18 replies to this topic

[Tanger]

In this high voltage spy thriller, Secret Agent 007 must "liquidate" ruthless billionaire kingpin Klaus Doberman. But James Bond has his hands full as he battles a luscious lady assassin who offers lethal love Russian style and a slit-eyed Oriental sadist who is an elusive and deadly Ninja. Aided by his sex-galore confederate Lotta Head and his old CIA buddy Felix Leiter, 007 is pitted against Klaus Doberman in his heavily armed fortress high in the Mexican Sierra Madres... in the most bloodcurdling death duel in the great Bond saga.

This, perhaps the most notorious James Bond Fan Fiction tale ever, was written and "published" in 1985 by Jim Hatfield. Claiming to have been given the job of writing the next James Bond novel, Hatfield convinced friends and co-workers that he was to continue the literary adventures of 007. It was of course purely an obsessive piece of fan fiction. Nothing more.
This book was never published in mass quantities as it was never official but it is believed that around 100 copies maximum were self-published, most of which Hatfield distributed amongst friends, family and co-workers. From this number it is now believed that only a handful of copies still exist, perhaps as few as 2 or 3.
Funnily enough, 1985 is the only year in which a novel from John Gardner did not appear. There is also a stunning resemblance between this story and the 1989 film Licence To Kill.
Mr. Hatfield committed suicide in 2001.

Now, it is my great pleasure to present this to you, the members of the FFRC, to read and enjoy.
This is downloadable in a .doc file format courtesy of the Russian Ian Fleming site. The picture is courtesy of Dr. Shatterhand's Botanical Garden.

http://ianfleming.narod.ru/tkz.htm

[Mister Asterix]

Tanger, I

[Tanger]

Well, I think you'll find that many people cannot access that site for a small number of reasons.

Also, I checked, and a while back you were all for getting a Pdf. of this piece done and up on CBN. What's the difference between that and this?

[Mister Asterix]

I suggest that those who cannot access the Russian site contact Tanger or one of the other FFRC members to get the file. As for the PDF, it never came in to being for the same reasons I explained above. I am not trying to slow anyone down from getting this file, but I do want to keep things on the up and up here at CBn.

[Leviathan]

Oh, dear.

I've tried with this one. I really have. I've skimmed bits here and there.

I tried again today to start at teh beginning and by the time I was a few paragraphs into Chapter 2, it bucked me off again.

For the record, M has damnably clear grey eyes. The greyness of his eyes in not in itself damnable. That's where I got off. It takes more than aping some of Fleming's phrases to be a worthy successor to him. It takes observation, and wit and a certain ingenuity with words that Hatfield does not display here.

Beyond a number of clumsy choices and constructions, like M's damnably grey eyes, the whole first chapter seems rushed, and not well thought-out. More than an outline, surely, but not fleshed out into fully living prose. In a few places, Hatfield gets a little air under his wings -- the discussion of Adrenalin, for instance, although it also sounds familiar, and might be cribbed -- but he mostly seems to be in a hurry to get his ideas down, and his construction and structure seem to suffer as a result.

I'm almost always unimpressed by killing off a regular for shock-value, and Hatfield's offering up of a sacrificial lamb in his opening chapter certainly doesn't break that streak.

But I'm also put off by clumsy phrasings and word-choice. The Mexican policeman is "moose-like?" Does he have antlers? Kneels down to drink, maybe? Flaming was never hesitant to go in unusual directions with his language, but I can't imagine him useing "Moose-like" to describe any human being.

Hatfield's opening line is as clumsy as mine for "Finders, Keepers," which doesn't leave me a lot of moral authority to criticize it, but I wasn't trying to pass FK off as a new Glidrose-approved novel, either. After reading Evan Willnow's brilliantly Fleming-like "The face of a corpse fits like the wrong man's suit," I want to see better openers than this.

In fairness, I should stop here, but I can never stop kicking Hatfield without adding in one more lick for the funeral of a major character, very late in the book. Yes, "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" was a wonderful movie. Yes, Spock's funeral was quite moving. No, it isn't okay to change the names of the involved characters, and a couple of words here and there, and pass it off as 007 material. M is not James T. Kirk. Moneypenny is not Saavik. And no, the fellow in the coffin here is certainly not a Vulcan named Spock. It's sheer lazy writing at its worst, putting everybody involved in an out-of character position -- even the corpse!

Nobody likes to speak ill of the dead, and I hope Hatfield, whose life was so tumultuous, has at last found peace, and his survivors have as well...

But the only feelings "The Killing Zone" leaves me with in the end are a slight irritation with its ineptitude, and a thoroughgoing bewilderment that Hatfield ever thought, even for a moment, that he could buffulo _anybody_ into thinking this was a real, Glidrose-Productions-approved James Bond novel.

--
Jonathan Andrew Sheen

[Jim]

All I could say is said.

"Not fond".

[scaramanga1]

Having read this before -all I can say is nearly everything we have read in recent weeks is better than this. Surely this "fanfiction" which is a sham and was never really commissioned by Glidrose deserves to be cast into depths of poorly written pulp. I will struggle to read it again just for the benefit of this club -but I can't see my mind changing on reading it a second time.

Edited by scaramanga1, 19 April 2004 - 07:44 PM.

[Loomis]

I've downloaded "The Killing Zone" and skimmed through it, but I doubt I'll be letting it take up valuable space on my computer for long. From what little I've read so far, I find it hard to believe it was written by an adult, let alone a professional journalist (one who makes the tall, somewhat immodest, and - it seems to me - wildly inaccurate claim that he has managed to describe "the sights, sounds, and textures of Mexico"). The kindest thing to think is that Jim Hatfield knocked it together at furious speed over the course of a couple of sleepness nights. On plenty of Klaus Doberman's product. Which he must have been pretty far gone on when he wrote in the acknowledgements section that he had transformed James Bond from "a cardboard automaton of the movies to a living and breathing British spy with a license to kill". Hmmm.... Jim, don't call us, we'll call you.

"The Killing Zone" gives us a Chinese assassin who for some reason rejoices in the Japanese name Fuji. We are told that Bond has a "Scottish face" (what sort of image is that supposed to conjure, other than, presumably, Sean Connery's mug?), while a young Bond is described as a "seagoing sailor". Oh, how I'd love CBn's Jim to review "The Killing Zone".

Yet for all the dumb errors and dreadful descriptions, it's clear that Hatfield was not entirely unskilled as a writer. He has dreamed up what appear at first glance to be some possibly quite exciting action scenes (although the dead hand of cliche is everywhere), and I'm sure there's the germ of a good story in "The Killing Zone" (although I can't be bothered to look for it).

This can't possibly have been his or anyone else's idea of a finished work. It reads like a first or second draft. How else to explain the almost indecent haste with which Hatfield covers the "book"'s inciting incident, the murder of an old face from the Fleming novels, which causes M to nudge Bond into action?

I'd like to know more about the nature and results of the scam that Hatfield is said to have penned "The Killing Zone" in the service of. Was his main purpose in writing it the possibility that certain doors would open for him if he were able to pass himself off as the current author of the James Bond books? (Not exactly a believable scenario these days, of course - how times have changed for the literary Bond, I remember when there would be an entire row of Gardners plus "Colonel Sun" in every bookshop in the world, when being writer-in-residence at Glidrose was only one step down from being the Poet Laureate, etc. etc.) Was Hatfield thought to have successfully obtained money and/or favours via this curious scheme?

[Originally posted on http://debrief.comma...opic=8804&st=0]

[Tanger]

I thought this would happen. As I've said before you don't have to read every piece, but it makes it all the more interesting if you do. I've been willing to give this one a shot and am up to Chapter 5 so far. Whilst I do agree with much of the abuse it gets, I still find it quite interesting and entertaining. Here are some things I'm not too fond of:

-Many passages copied word for word from John Pearsons Bond Biography. Had I not so recently finished that book then I might not have noticed. But I did, it was jarring and just smacks of unoriginality and laziness.

-The occasional phraseology and grammatical errors as said above.

-Bill Tanner being murdered so early on. Why not an original character instead of a popular one. And I won't even go into the other deaths that occur later in the story.

-Using characters that were created purely for the films.

-Lotta Head? Nuff said.

-Only the events of the Fleming novels are reffered to

[Qwerty]

Well, as it seems we are posting reviews as we read along this selection, I shall throw in my bit as I've read a little bit of it so far.

It's average. I had always thought this one to be the most interesting for the very reason that it's almost impossible to track down, but when one is reading it, you can't help sometimes but be let down with certain bits of it, that many of you have already pointed out here in this thread.

Some sentences and lines just do not seem to flow well at all together, and it makes reading it seem rather spiky and confused, as though you have to look back at the line for a second time, and I like a novel and an author, which is the majority, that can make their work flow quickly and be enjoyable to read.

This piece just seems like it tries to hard to show off sex in a rather unexpected fashion (Lotta Head), and violence and killing in an unexpected fashion (Tanner's early death) as an example. Unexpected is fun, but I just don't think it works too well for this story.

Ah well, I will contrinue reading if time allows so far, will see what else happens!

[Tanger]

I agree Qwerty, I had to reread many lines.

I'm still sticking with this one though. I'm going to see it through till the end.

[scaramanga1]

I've given up. I really can't be bothered to read this now. I know I should -so that I can be sure I don't make similar mistakes with my own writing. But then again I like to read for pleasure -and saddly Mr Jim Hatfield has taken some of the pleasure out of reading this piece of "work"

Edited by scaramanga1, 20 April 2004 - 01:55 PM.

[Qwerty]

I've given up. I really can't be bothered to read this now. I know I should -so that I can be sure I don't make similar mistakes with my own writing. But then again I like to read for pleasure -and saddly Mr Jim Hatfield has taken some of the pleasure out of reading this piece of "work"

That's the idea that I had the first couple times, but I will stick with it, no matter how 'difficult' this story can be sometimes.

[Tanger]

Did you get as far as the diving part scaramanga1? I thought that this was quite well written.

I'm still with it and will be reading it till the end. Seems like just me and you Qwerty.

[Qwerty]

I'm still with it and will be reading it till the end. Seems like just me and you Qwerty.

If all goes well, I'll keep reading it.

Hmm, well two other long term members of this club, Clinkeroo and Xen, maybe they are reading it, or will read it and post some thoughts about it.

This is quite the piece and I hope some others, that have not already, chime in with their thoughts about this.

[Tanger]

I was hoping that this would be one of our more active discussions. That's the whole reason why I decided to do this piece this week.

[Leviathan]

Well, I've hung in for more, but, man, it's work.

--
Jonathan Andrew Sheen

[Tanger]

Don't deny that it's not entertaining though. Am I the only one enjoying this?

[Qwerty]

No, as a crazed fan of all things Bond, I too am enjoying this, Tanger.

The FFRC is fun and this selection, like many others, is a different and good one.