98 replies to this topic

[Safari Suit]

Couldn't you achieve that position by simply not reading/owning the works by other authors?

[Royal Dalton]

J R HARTLEY

God no! The print runs for his books are abysmal! Have you ever tried to find a copy of Flyfishing? It's a bloody nightmare!

Well, it is rather old...

[[dark]]

As a Bond fan, I'm interested in seeing the literary Bond become much bigger: I want a regular fix, and I want the world to have it, too. practicalities.

Personally, I wish it were much smaller, not much bigger. I wish only the Flemings, the Amis and the Pearson existed.

I'm actually with you, Loomis, but not in your choices. I like that the literary Bond canon is now clearly refocussed to include the Flemings, Higsons, Weinbergs and Faulks. I was in a bookstore about an hour ago and stumbled onto the Star Wars section - it was huge. Way too overwhelming. I wouldn't know where to start.

While it's a shame that Fleming, Higson, Weinberg and Faulks are not marketed in a more cohesive way, it's a manageable canon once again. I think if you expand it at a rapid rate, you're likely to wind up in a similar position to what we were in a few years back, with a new novel buried among the paperbacks of a bookstore every twelve months.

[Santa]

I was in a bookstore about an hour ago and stumbled onto the Star Wars section - it was huge. Way too overwhelming. I wouldn't know where to start.

Timothy Zahn.

[spynovelfan]

I think if you expand it at a rapid rate, you're likely to wind up in a similar position to what we were in a few years back, with a new novel buried among the paperbacks of a bookstore every twelve months.

I don't think it would be in anyone's interests to swamp the market. But 'more novels' doesn't have to mean millions of the things. There's rather a large range in this field, both in quantity and quality. BURN NOTICE, for instance, has a well-respected writer (Tod Goldberg) penning novels now, and they seem to be planning to bring out one a year, in rather classy mass-market paperbacks from Penguin. Here's an excerpt. I'm not holding it up as something especially Bondish, but as something rather well done and in the spirit of the original. And, well, look at the cover! I like BURN NOTICE, but if the guy holding the gun was wearing a tux and the letters IFP appeared somewhere on the copyright page I'd have bought this - wouldn't you?

Whatever the connection is to Bond - straightforward adult Bond, Sixties Bond, Victorian Bond, Double O agents, a series about Major Boothroyd's adventures in the Crimean War or, perhaps most tenuous of all, a return to John Gardner's MicroGlobe One character - would you really not be interested if Ian Fleming Publications announced that they had a writer with a good track record who was going to produce a novel a year for them?

[Greene Planet]

Alex Berenson?

Edited by Greene Planet, 12 January 2009 - 12:11 AM.

[Syndicate]

I don't know would it be a good idea for authors who writes close to the real world type spy novels. In their line of work a lot of research is done. they need to know about some of the countries's Intelligence, like the U.S., The British, Russia, China, North Korea, The Middle East and Germany. Special Forces of some of the countries also neede, in case in their novel a joint operation is needed or solo one.They also know military science, about briefing the President. Last all those terms like Black Ops, Burn Bag, Wet Works and Intelligence estament.

We all know in a James Bond novel we don't read about those stuff and it does not tell us about the inner workings. We never hear about stuff like HALO jump, the football, Cipher Lock, AWACS, Laser Desimgnator and Low-Drag Cases. So I don't know it be a good idea to have authors like,
Tom Clancy
John Le Carre
Fredrick Forsyth
Vince Flynn
W.E.B. Griffin
Jack Higgins
Robert Littell
David Ignatius
Patrick Robinson
to write a Bond novel, if they little of those in the novel it could make a Bond novel boring. Because they are so use to doing that and having all those info in thier novels. For Bond fans that have never read a close to the real world type spy novels, might get bored with thos in there. Maybe it best to have authors that never wrote a close to the real world type spy novels to write a James Bond novel. Charlie Higson should do it since his already doing the Young Bond novels, and he never wrote a close to the real world type spy novel.

[Greene Planet]

I don't know would it be a good idea for authors who writes close to the real world type spy novels. In their line of work a lot of research is done. they need to know about some of the countries's Intelligence, like the U.S., The British, Russia, China, North Korea, The Middle East and Germany. Special Forces of some of the countries also neede, in case in their novel a joint operation is needed or solo one.They also know military science, about briefing the President. Last all those terms like Black Ops, Burn Bag, Wet Works and Intelligence estament.

We all know in a James Bond novel we don't read about those stuff and it does not tell us about the inner workings. We never hear about stuff like HALO jump, the football, Cipher Lock, AWACS, Laser Desimgnator and Low-Drag Cases. So I don't know it be a good idea to have authors like,
Tom Clancy
John Le Carre
Fredrick Forsyth
Vince Flynn

True, a Bond novel needs terrorist situations.
W.E.B. Griffin
Jack Higgins
Robert Littell
David Ignatius
Patrick Robinson
to write a Bond novel, if they little of those in the novel it could make a Bond novel boring. Because they are so use to doing that and having all those info in thier novels. For Bond fans that have never read a close to the real world type spy novels, might get bored with thos in there. Maybe it best to have authors that never wrote a close to the real world type spy novels to write a James Bond novel. Charlie Higson should do it since his already doing the Young Bond novels, and he never wrote a close to the real world type spy novel.

[spynovelfan]

I suspect they could get a huge amount of publicity, buzz, review space, sales and perhaps even rather a good novel if they announced that Ian Fleming's nephew James was to write the next book:

http://www.jamesflem....uk/reviews.htm

[Double-Oh Agent]

Whatever the connection is to Bond - straightforward adult Bond, Sixties Bond, Victorian Bond, Double O agents, a series about Major Boothroyd's adventures in the Crimean War or, perhaps most tenuous of all, a return to John Gardner's MicroGlobe One character - would you really not be interested if Ian Fleming Publications announced that they had a writer with a good track record who was going to produce a novel a year for them?

Straight-forward adult Bond? Absolutely! Bring them on!
Sixties Bond? Definitely, and Seventies Bond too.
Victorian Bond? Hell no. Same for futuristic/sci-fi Bond.
Double-Oh agents? Not wild about it, but will not outright say no. I'd have to see how they come out.
Maj. Boothroyd or other double-oh family characters? See the double-oh agent answer.
John Gardner's Bond/Raymond Benson's Bond/Modern day Bond? Yes.

[Trident]

Ok, Victorian 00-agents would of course threaten to drift into LXG/Wild Wild West country. Still I would see some potential in this concept, perhaps even dating back further into history. Spying arguably being the second oldest trade, the history of espionage dates back quite some way. While Walsingham may have been a spymaster of the highest calibre, he can hardly have been the fist one, can he? And a need for drastic measures would have been a sideline, albeit a small one, in this trade from time to time. But this of course already is wide off the mark of a 00-section concept.

If you would prefer to stay at least partially on familiar ground, there's still a lot of room here. The SIS was founded in 1909 (Btw: Happy anniversay one of these days in October, SIS! Have a good one! You don't look a day older than 21! ) The eve of the first World War, the war itself and the time between the wars is a field that would offer a whole bunch of operations that might, at some point or other, include the assignment of a 00-agent.

World enough, and time. Plenty of.

[spynovelfan]

Straight-forward adult Bond? Absolutely! Bring them on!
Sixties Bond? Definitely, and Seventies Bond too.
Victorian Bond? Hell no. Same for futuristic/sci-fi Bond.
Double-Oh agents? Not wild about it, but will not outright say no. I'd have to see how they come out.
Maj. Boothroyd or other double-oh family characters? See the double-oh agent answer.
John Gardner's Bond/Raymond Benson's Bond/Modern day Bond? Yes.

I was being facetious about Boothroyd in the Crimea!

I increasingly like zencat's idea of a short run of four or five tie-in novels about the adult James Bond, as played by Daniel Craig in the current films, and which make it clear that they are not continuing from Ian Fleming's novels or intended to. They could make them a bit classier than some of the competition quite easily, and they could indeed be called the Quantum Files or something similar. But one problem with the idea is that IFP would have to do a deal with EON, and another is that I just think all the evidence we have suggests they want to concentrate on their brand, which is Ian Fleming.

I don't think we're going to see anything from IFP that is not in some way connected to Ian Fleming. So if we were going to have thrillers about an agent set in the Victorian or Edwardian age or what-have-you, they would be relatives of Bond. However, I don't think this is very likely at all because it is two steps away from Fleming, and so far they've only gone one step. Higson's series is in a different period from Fleming but the protagonist is James Bond. Weinberg's series featured a minor Fleming character but was in the same period as Fleming, roughly. So both tie to the books - Higson directly to the obituary in YOLT, where we learned that Bond went to Eton, and Weinberg fitting in chronicles of a minor character into Fleming's timeline. I think they will either go modern again or have another such variation. James Bond during the war is a very sellable idea, I think: COMMANDER BOND. The Double O agents is a bit of a harder sell, but is equivalent to the Weinberg idea, only the characters that they would feature are rather more in the target market and you could bring in a lot more of Fleming than a War Bond idea could by setting in the same period as Fleming's novels. I don't think they'll stray away from any period that couldn't fit into the life-span of Ian Fleming's characters.

I think for fans Bond the brand can become bigger than the reality. Nobody's answered my question about what elements they would like to see in a novel from IFP. The idea of another Gardneresque Bond doesn't appeal to me at all, because apart from being not very good and rather repetitive, most of them did not provide me with what I am looking for in Bond novels. It's not about the period they were set in, but the character and tone of the novels themselves. Colin Forbes, another British thriller-writer of rather a similar stamp to John Gardner, wrote a whole series of books about an SIS agent called Tweed chasing megalomaniacal villains around the world. They're not great thrillers, and Tweed is nothing like Bond. But if Forbes had gotten the gig instead of Gardner in the 80s, and had continued to write Tweed-style thrillers but just renamed Tweed 'James Bond' and added a few vodka martinis, we'd all be talking about those books as if they were the literary James Bond, because they would be, officially. But is that enough?

Isn't it about more than naming the lead character James Bond? So... what is it, then? Without the specifics of period or even Bond himself (and for me the books are not just about Bond but about the sort of girl he meets, the villain and so on), what elements are we hankering for in a new novel from Ian Fleming Publications? Try to be as specific as possible: there are lots of 'globe-trotting exciting thrillers', for instance, but I take it we're not just interested in reading one in which the lead character happens to be named James Bond, but something more. What?

[Jim]

Isn't it about more than naming the lead character James Bond? So... what is it, then? Without the specifics of period or even Bond himself (and for me the books are not just about Bond but about the sort of girl he meets, the villain and so on), what elements are we hankering for in a new novel from Ian Fleming Publications? Try to be as specific as possible: there are lots of 'globe-trotting exciting thrillers', for instance, but I take it we're not just interested in reading one in which the lead character happens to be named James Bond, but something more. What?

Panache. Character. Anyone (well, not anyone, but many) can convincingly write incident and that's all very exciting and there are many books with considerably more coherent and lively plots than Fleming's stuff but they don't have James Bond in them. One should consider what one does with James Bond before one considers what James Bond does. If all that happens is a series of events with an ostensible hero jetting about, then that could be any old thing by any old person.

James Bond during the war is a very sellable idea, I think: COMMANDER BOND.

In theory, yes, and there's plenty of incident for the character to be involved in. However, would there be plenty of character? Working from the premise that one is content for Young Bond to be canon (and the following comment is only justified on accepting that initial proposition, which many may not), then I'm not too sure where the Bond charcater one leaves walking down the mountain at the end of By Royal Command has to go to before one rejoins him again in Casino Royale. Certainly, the number of cigarettes smoked and alcohol drunk and women bedded and people killed will have increased but these are incident rather than character: insofar as attitude is concerned, I read James Bond in that final Young Bond book and I'm not totally convinced that there's too much more to say about him in the interim.

Do the war stories need James Bond in them? Or are they just war stories? If such tales would develop the character in some way (hard, being bookended by Higson and Fleming being, in my view, pretty close by their respective end and start) then maybe it's a good idea. I would think it prudent for an author attempting such tales to have a pretty good idea about what (s)he will have said about James Bond by the end of the run. This I see as the problem I have with much of John Gardner's later stuff - the plots aside, and there were some splendid ideas in the later books, he lost / wilfully abandoned James Bond. The Benson books seemed designed to have a weird Eon-esque mishymashy sorta chap in there and were, on that basis, a successful presentation of where James Bond was between 1995 and 2002.

It's not a question of having a really good idea for a book. It's about having a really good idea for James Bond. Without that, it's a really bad idea.

[Santa]

Colin Forbes, another British thriller-writer of rather a similar stamp to John Gardner, wrote a whole series of books about an SIS agent called Tweed chasing megalomaniacal villains around the world. They're not great thrillers, and Tweed is nothing like Bond. But if Forbes had gotten the gig instead of Gardner in the 80s, and had continued to write Tweed-style thrillers but just renamed Tweed 'James Bond' and added a few vodka martinis, we'd all be talking about those books as if they were the literary James Bond, because they would be, officially. But is that enough?

Ugh, no. Forbes was an awful, awful writer. It seems to me there are two different parts to writing Bond: the practical part such as plot and characters, and the tone. To me, Sebastian Faulks captured Fleming's writing voice clearly enough, but his story was weak (Fleming tended towards similar weaknesses sometimes). Gardner and Benson seemed to understand what sort of plot and characters were needed but their prose was workmanlike, as is Colin Forbes'. To write about Bond during any stage of his life or any era, or to write about other Bondiverse characters successfully, I think you have to capture both of those elements (and I think Higson is the only one so far to really manage it well). If someone could do that then I think tie-in novels of various kinds could work.

[ACE]

I still like the idea of a series of novels about other double 0 agents. Stories set in the same universe, and with a Flemingian spirit but with Bond as a fringe character - giving the writer a bit more freedom..

That way we could have our period pieces whilst not putting an author in the position of feeling he has to somehow pastiche Fleming.
In the same way, an author writing a contemporary story wouldnt feel obliged to write something which fits with Craig's Bond.

And also, we'll all be less likely to get our knickers in a twist when the book doesn't meet unreasonably high expectations or slips up on some detail about Bond's taste in underwear or something.

I also like this idea, for all the reasons given and more. The Moneypenny Diaries were in this line, I suppose, but that was still a bit of a hard sell to most fans of the genre. It seems they took two ideas that on paper seemed dreadful and very bandwagonish - the adventures of a young James Bond (for the Alex Rider/Harry Potter market) and the diaries of Moneypenny (chick-lit/Bridget Jones crowd) - and gave them to brilliant writers who handled them very well. But, you know, they're still series featuring a young boy and a woman and for those reasons alone many people, even on these forums, haven't read them. I think a series of mass-market paperbacks featuring other Double Os is much more obviously appealing to the target audience than either of those at first glance, but still doesn't come with the burden of expectation that a 'real' continuation has, and all the baggage that has gone with it. They could produce them regularly - every three months, perhaps - and have them in every airport bookstand and supermarket in the world, with 'Ian Fleming Productions Presents...' as a banner across the top. Just the same as all those 'Tom Clancy's Net Force' books, but with a British feel to them. Maybe set them in the Sixties, even, give them cool retro covers and so on.

I think if they were exciting and reasonably well written (which would be the hard part!), people would eat them up. Have them all published under the 'Robert Markham' name, and give the writers access to Fleming's notebooks and so on to class it up a bit. Package the whole series as 'Double O', and start marketing each character with diffferent logos and iconographies, but obviously fitting in with the main Bond one. Have a few of them hate Bond, feature Bond in a couple of the plots, kill Bond off in one and get one of them to impersonate Bond (before revealing Bond is alive all along), set them between the Fleming adventures, bring a few villains or girls back (carefully, mind)... I think there's loads they could do with this idea. It would take a lot of planning and investment and, above all, care, but then the've shown they can do that with Higson's and Weinberg's series, and I reckon the massive success of DEVIL MAY CARE would give a lot of momentum.

Well, one can hope they're already planning something along these lines.

It's an intriguing premise, spynovelfan, and you go a long way towards selling it, but the question remains: would people want to read about a 00-agent who wasn't James Bond? Surely that concept could be placed alongside the "adventures of a young James Bond (for the Alex Rider/Harry Potter market) and the diaries of Moneypenny (chick-lit/Bridget Jones crowd)" ideas.

Look at the three options:

The adventures of James Bond as a teenage boy at Eton in the 1930s.
The adventures of Miss Moneypenny in the Cold War, as discovered by her aunt.
The adventures of other Double O agents in the 1960s.

What was your initial reaction to the first two being announced? Be honest. What would your reaction be to the third being announced? It's a better reaction than you initially had to the other two, isn't it?

Well, yes, spy, but it's not a great reaction because I'm a Bond fan and I want to read about Bond. Okay. But there are lots of casual Bond fans, millions of them around the world, in fact, and it would appear that generally speaking they don't really want to read about Bond all that much. One reason is because of the films. It's simply too confusing: people don't want the two worlds confused, and the Bond film brand is simply far too big. It's caused lots of problems with the literary brand over the years, and even with the success of DEVIL MAY CARE there are problems. These problems were neatly sidestepped by the Higson and Weinberg projects, and in Higson's case were best-sellers. They sidestepped them because there was no burden of following either the films or Fleming - but they still appealed to people who 'like this sort of thing'. Higson had an uphill struggle, though, because nobody liked the idea when they first heard about it (and some still don't). The Double O idea is something like both Higson and Weinberg but it is, from the off, much more obviously appealing. Sure, there'd be a 'What? No Bond?' effect at first. But compare that to the 'What???? James Bond as a boy? No way!' and 'Moneypenny? She was a secretary! The adventures of Moneypenny????' reactions and the adventures of Double O agents, I'd hope you'd agree, are rather less jarring.

Since the success of the Bourne films, Ludlum's estate has commissioned and published three new Bourne novels (by Eric Van Lustbader) with a fourth soon to come out. Okay. And if they introduced a series of novels about other Treadstone agents...? The same people would buy them. A series about Bourne as a teenager, or Bourne's assistant... Tougher sell.

Ironically, because this idea is more easily accessible, hardcore Bond fans will find it harder to like it (because 'it's not Bond'). Everyone else will get it at once, though, and in a way they did not with Higson or Weinberg, both of which are pretty esoteric and jarring ideas in the modern market and which worked despite that. Hardcore Bond fans didn't like the sound of either of those, either... but hardcore Bond fans are rather hard to please.

Imagine you're walking through a train station. You see a bookshop, and it has a stand filled with paperbacks. They look like Bond novels, so you pick one up. It is a Bond novel, a new edition of DR NO. Oh, look, they have all the Flemings and even COLONEL SUN. All with the same kind of cool, classy retro covers. Just the sort of thing you'd like to read and be seen reading on the train. But what's this one - you've not heard of that continuation! Ah, it's not, quite. Across the top, in a classy white typeface on black, you read:

'IAN FLEMING PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

A DOUBLE O SECTION ADVENTURE

HELL HAS NO EXITS
BY
ROBERT MARKHAM'

What fresh heaven is this? You turn to the back:

'Ian Fleming Productions is proud to present a new series of thrilling adventures designed to appeal to fans of Ian Fleming the world over. Since 2009, we have worked with a specially selected group of writers to bring to life some of Fleming's world, through fresh eyes. Ian Fleming made passing mention to the Double O Section to which James Bond belongs in his novels. It is an elite group of crack agents, licensed to kill. Prepare to meet them...'

Beneath this is a synopsis of an adventure featuring 0011, who even has his own 007-ish-style logo, only the two '1's are silver bullets. The novel takes place in 1964, and is a 65,000-word Sixties-style page-turner. 0011 isn't Bond, to be sure, but he's a damn sight more like it than most thrillers out there, and there's a scene with M, Boothroyd pops up, London and Cairo and Biarritz and a villainous plot... You read the whole thing on the train journey and when you get out the other end you look for another bookshop. There are more of these to come! Fantastic...

Just a dream, I know. But if they can make best-sellers out of a schoolboy Bond in the 1930s, I really can't see why they couldn't make this work, and work very well.

Why not just do all this with Bond himself? Well, possibly. But suddenly you have all those problems about Fleming, and continuity, and the films. Weinberg and Higson were pros, but if they hadn't been it wouldn't have been a major problem because it wasn't the main brand they were playing with. It would have been akin to 'Oh, that cartoon they once did' or the book with the nephew. Trivia, collectible to hardcore fans and that's it. 'Those awful books where they made James Bond into Harry Potter in the 1930s!' or 'That dire attempt to make Moneypenny into Tomb Raider'! If the worst fears we had had about those two projects had happened, it wouldn't really have mattered. If Moneypenny had been killed off or a Young James Bond has become a wizard, it wouldn't really have counted. But if you do that sort of thing in a proper adult James Bond novel... well, it's a bit tricky. Same with this. Pull it off and you could well lead into adult Bonds in the same style, regularly produced and massively distributed and best-sellers around the world. If they're dreadful, though, or just fail to sell, you haven't harmed that main brand, which needs protecting. You can only improve the brand, not in any way significantly diminish it. And once diminished, it's hard to get the public back on track.

Just a dream, I know. But if they can make best-sellers out of a schoolboy Bond in the 1930s, I really can't see why they couldn't make this work, and work very well.

Just a dream? I don't think so. Sounds like you've put quite a lot of thought into this (and it seems a very feasible idea to me) - now, who could you have in mind to write these? Hmmmmm, I wonder...

I wasn't and wouldn't put myself up for this idea. It's really just what I think would work and which would also, coincidentally, give me the sort of lit-Bond fix I crave.

Bond novels now have all kinds of problems attached to writing them, depending on whether you set them in Fleming's era or now. If you go down the Fleming route, you run the risk of getting bad reviews comparing you to Fleming, annoying fans because you put Bond into a situation that contradicts the spirit or letter of the original books and presumes to change that history, etc. If you set it now you confuse the hell out of people and run the risk of looking like novelizations of Craig films they didn't make because the ideas were too lame. Again, how do you fit a Bond story into what he's doing in the other continuity - why does M do this when in the film QoS she says that, etc. Nightmare. Higson and Weinberg were a clever way round both problems, focusing on Fleming's spirit but at angles that did not affect Fleming's work.

Some have suggested that a series about James Bond during the war would be attractive, and I agree. That would get around the problem in much the same way, and would have the advantage of having an adult James Bond as the hero. You could have slightly younger versions of the minor Fleming characters, by which I mean the likes of M: Aunt May wasn't a character in Fleming's books, but was made into one by Higson - rather more of a tenuous connection. You could do the 'Bond begins' stuff properly, with his visiting Savile Row and so on. Higson's done some of it, but it would be a much easier sell. Many Bond fans don't want to buy 'children's books'. War Bond would have a better chance of attracting the older crowd and the mainstream who bought Faulks' novel.

So I would say that that may be the best idea. But literary Bond is a very delicate brand. A growing one with massive potential, I think, but despite the success of DEVIL MAY CARE, one false move could return it to the ghetto marked 'hardcore Bond fans only, please'. Ask your friends who are casual fans of the movies how many John Gardner Bond novels they've read. [strokes white cat] But there's an opportunity now, I think, to make literary Bond a brand that can compete in its own right, on a global scale. [/strokes white cat]

As a Bond fan, I'm interested in seeing the literary Bond become much bigger: I want a regular fix, and I want the world to have it, too. I'm just throwing out a few half-formed ideas, but it's an extremely complicated brand, I think, and needs a massive amount of thinking and investment by IFP to make it really take off. But they have executed a remarkable turnaround in the last few years, without the help of any online forum posters! And it's rather easy to be an armchair general, of course, without having to think about budgets or any other practicalities.

Victorian 00s? What are you lot like?

Literary Bond is in a unique position because it is in fact hampered by the stature of the character, meaning it's very hard to do some of the things lesser brands do the whole time (and make a lot of money doing). The thread asks who I want to write Bond, but it's easy to play fantasy, just as it's easy to say we'd like our favourite actor to play Bond, our favourite director for the next film and so on. But if we look at what is possible, likely, practical and so on... it's another ball game. Spielberg's not going to direct the next Bond film, and Clancy/Higgins/whichever massive-selling thriller-writer you happen to fancy is unlikely to write the next Bond novel.

Many successful TV series have novels now:

ALIAS: http://www.fantastic...k/series/alias/
24: http://www.fantastic...4-declassified/
BURN NOTICE: http://www.fantastic...rds=burn notice

This is even more common in the fantasy/sci-fi world. But would we really want Bond to go down this route, with three or four Bond novels a year with Craig battling Quantum around the world in adventures we'd never see on screen? I don't think we, or EON or IFP would. We wouldn't because we want Bond novels to be special, not like a TV thriller series with cheap cash-ins. The cachet of Ian Fleming's creation would be gone and the character would no longer be iconic, with an eccentric but still containable and understandable canon. Literary Bond would be much more like comic strip Bond, with dozens of strange adventures that would never have passed muster with 'proper' adult continuations. Bond would be like any other action hero and would lose his class and cool. EON wouldn't like it, either, because the films are Major Events and this would eat away at that, too.

So the success of the brand has hindered the brand. Do IFP care, really? I doubt it, somehow. It's a very wealthy company, so why devalue Fleming's name, which they are there to protect, to make a bit more cash from merchandising? No reason to, really. You can see with both the Higson and Weinberg ideas a desire to protect Fleming's creation - they're not about to open the floodgates and allow dozens of writers to have a go at writing Bond thrillers. So the odds, I think, are really on us waiting a few years. Possibly getting War Bond. The idea for thrillers on the Double Os would be a way of making some money (I think) without risking any damage to the Fleming brand and also pleasing the target audience - but is unlikely to happen, I'll admit. IFP do, I think, want to use Fleming's creation as a starting point, though, so I suspect Victorian 00 agents are something we won't see from them any time soon.

Then again, who would have predicted a series of novels about Bond at Eton in the 30s written by Charlie Higson from The Fast Show?

I think if you expand it at a rapid rate, you're likely to wind up in a similar position to what we were in a few years back, with a new novel buried among the paperbacks of a bookstore every twelve months.

I don't think it would be in anyone's interests to swamp the market. But 'more novels' doesn't have to mean millions of the things. There's rather a large range in this field, both in quantity and quality. BURN NOTICE, for instance, has a well-respected writer (Tod Goldberg) penning novels now, and they seem to be planning to bring out one a year, in rather classy mass-market paperbacks from Penguin. Here's an excerpt. I'm not holding it up as something especially Bondish, but as something rather well done and in the spirit of the original. And, well, look at the cover! I like BURN NOTICE, but if the guy holding the gun was wearing a tux and the letters IFP appeared somewhere on the copyright page I'd have bought this - wouldn't you?

Whatever the connection is to Bond - straightforward adult Bond, Sixties Bond, Victorian Bond, Double O agents, a series about Major Boothroyd's adventures in the Crimean War or, perhaps most tenuous of all, a return to John Gardner's MicroGlobe One character - would you really not be interested if Ian Fleming Publications announced that they had a writer with a good track record who was going to produce a novel a year for them?

Straight-forward adult Bond? Absolutely! Bring them on!
Sixties Bond? Definitely, and Seventies Bond too.
Victorian Bond? Hell no. Same for futuristic/sci-fi Bond.
Double-Oh agents? Not wild about it, but will not outright say no. I'd have to see how they come out.
Maj. Boothroyd or other double-oh family characters? See the double-oh agent answer.
John Gardner's Bond/Raymond Benson's Bond/Modern day Bond? Yes.

I was being facetious about Boothroyd in the Crimea!

I increasingly like zencat's idea of a short run of four or five tie-in novels about the adult James Bond, as played by Daniel Craig in the current films, and which make it clear that they are not continuing from Ian Fleming's novels or intended to. They could make them a bit classier than some of the competition quite easily, and they could indeed be called the Quantum Files or something similar. But one problem with the idea is that IFP would have to do a deal with EON, and another is that I just think all the evidence we have suggests they want to concentrate on their brand, which is Ian Fleming.

I don't think we're going to see anything from IFP that is not in some way connected to Ian Fleming. So if we were going to have thrillers about an agent set in the Victorian or Edwardian age or what-have-you, they would be relatives of Bond. However, I don't think this is very likely at all because it is two steps away from Fleming, and so far they've only gone one step. Higson's series is in a different period from Fleming but the protagonist is James Bond. Weinberg's series featured a minor Fleming character but was in the same period as Fleming, roughly. So both tie to the books - Higson directly to the obituary in YOLT, where we learned that Bond went to Eton, and Weinberg fitting in chronicles of a minor character into Fleming's timeline. I think they will either go modern again or have another such variation. James Bond during the war is a very sellable idea, I think: COMMANDER BOND. The Double O agents is a bit of a harder sell, but is equivalent to the Weinberg idea, only the characters that they would feature are rather more in the target market and you could bring in a lot more of Fleming than a War Bond idea could by setting in the same period as Fleming's novels. I don't think they'll stray away from any period that couldn't fit into the life-span of Ian Fleming's characters.

I think for fans Bond the brand can become bigger than the reality. Nobody's answered my question about what elements they would like to see in a novel from IFP. The idea of another Gardneresque Bond doesn't appeal to me at all, because apart from being not very good and rather repetitive, most of them did not provide me with what I am looking for in Bond novels. It's not about the period they were set in, but the character and tone of the novels themselves. Colin Forbes, another British thriller-writer of rather a similar stamp to John Gardner, wrote a whole series of books about an SIS agent called Tweed chasing megalomaniacal villains around the world. They're not great thrillers, and Tweed is nothing like Bond. But if Forbes had gotten the gig instead of Gardner in the 80s, and had continued to write Tweed-style thrillers but just renamed Tweed 'James Bond' and added a few vodka martinis, we'd all be talking about those books as if they were the literary James Bond, because they would be, officially. But is that enough?

Isn't it about more than naming the lead character James Bond? So... what is it, then? Without the specifics of period or even Bond himself (and for me the books are not just about Bond but about the sort of girl he meets, the villain and so on), what elements are we hankering for in a new novel from Ian Fleming Publications? Try to be as specific as possible: there are lots of 'globe-trotting exciting thrillers', for instance, but I take it we're not just interested in reading one in which the lead character happens to be named James Bond, but something more. What?

spynovelfan, yes, yes and yes!

I personally think a new Bond novel should be contemporary (Bond, IMO, does NOT belong in the 1960's - Fleming always envisaged the character to be modern). However, this would still need a John Gardner sleight-of-hand trick with the chronology but so what.

A successful Bond novel should, IMO, have an insider tone, a cynical world-weariness but intellectual curiosity to places, things and events. I don't think the novels should always be about megalomaniacal villains and plots to destroy the world. However, the novels should have an quasi-journalistic insight to the events which they are describing. However, they also need to sell well and be enjoyed by a readership beyond Bond fans.

My choices for future Adult Bond novels would be:

Charlie Higson
Iain Banks
Robert Harris
Martin Amis
Charles Cumming
Jeremy Duns
Ben Macintyre
Robert Fisk
John Pearson
Christopher Wood
Raymond Benson
Jacques Stewart

[Eurospy]

I personally think a new Bond novel should be contemporary (Bond, IMO, does NOT belong in the 1960's - Fleming always envisaged the character to be modern). However, this would still need a John Gardner sleight-of-hand trick with the chronology but so what.

A successful Bond novel should, IMO, have an insider tone, a cynical world-weariness but intellectual curiosity to places, things and events. I don't think the novels should always be about megalomaniacal villains and plots to destroy the world. However, the novels should have an quasi-journalistic insight to the events which they are describing. However, they also need to sell well and be enjoyed by a readership beyond Bond fans.

Excellent statement

Edited by Eurospy, 13 January 2009 - 01:12 PM.

[spynovelfan]

Panache. Character. Anyone (well, not anyone, but many) can convincingly write incident and that's all very exciting and there are many books with considerably more coherent and lively plots than Fleming's stuff but they don't have James Bond in them. One should consider what one does with James Bond before one considers what James Bond does. If all that happens is a series of events with an ostensible hero jetting about, then that could be any old thing by any old person.

Absolutely. This is what I was getting at. I'm not sure I'd agree that character development is necessary in quite the same way as you (Fleming didn't develop the character that much, although he did admittedly develop him), but I want whoever writes these books to understand Ian Fleming's works - and if they're about James Bond, to understand James Bond. I don't think John Gardner 'got' Bond, and he admitted he didn't like him. I think after the first few books Gardner effectively used the series to write the sort of action adventure thrillers he wanted to write, with the kind of character he wanted, and simply named him Bond. I think as far as gadgetry and technology and so on, he followed the Fleming spirit to the end, but the real-world espionage elements and, crucially, the character of James Bond himself were not, to my mind, sufficiently like James Bond to warrant that name. In fact, at times reading Gardner I find myself staggered that fans accept that they are continuation novels at all.

But Gardner had an impossible job. I don't agree with ACE, for instance, that setting Bond novels now requires a mere sleight-of-hand-trick with the chronology. You can see the problem most clearly in LICENSE RENEWED, where Gardner sets out his stall in the early chapters. He goes through all the lifestlye changes Bond has made and justifies them - and I think he does that reasonably well. But there is nevertheless a massive disconnection between the exposition-stuffed research-based 'real-world' espionage of the Red Army Faction and the IRA and GSG9 and Squad R and so on and a villain with a ward called Lavender Peacock.

I can see why they went this route, but for me it didn't work, ever, even when done at the height of Gardner's powers. I really don't care much about continuity, but Gardner's books didn't just blow a hole in the continuity but much more crucially in the tone. They're very erratic, because they were essentially action adventure espionage thrillers by John Gardner - and largely, not very good ones, with dull prose, predictable and weak characters, too many double-crosses, repeated ideas, and far too much exposition - on top of which were inserted occasional references to Fleming's character, either solidifying it (gunmetal lighter, etc) or directly going against it to explain how the character could exist 'now' (disbanding the Double-O Section, etc).

Ian Fleming did indeed think that his character should be modern, but I think the practicalities of doing that are extremely difficult indeed, especially considering that there's a series of films doing it rather successfully. It's very hard to pull off a Bond novel as it is - it's a lot more than just a megalomaniac's plot and some car chases and a girl with a silly name - but trying to marry the character from the Fleming novels of the 50s and 60s with the present day is much much harder. I realise this stems from my personal preference for spy thrillers set in the 60s, but I also think from a marketing point of view it makes much more sense to do that, because of the films. Faulks tried to cater for the film-goer a little, but I don't think that's a good idea, particularly. Ian Fleming Publications are the literary keepers of Fleming's flame, and part of me wants them to continue to produce novels that are in keeping with his creation. Major Boothroyd and Loelia Ponsonby and Sir Miles Messervy are all part of their brand, completely distinct from the films, and I believe can still be revived and put to good use in Bond novels. The Cold War was a fascinating era, and there's plenty of evocative stuff in it. So part of me wants continuation Bond novels to be just that: to continue where Fleming left off. No updating necessary. Something in Fleming's spirit, set in the era of his novels, featuring a facially-scarred agent who smokes rather a lot and drinks too much and saves civilisation while he goes along.

Traditionalist, perhaps. But perhaps there is a market for the continuing adventures of Ian Fleming's James Bond?

[Santa]

I can see why they went this route, but for me it didn't work, ever, even when done at the height of Gardner's powers. I really don't care much about continuity, but Gardner's books didn't just blow a hole in the continuity but much more crucially in the tone. They're very erratic, because they were essentially action adventure espionage thrillers by John Gardner - and largely, not very good ones, with dull prose, predictable and weak characters, too many double-crosses, repeated ideas, and far too much exposition - on top of which were inserted occasional references to Fleming's character, either solidifying it (gunmetal lighter, etc) or directly going against it to explain how the character could exist 'now' (disbanding the Double-O Section, etc).

I'm with you, Gardner's Bond never worked for me (nor did Benson's, to be honest, but I preferred him over Gardner), but I think that if, for example (and obviously we'll never see it), we were to give Fleming Gardner's basic story outline to write in his own words, his own style, we'd pretty much have BWKAL (was that the acronym?). What do you think?

[Jim]

Panache. Character. Anyone (well, not anyone, but many) can convincingly write incident and that's all very exciting and there are many books with considerably more coherent and lively plots than Fleming's stuff but they don't have James Bond in them. One should consider what one does with James Bond before one considers what James Bond does. If all that happens is a series of events with an ostensible hero jetting about, then that could be any old thing by any old person.

Absolutely. This is what I was getting at. I'm not sure I'd agree that character development is necessary in quite the same way as you (Fleming didn't develop the character that much, although he did admittedly develop him)

True; it's not as if he's that richly nuanced and developed a character, but he is of interest and how he lives and reacts was always, to me anyway, more interesting than what he does. Take Diamonds are Forever as a case in point - the action sequences are hopeless and that rubbish at the end when Wint & Kidd menace Tiffany Case - feeble. But Bond's journalistic observations and living (however much they uncannily match Fleming's own thinking, how very very very uncanny) I find fascinating.

but I want whoever writes these books to understand Ian Fleming's works - and if they're about James Bond, to understand James Bond. I don't think John Gardner 'got' Bond, and he admitted he didn't like him.

Yes, this was a bit of a problem. More than a bit. A lot of a problem.

One can go too far the other way, though: the understanding can become irritating reverence, and this is a problem with the Benson books, crammed as they are with Fleming characters returning rather than bothering to come good on some interesting ones of his own. I accept that this may have been a contractual requirement rather than an artistic decision, however.

I'm not sure it's a requirement to like Bond; some of Fleming's strongest / most unusual and arresting stuff is riddled with antipathy: whatever the merits or otherwise of The Spy who Loved Me, I doubt it would have been written if Fleming wasn't sick to death of the silly man. Gardner could set Bond aside, and did. Fleming could not, but tried. There's much meaty goodness in how he tried.

I think after the first few books Gardner effectively used the series to write the sort of action adventure thrillers he wanted to write, with the kind of character he wanted, and simply named him Bond. I think as far as gadgetry and technology and so on, he followed the Fleming spirit to the end, but the real-world espionage elements and, crucially, the character of James Bond himself were not, to my mind, sufficiently like James Bond to warrant that name. In fact, at times reading Gardner I find myself staggered that fans accept that they are continuation novels at all.

Yes, he was very strong on the hardware and telling us this week's new name for the KGB but that sort of stuff left me totally bored and I think that lies behind why I haven't revisited his books much, or remember lots about them - I must have skipped the detail. I expect others will have found it interesting, though.

But Gardner had an impossible job. I don't agree with ACE, for instance, that setting Bond novels now requires a mere sleight-of-hand-trick with the chronology. You can see the problem most clearly in LICENCE RENEWED, where Gardner sets out his stall in the early chapters. He goes through all the lifestlye changes Bond has made and justifies them - and I think he does that reasonably well. But there is nevertheless a massive disconnection between the exposition-stuffed research-based 'real-world' espionage of the Red Army Faction and the IRA and GSG9 and Squad R and so on and a villain with a ward called Lavender Peacock.

Agreed. The first five or six Gardners are fun - I still think Nobody Lives Forever is a great book (but I haven't reread it and I may now consider it vile - I wish to preserve the memory!) - but there's a point at which they become unfun and I think that was probably Win, Lose or Die. evidently, Fleming did write about some of the real world stuff and the hardware but it always struck me as even then a little fantastical, however true it was. That demonstrates substantial skill and an eye for the slightly twisted even in the most mundane of matters. Bond's breakfast, for example - all very routine, all very straightforward and commonplace things - he's not biting out the necks of eagles, for example - but the delivery is just so to make it a hyper-reality. Gardner has a habit of making the ordinary seem ordinary.

I can see why they went this route, but for me it didn't work, ever, even when done at the height of Gardner's powers. I really don't care much about continuity, but Gardner's books didn't just blow a hole in the continuity but much more crucially in the tone. They're very erratic, because they were essentially action adventure espionage thrillers by John Gardner - and largely, not very good ones, with dull prose, predictable and weak characters, too many double-crosses, repeated ideas, and far too much exposition - on top of which were inserted occasional references to Fleming's character, either solidifying it (gunmetal lighter, etc) or directly going against it to explain how the character could exist 'now' (disbanding the Double-O Section, etc).

Agreed. This is looking a bit anti-Gardner now, innit? I enjoyed the books well enough while they were they and have read them all. The updating was a bad idea. James Bond is, the success of Young Bond aside, as an adult a beast of the Cold War. Whilst i'm well aware that this outlived the 60s, he is inherently pre-decimal as far as I'm concerned.

Ian Fleming did indeed think that his character should be modern, but I think the practicalities of writing that and pulling it off are extremely difficult indeed.

He still translates. Likewise the continued success of Sherlock Holmes - those stories still resonate. The Gardner books, so replete with current detail, have dated more, in my view - Role of Honour is baffling and some of the later ones where Bond saves John Major or Helmut Kohl may as well have been written about The Venerable Bede.

It's pretty hard to pull off a Bond novel as it is - it is a lot more than just a megalomaniac's plot and some car chases and a girl with a silly name - but trying to marry the character from the Fleming novels of the 50s and 60s with the present day is much much harder. I realise this stems from my personal preference for spy thrillers set in the 60s, but I also think from a marketing point of view it makes much more sense to do that, because of the films. Faulks tried to cater for the film-goer a little, but I don't think that's a good idea, particularly.

Agreed.

Ian Fleming Publications are the literary keepers of Fleming's flame, and part of me wants them to continue to produce novels that are in keeping with his creation. Major Boothroyd and Loelia Ponsonby and Sir Miles Messervy are all part of their brand, completely distinct from the films, and I believe can still be revived and put to good use in Bond novels. The Cold War was a fascinating era, and there's plenty of evocative stuff in it. So part of me wants continuation Bond novels to be just that: to continue where Fleming left off. No updating necessary.

Agreed. The weird mashing of Fleming incidents and filmy stuff made the Benson books a bit odd at times.

Something in Fleming's spirit, set in the era of his novels, featuring a facially-scarred agent who smokes rather a lot and drinks too much and saves civilisation while he goes along.

...while he goes along. Yes. That's it. Stories about James Bond, not James Bond stories. Mr Gardner didn't seem all that interested in either concept after a while and, DoubleShot aside, the Benson books are James Bond stories. Start with James Bond. There remains stuff there to exploit and invent.

Traditionalist, perhaps. But I believe there is a market for the continuing adventures of Ian Fleming's James Bond.

I love you.

[Scrambled Eggs]

Traditionalist, perhaps. But perhaps there is a market for the continuing adventures of Ian Fleming's James Bond?

I think it's been pretty definitively demonstrated that there is.

I think most of us can agree that any future author needs to have some sort of affection for Fleming's Bond, or at least a respect for him.

Perhaps its best not to allow a complete fan boy loon take charge of the franchise but any continuation author should, at the very least, be someone who knows and enjoys the originals - not just someone who knows the originals because they've been commissioned to write a James Bond novel and so thinks they'd better gen up.

[Trident]

Isn't it about more than naming the lead character James Bond? So... what is it, then? Without the specifics of period or even Bond himself (and for me the books are not just about Bond but about the sort of girl he meets, the villain and so on), what elements are we hankering for in a new novel from Ian Fleming Publications? Try to be as specific as possible: there are lots of 'globe-trotting exciting thrillers', for instance, but I take it we're not just interested in reading one in which the lead character happens to be named James Bond, but something more. What?

Panache. Character. Anyone (well, not anyone, but many) can convincingly write incident and that's all very exciting and there are many books with considerably more coherent and lively plots than Fleming's stuff but they don't have James Bond in them. One should consider what one does with James Bond before one considers what James Bond does. If all that happens is a series of events with an ostensible hero jetting about, then that could be any old thing by any old person.

In fact this is something that's really occupying me for some time now. I'd like to see what happens to Bond after his disturbing comeback of TMWTGG. To me Bond felt far from restored in that one and I think there might be interesting material there.

Bond's abilities apart, which I think could be at least questionable after his failure to immediately carry out his task, there is also his mind that would give room for exploration. Would he really be thankful for regaining his memory? With everything that entails? Or would he rather have lived on in mercyful oblivion?

His posting as 00-agent. Will it go on forever? Hardly. I'd like to see him moved onwards. Would he welcome this? No, certainly not. Perhaps he could fit into other branches of the SIS, become head-of-station somewhere. Or perhaps he wouldn't fit in. It would of course depend on what further ideas one had, but I can imagine Bond in early retirement. And my personal idea would have Bond not in London. Nor Jamaica for that matter.

My idea would see him leaving an SIS that has changed. Changed personnaly, because M has finally bought it, his replacement yet to be announced until some party member with the right political background takes over. Changed, because Tanner, his best (and only) friend in the Service, has gone to Washington to help regaining American trust after a chain of major security scandals. And taken Moneypenny with him.

Clean slate! Not the 1.003rd M/Bond-bureau-scene. Instead a hearing in front of the JIC. People who don't know him, have perhaps never heard about his career and don't give a if they have. And who have the distinctive feeling that this member of the SIS is better kept at bay. Preferably outside the Mainland. And off goes Bond, farewell!

Bond minus 00-licence? He never needed the licence to kill anybody. A gun, a knife, a rifle, his hands, but not the bloody licence. Bond minus the SIS? To be fair, one would have to acknowledge that Bond, as most likely all members of the 00-section, is a kind of outsider in his own service. Good riddance! Bond without the prospect of a dangerous mission, of adventure? That's a completely different matter. Might do all kinds of stupid, dangerous stuff to get his kick out of his pension. Certainly not the type to feed the pigeons in the park. And certainly the type to find himself a mission if necessary.

And then we can see the character study of a human being under severe stress. Whose only hope of success is his gift of endurance, his unwillingness to give in, to give up and surrender. Faced with an adversary superior in funds, strength, numbers and brutality. And what this does with a man that has lost most of his contacts, yet cannot withstand the thrill of his calling.


Something along those lines.

[David Schofield]

Much of the talk here has been - quite rightly - of the need to recreate Ian Fleming's James Bond, rather than the Gardner or Benson alternate versions. And while it is agreed that there might be scope for a Bond novel that is not a conventional espionage thriller but takes hints from, say, Fleming's Spy, Octopussy or QOS, it would seem that all consider it essential that we have Fleming's Bond, but updated, that same old Peter Pan 38 year old.

Now I must say at the outset, I have NEVER merely seen Bond as a 38 year old Pan from CR to MTWGG, so my suggestion here is heavily influenced by the real-life (Flemingesque) anxiety of growing old. I should also clarify that I have kissed 40 goodbye some years ago, and confess that I have started to notice the change of seasons, nature and flowers more

But I would happily see Bond in an epic novel (that is, a book about James Bond, rather than a long thriller in which Bond disappears for chunks, viz Benson and Faulks) that sets Bond in, ooh, say 1973-74. He is in his early 50s. He is ex-SIS. He is settled down in, oh I don't know, Sevenoaks, Canterbury - ie. pure Fleming Kent. He lives off his private income and SIS pension. He plays golf a lot. He tries, unsuccessfully, to drink and smoke less. And here's the conceit, has been married since the late sixties to a woman in her early 30s. He has two young children. The wife is exciting, he TRIES be a good father. (Hey, maybe David Suzuki vists) And yet, and yet... His wife wants him to get rid of the Bentley, to get a Rover 3.5...

And James Bond watches Britain's role in the world decline further than ever. He sees the growth of trade unionism, domestic economic strife. he detests the Wilson government (both of 'em) - as Fleming surely would have. And he watches in Europe the spread of terrorism in the form of Carlos the JAckal, the Red Brigade, IRA. And his 50+ body won't allow him to do anything about it....

Now if there is anything FURTHER removed from a traditional espionage story than the post 1968 ageing and decline (?) of James Bond than the above I'd like to see it. And perhaps a skilled writer could link Bond's new "happiness" and ageing, his loss of his taken for granted permanent youth and its skills, and weave around it a thriller which allows Bond still to be Bond just older and wiser.

Any takers?

[spynovelfan]

Is that your pitch to IFP, Trident? It's very intriguing, I think. Pearson and Faulks both tried something a little similar, as did Jenkins, of course, with Bond countermanding M, resigning, and heading off to investigate on his own. Though I see you're advocating something more radical, and I can see that the idea of Bond cut loose could have a lot of potential.

I also agree that slavish devotion to Fleming is not enough and what would be required is the boldness he had, rather than simply ticking the boxes. You mention the 1,003rd Bond-meets-M-for-some-exposition-in-his-office scene, and I think that's precisely right. For all my ragging, I think Amis did understand this, and did shake things up in this way.

I'd like to revise my pitch in the light of this discussion. Gothamite just posted on the tie-in thread:

I'd love me some 'very much Daniel Craig' movie continuation novels while at the same time, the standard 'Bond in the Cold War with cigarettes and Benzedrine' novels continue... Probably a pipe-dream though and the two different styles would inevitably cause confusing clashes on the consumer market; but I think it would be worth it.

And there's the rub. I think there can only be one of those alternatives. If you have Bond novels set now, they really have to take the films into account. But then they run the risk of being novelisations of films EON haven't yet made. It would be easy enough to get around continuity problems with Fleming: just ignore Fleming entirely. Don't mention Leiter's wounds, just have him the Leiter played by Jeffrey Wright. M is Dench, etc. Villains are Quantum... oh, hang on. That's all rather carefully worked out in the films, which are now sequential, so where do the novels fit in? Why do we want to read about motorbike stunts and spectacular explosions and so on, when it's the seeing them on screen and Craig's portrayal that is selling all of it so much better? Novels are slower-moving creatures, generally, and making a book of a Craig-ish Bond movie that hasn't been made yet would be a hard task - and perhaps not nearly as enjoyable as it sounds.

Fleming's character has survived into the modern age - on film. On the page, then, why not make him Fleming's original character? The estate of AA Milne this week announced they had commissioned the first Winnie The Pooh continuation book. What? There are hundreds, surely? No, those are all books adapted from Disney cartoons. This will be a sequel to Milne's two books, in that spirit. There won't be any gophers and Pooh will look like he did in the original books, and so on. Cigarettes and benzedrine have gone out of fashion, but Faulks' success shows there is an appetite for this type of novel. Fleming died in 1964. Bond had an average of, what, three missions a year? Before the end of the decade, then, he could have another 15 adventures! With judicious researching of the archives, one could plausibly date COLONEL SUN and mention the events of that novel in the 12th or 13th book. Faulks' adventure took place in 1967, I believe , so you could mention Gorner in the adventure after it. Perhaps kill off Scarlett there. A series of 15 novels following James Bond until the end of the decade. One published a year. Robert Markham to write. No pointless character returns, no checklists, no pandering to the films. Well-written warm blooded adventures in the spirit of Ian Fleming, following the adventures of James Bond between 1965 and 1969. Any takers?

[spynovelfan]

Much of the talk here has been - quite rightly - of the need to recreate Ian Fleming's James Bond, rather than the Gardner or Benson alternate versions. And while it is agreed that there might be scope for a Bond novel that is not a conventional espionage thriller but takes hints from, say, Fleming's Spy, Octopussy or QOS, it would seem that all consider it essential that we have Fleming's Bond, but updated, that same old Peter Pan 38 year old.

Now I must say at the outset, I have NEVER merely seen Bond as a 38 year old Pan from CR to MTWGG, so my suggestion here is heavily influenced by the real-life (Flemingesque) anxiety of growing old. I should also clarify that I have kissed 40 goodbye some years ago, and confess that I have started to notice the change of seasons, nature and flowers more

But I would happily see Bond in an epic novel (that is, a book about James Bond, rather than a long thriller in which Bond disappears for chunks, viz Benson and Faulks) that sets Bond in, ooh, say 1973-74. He is in his early 50s. He is ex-SIS. He is settled down in, oh I don't know, Sevenoaks, Canterbury - ie. pure Fleming Kent. He lives off his private income and SIS pension. He plays golf a lot. He tries, unsuccessfully, to drink and smoke less. And here's the conceit, has been married since the late sixties to a woman in her early 30s. He has two young children. The wife is exciting, he TRIES be a good father. (Hey, maybe David Suzuki vists) And yet, and yet... His wife wants him to get rid of the Bentley, to get a Rover 3.5...

And James Bond watches Britain's role in the world decline further than ever. He sees the growth of trade unionism, domestic economic strife. he detests the Wilson government (both of 'em) - as Fleming surely would have. And he watches in Europe the spread of terrorism in the form of Carlos the JAckal, the Red Brigade, IRA. And his 50+ body won't allow him to do anything about it....

Now if there is anything FURTHER removed from a traditional espionage story than the post 1968 ageing and decline (?) of James Bond than the above I'd like to see it. And perhaps a skilled writer could link Bond's new "happiness" and ageing, his loss of his taken for granted permanent youth and its skills, and weave around it a thriller which allows Bond still to be Bond just older and wiser.

Any takers?

Fascinating - and we ended on the same note! I think you might enjoy the novels of Joseph Hone, David. Particularly his 1982 novel THE VALLEY OF THE FOX. Peter Marlow is a former SIS agent, now retired and living in the Cotswolds with his wife and step-daughter, slowly working on his memoirs. But SIS don't want him to be working on his memoirs, and neither do others. His cosy home life is suddenly shattered and he's on the run, living on his wits, hunted... It's a brilliant novel, and I highly recommend the whole series.

[Trident]

Much of the talk here has been - quite rightly - of the need to recreate Ian Fleming's James Bond, rather than the Gardner or Benson alternate versions. And while it is agreed that there might be scope for a Bond novel that is not a conventional espionage thriller but takes hints from, say, Fleming's Spy, Octopussy or QOS, it would seem that all consider it essential that we have Fleming's Bond, but updated, that same old Peter Pan 38 year old.

Now I must say at the outset, I have NEVER merely seen Bond as a 38 year old Pan from CR to MTWGG, so my suggestion here is heavily influenced by the real-life (Flemingesque) anxiety of growing old. I should also clarify that I have kissed 40 goodbye some years ago, and confess that I have started to notice the change of seasons, nature and flowers more

But I would happily see Bond in an epic novel (that is, a book about James Bond, rather than a long thriller in which Bond disappears for chunks, viz Benson and Faulks) that sets Bond in, ooh, say 1973-74. He is in his early 50s. He is ex-SIS. He is settled down in, oh I don't know, Sevenoaks, Canterbury - ie. pure Fleming Kent. He lives off his private income and SIS pension. He plays golf a lot. He tries, unsuccessfully, to drink and smoke less. And here's the conceit, has been married since the late sixties to a woman in her early 30s. He has two young children. The wife is exciting, he TRIES be a good father. (Hey, maybe David Suzuki vists) And yet, and yet... His wife wants him to get rid of the Bentley, to get a Rover 3.5...

And James Bond watches Britain's role in the world decline further than ever. He sees the growth of trade unionism, domestic economic strife. he detests the Wilson government (both of 'em) - as Fleming surely would have. And he watches in Europe the spread of terrorism in the form of Carlos the JAckal, the Red Brigade, IRA. And his 50+ body won't allow him to do anything about it....

Now if there is anything FURTHER removed from a traditional espionage story than the post 1968 ageing and decline (?) of James Bond than the above I'd like to see it. And perhaps a skilled writer could link Bond's new "happiness" and ageing, his loss of his taken for granted permanent youth and its skills, and weave around it a thriller which allows Bond still to be Bond just older and wiser.

Any takers?

Yes! YES! YES!

[ACE]

Much of the talk here has been - quite rightly - of the need to recreate Ian Fleming's James Bond, rather than the Gardner or Benson alternate versions. And while it is agreed that there might be scope for a Bond novel that is not a conventional espionage thriller but takes hints from, say, Fleming's Spy, Octopussy or QOS, it would seem that all consider it essential that we have Fleming's Bond, but updated, that same old Peter Pan 38 year old.

Now I must say at the outset, I have NEVER merely seen Bond as a 38 year old Pan from CR to MTWGG, so my suggestion here is heavily influenced by the real-life (Flemingesque) anxiety of growing old. I should also clarify that I have kissed 40 goodbye some years ago, and confess that I have started to notice the change of seasons, nature and flowers more

But I would happily see Bond in an epic novel (that is, a book about James Bond, rather than a long thriller in which Bond disappears for chunks, viz Benson and Faulks) that sets Bond in, ooh, say 1973-74. He is in his early 50s. He is ex-SIS. He is settled down in, oh I don't know, Sevenoaks, Canterbury - ie. pure Fleming Kent. He lives off his private income and SIS pension. He plays golf a lot. He tries, unsuccessfully, to drink and smoke less. And here's the conceit, has been married since the late sixties to a woman in her early 30s. He has two young children. The wife is exciting, he TRIES be a good father. (Hey, maybe David Suzuki vists) And yet, and yet... His wife wants him to get rid of the Bentley, to get a Rover 3.5...

And James Bond watches Britain's role in the world decline further than ever. He sees the growth of trade unionism, domestic economic strife. he detests the Wilson government (both of 'em) - as Fleming surely would have. And he watches in Europe the spread of terrorism in the form of Carlos the JAckal, the Red Brigade, IRA. And his 50+ body won't allow him to do anything about it....

Now if there is anything FURTHER removed from a traditional espionage story than the post 1968 ageing and decline (?) of James Bond than the above I'd like to see it. And perhaps a skilled writer could link Bond's new "happiness" and ageing, his loss of his taken for granted permanent youth and its skills, and weave around it a thriller which allows Bond still to be Bond just older and wiser.

Any takers?

Yes! YES! YES!

x2
Nice one, David.

Sort of.

I like the creative leap. Not so sure about the period.
What better, more relevant, more ambiguous time is there to be a British SIS officer than now? QOS tries to examine the role (albeit in the fantasy aspic of a Bond fillum). But I love the Gardner idea of the abolishment of the 00 Section and its private retention by M. Bond novels could feature as framing devices things like the attempted political oversight of intelligence operations, the constitutional overlaps and slights, the plausible deniability of the Babushka doll-like set up of intelligence organizations. Also, where is intelligence focussed nowadays? Sure, there is the terrorist threat, but MI6 is also focussed on economic and financial threats whilst ostenbily trying to stay within the politically defined lines. We got a taste of this in QOS. The world and attitudes of what a Bond novel could be are as rich and complex now as they ever have been. The "cardboard booby" of old (and in DMC) would not stand up today. They should of course be well-plotted, exciting, intriguing, rich in tone and characterisation, obscure in research and unputdownable. Now, what's so difficult about that?

[Zorin Industries]

Much of the talk here has been - quite rightly - of the need to recreate Ian Fleming's James Bond, rather than the Gardner or Benson alternate versions. And while it is agreed that there might be scope for a Bond novel that is not a conventional espionage thriller but takes hints from, say, Fleming's Spy, Octopussy or QOS, it would seem that all consider it essential that we have Fleming's Bond, but updated, that same old Peter Pan 38 year old.

Now I must say at the outset, I have NEVER merely seen Bond as a 38 year old Pan from CR to MTWGG, so my suggestion here is heavily influenced by the real-life (Flemingesque) anxiety of growing old. I should also clarify that I have kissed 40 goodbye some years ago, and confess that I have started to notice the change of seasons, nature and flowers more

But I would happily see Bond in an epic novel (that is, a book about James Bond, rather than a long thriller in which Bond disappears for chunks, viz Benson and Faulks) that sets Bond in, ooh, say 1973-74. He is in his early 50s. He is ex-SIS. He is settled down in, oh I don't know, Sevenoaks, Canterbury - ie. pure Fleming Kent. He lives off his private income and SIS pension. He plays golf a lot. He tries, unsuccessfully, to drink and smoke less. And here's the conceit, has been married since the late sixties to a woman in her early 30s. He has two young children. The wife is exciting, he TRIES be a good father. (Hey, maybe David Suzuki vists) And yet, and yet... His wife wants him to get rid of the Bentley, to get a Rover 3.5...

And James Bond watches Britain's role in the world decline further than ever. He sees the growth of trade unionism, domestic economic strife. he detests the Wilson government (both of 'em) - as Fleming surely would have. And he watches in Europe the spread of terrorism in the form of Carlos the JAckal, the Red Brigade, IRA. And his 50+ body won't allow him to do anything about it....

Now if there is anything FURTHER removed from a traditional espionage story than the post 1968 ageing and decline (?) of James Bond than the above I'd like to see it. And perhaps a skilled writer could link Bond's new "happiness" and ageing, his loss of his taken for granted permanent youth and its skills, and weave around it a thriller which allows Bond still to be Bond just older and wiser.

Any takers?

Yes! YES! YES!

x2
Nice one, David.

Sort of.

I like the creative leap. Not so sure about the period.
What better, more relevant, more ambiguous time is there to be a British SIS officer than now? QOS tries to examine the role (albeit in the fantasy aspic of a Bond fillum). But I love the Gardner idea of the abolishment of the 00 Section and its private retention by M. Bond novels could feature as framing devices things like the attempted political oversight of intelligence operations, the constitutional overlaps and slights, the plausible deniability of the Babushka doll-like set up of intelligence organizations. Also, where is intelligence focussed nowadays? Sure, there is the terrorist threat, but MI6 is also focussed on economic and financial threats whilst ostenbily trying to stay within the politically defined lines. We got a taste of this in QOS. The world and attitudes of what a Bond novel could be are as rich and complex now as they ever have been. The "cardboard booby" of old (and in DMC) would not stand up today. They should of course be well-plotted, exciting, intriguing, rich in tone and characterisation, obscure in research and unputdownable. Now, what's so difficult about that?

Yes - but you are missing the point Mr Schofield - who would write the film tie-in
of this novel? (!).

Happy New Year! Hope to meet up for a beer in '09.....

[Trident]

Is that your pitch to IFP, Trident?

As if they'd need any kind of advice/application from a fanboy. They must have tons of stuff like this in towers of files, piling up under their ceiling. Should they ever decide to do anything like that, I imagine there's a high probability they'd at least hire a native speaker, wouldn't they?

It's very intriguing, I think. Pearson and Faulks both tried something a little similar, as did Jenkins, of course, with Bond countermanding M, resigning, and heading off to investigate on his own. Though I see you're advocating something more radical, and I can see that the idea of Bond cut loose could have a lot of potential.

It would, once more, be a moment when Bond is not the master of his own destiny. When he's almost ordinary. And when he has to cope with the real life. Leaving the service, the only family he's left for some time now, wouldn't there be a feeling of 'I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join'? Opportunity to show Bond's world off kilter. And a welcome chance to show him dealing with that. Perhaps a little race alongside some coastal road? Spurred by some spirits? Just to make the blood tingle a little like in the good-old-days.

[NOW ALL KIDDIES PLEASE DO REMEMBER: ALWAYS DRINK AND DRIVE RESPONSIBLY!]

I also agree that slavish devotion to Fleming is not enough and what would be required is the boldness he had, rather than simply ticking the boxes. You mention the 1,003rd Bond-meets-M-for-some-exposition-in-his-office scene, and I think that's precisely right. For all my ragging, I think Amis did understand this, and did shake things up in this way.

These formulaic must-have scenes, M's office, Boothroyd/Q, Moneypenny and so on so often get in the way of writers showing what they really can. Yes, there are thousands of these scenes out there in continuations and fanfic. And some of them are pretty damn good on top of that. So I gather the world doesn't exactly hold its breath for the advent of another one. At least not for anything I could produce in that respect.

If you have Bond novels set now, they really have to take the films into account. But then they run the risk of being novelisations of films EON haven't yet made. It would be easy enough to get around continuity problems with Fleming: just ignore Fleming entirely. Don't mention Leiter's wounds, just have him the Leiter played by Jeffrey Wright. M is Dench, etc. Villains are Quantum... oh, hang on. That's all rather carefully worked out in the films, which are now sequential, so where do the novels fit in? Why do we want to read about motorbike stunts and spectacular explosions and so on, when it's the seeing them on screen and Craig's portrayal that is selling all of it so much better? Novels are slower-moving creatures, generally, and making a book of a Craig-ish Bond movie that hasn't been made yet would be a hard task - and perhaps not nearly as enjoyable as it sounds.

I doubt that it will come again to film-tie-ins, or the modern bastardized equivalent that comes as 24:declassified or Alias Files or whatever. Too much effort to guarantee a reasonable quality and too little margin to gain. Economically not a move worth making for EON.

Cigarettes and benzedrine have gone out of fashion, but Faulks' success shows there is an appetite for this type of novel. Fleming died in 1964. Bond had an average of, what, three missions a year? Before the end of the decade, then, he could have another 15 adventures! With judicious researching of the archives, one could plausibly date COLONEL SUN and mention the events of that novel in the 12th or 13th book. Faulks' adventure took place in 1967, I believe , so you could mention Gorner in the adventure after it. Perhaps kill off Scarlett there. A series of 15 novels following James Bond until the end of the decade. One published a year. Robert Markham to write. No pointless character returns, no checklists, no pandering to the films. Well-written warm blooded adventures in the spirit of Ian Fleming, following the adventures of James Bond between 1965 and 1969. Any takers?

Yes! YES! YES!

[Actually, no need for any kind of continuity. Why mention other works?]

[spynovelfan]

What better, more relevant, more ambiguous time is there to be a British SIS officer than now? QOS tries to examine the role (albeit in the fantasy aspic of a Bond fillum). But I love the Gardner idea of the abolishment of the 00 Section and its private retention by M. Bond novels could feature as framing devices things like the attempted political oversight of intelligence operations, the constitutional overlaps and slights, the plausible deniability of the Babushka doll-like set up of intelligence organizations. Also, where is intelligence focussed nowadays? Sure, there is the terrorist threat, but MI6 is also focussed on economic and financial threats whilst ostenbily trying to stay within the politically defined lines. We got a taste of this in QOS. The world and attitudes of what a Bond novel could be are as rich and complex now as they ever have been. The "cardboard booby" of old (and in DMC) would not stand up today. They should of course be well-plotted, exciting, intriguing, rich in tone and characterisation, obscure in research and unputdownable. Now, what's so difficult about that?

How would you reconcile all this with the fantasy aspect, though? That's what I think was tricky about the Gardner premise. It is indeed a fascinating time for espionage, and there are novelists exploring it. But does it fit Bond? What would you do about Fleming in such a series - ignore him entirely? And what about the films' continuity? How would you combine the realism of constitutional oversights and so on with a character like Bond and all that goes with him? It's sort of easier to skate past the inherent contradictions in a film (especially an eight-minute one like QoS! Or however long it is ). In a novel, you'd have to make it a bit more plausible, surely? But I'd be fascinated to see how it could be done.

Can you send a full proposal by tomorrow morning?

[Actually, no need for any kind of continuity. Why mention other works?]

Well, just glancing references to place us and link things up where need be. And, you know, to kill Scarlett off.

[Trident]

Well, just glancing references to place us and link things up where need be. And, you know, to kill Scarlett off.

Trust me, somebody has already taken care of that matter. Probably more than once.