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[Donovan Mayne-Nicholls]

I started collecting Bond around '82-'83. Not precisely the most fruitful time to become a collector. In '85 I found out Gardner was writing new novels. The first to be published in Spanish, thus available in Chile was Icebreaker (an Argentine friend informs me Licence Renewed was published in Mexico but then Argentina is a much bigger country where you can get stuff that never arrives here). There was no internet so the only way to find out about other titles was in the back of the paperbacks. I bought three consecutive Gardner novels in Spanish but then they became so hard to find that instead I started buying them straight in English. Chile is not a literature-friendly country. Books are expensive and scarce. I managed to get most novels without having to research the net. Someone had told me in 1990 that there was a Bond biography but it wasn't until I joined the net that I could find out the title and author. 003 1/2 came even later than that and quite frankly by accident.
I don't understand all these "collectors" who whine about the novels not being reprinted. When I got Pearson's bio, there was no sign that it would be republished in the foreseeable future. If you're a collector, you should have the lot by now.