book takes it to a level of unbelievability that diminished my enjoyment.
Blossom, despite being the inventor of an AI, is nevertheless a 1960s sitcom ditz. The invention was purely by accident. I tried to imagine she was sensibly hiding her genius computer science skills from the government, but it was hard work. The TV series was much more 'modern' in its handling of female characters. Of course, since book Max is very stupid, Blossom is still the smartest human in the room.
Overall, this was fairly well-written and fun, but the relentless non-stop pace and the complete absence of believable characters and situations were wearying. I've never seen so many exclamation marks in one book before! It's good enough that I'd be interested in reading one of the sequels written after Johnston had had a chance to watch the series.
January 14, 2010
Maxwell Smart's first original novel - a media tie-in by the original master, William Johnston.
Hmmm... no Agent 99, no KAOS, just a runaway computer/robot and a freelance spy network named FLAG.
Fang (agent K-13) is here, and the Chief of Control, but Chief doesn't really have the same personality as I remember from the TV show. Actually, everybody in this book is a bit wackier than I expected - it's not just Max that bumbles everything up. Good guys, bad guys, and ordinary civilian bystanders are all working at about the same level here - so Max is not alone in his ineptness.
And Max is not entirely inept. He knows jiu-jitsu in this book, and can actually subdue people, only to walk immediately into locked closets to be stuck there waiting for help.
Some good fun - you can read this in a couple hours max.
Hmmm... no Agent 99, no KAOS, just a runaway computer/robot and a freelance spy network named FLAG.
Fang (agent K-13) is here, and the Chief of Control, but Chief doesn't really have the same personality as I remember from the TV show. Actually, everybody in this book is a bit wackier than I expected - it's not just Max that bumbles everything up. Good guys, bad guys, and ordinary civilian bystanders are all working at about the same level here - so Max is not alone in his ineptness.
And Max is not entirely inept. He knows jiu-jitsu in this book, and can actually subdue people, only to walk immediately into locked closets to be stuck there waiting for help.
Some good fun - you can read this in a couple hours max.
August 8, 2020
It was silly and stupid and that's about what I was looking for. I love old tv tie-in novels. Being what they are they have no choice but to be very rooted in the time they were written and I like the details - jokes about the Beatles and Rock Hudson, Greenwich village and Beatniks, the UN and foreign spies with ridiculous accents.
August 19, 2017
So many bad puns!!! Definitely a walk down memory lane.
November 16, 2019
More-or-less the same formula as the TV show:
Step 1 - Make corny joke.
Step 2 - Beat joke to death.
Step 3 - Repeat.
Step 1 - Make corny joke.
Step 2 - Beat joke to death.
Step 3 - Repeat.
April 19, 2022
I read this
This was a quick read I thought it was really well written and I thought the comedy worked with the medium. the reason it's not a five is it had some slow parts.
This was a quick read I thought it was really well written and I thought the comedy worked with the medium. the reason it's not a five is it had some slow parts.
Read
June 2, 2011This book has a subtitle (something like The Computer Caper), but it doesn't appear on any of the title pages.
I didn't see the original tv series before 99 was introduced. Reading this, I'm glad I didn't. 99 was an essential anchor--an intelligent, calm voice of reason for the others to subvert. Without her, the story tends to drift.
This series was in the tradition of campy, toungue-in-cheek satires of the spy stories that are (still!) so prevalent. We need a lot more of this, and not just because they're funny. The spy stories are so deadly serious at propounding their absurdities. The bubble needs to be burst, not just once or twice, but at all times. For every James Bond, there need to be at LEAST as many bumbling nincompoops who haven't thoroughly thought through how badly they're behaving--and who are constantly reminded thereof by ordinary people.
These books should stay in print, because they supply that need--and because they're bloody hilarious, even to those of us with a very low tolerance for slapstick.
Fred the computer's attempts to live a quiet life despite the machinations of all the spies trying to chain him in one dungeon or another are such that they deserve to be crowned with success--so how can he get our heroes (and everyone else) to leave him alone?
I didn't see the original tv series before 99 was introduced. Reading this, I'm glad I didn't. 99 was an essential anchor--an intelligent, calm voice of reason for the others to subvert. Without her, the story tends to drift.
This series was in the tradition of campy, toungue-in-cheek satires of the spy stories that are (still!) so prevalent. We need a lot more of this, and not just because they're funny. The spy stories are so deadly serious at propounding their absurdities. The bubble needs to be burst, not just once or twice, but at all times. For every James Bond, there need to be at LEAST as many bumbling nincompoops who haven't thoroughly thought through how badly they're behaving--and who are constantly reminded thereof by ordinary people.
These books should stay in print, because they supply that need--and because they're bloody hilarious, even to those of us with a very low tolerance for slapstick.
Fred the computer's attempts to live a quiet life despite the machinations of all the spies trying to chain him in one dungeon or another are such that they deserve to be crowned with success--so how can he get our heroes (and everyone else) to leave him alone?
January 4, 2011
Get Smart ! is the first book in a series of books written by William Johnston based on the Get Smart television series. In this book, Agent 86 Maxwell Smart is in New York City with his faithful pal Agent K-13—also known as Fang. Max and Fang are assigned to find a computerized robot built by a woman named Blossom. It was purely by accident, but this computer named Fred (after Blossom’s deceased dog) could possibly be the most important piece of machinery in the world. This is why both Control and FLAG (a secret agency of evil much like the KAOS) are both out to find Fred.
Read more: http://bookstove.com/book-talk/gettin...
Read more: http://bookstove.com/book-talk/gettin...
January 8, 2014
Actually hilarious.
I have no idea how this book got onto my parents' bookshelf crammed between Far From the Madding Crowd and Stormboy, but there it was.
I think this was the first book I ever read that was based on a TV show that wasn't for children. Since then, I've probably read two or three other books based on adult TV shows... there's no way I can possibly keep count.
It was about three point seven times funnier than the Get Smart TV shows, and that's saying something, Chief.
I have no idea how this book got onto my parents' bookshelf crammed between Far From the Madding Crowd and Stormboy, but there it was.
I think this was the first book I ever read that was based on a TV show that wasn't for children. Since then, I've probably read two or three other books based on adult TV shows... there's no way I can possibly keep count.
It was about three point seven times funnier than the Get Smart TV shows, and that's saying something, Chief.
May 17, 2015
Mukavan jutustelevasti kirjoitettu, mutta ei tämä ha-ha-hauska ollut. Tosin en muista enää, että oliko tv-sarjakaan.
December 3, 2015
747 - 2015
November 5, 2016
read in summer of 1966
Read
November 15, 2016a.k.a. Get Smart!; read some time possibly in early 1966
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews