14 replies to this topic

[Trevelyan 006]

Though it almost seems nearly sacrilegious to me as I write this, I have recently considered venturing past the original novels by Ian Fleming to dip into the vast world of continuation novelists. After all, with a break from the college semester, I feel as though there would be no better time to do so! The problem is, I have no idea where to start really. I have read each novel and short story provided by the master at least twice each and my favorites of the series far more times. 

 

With this, I should probably make clear a few things: I have no real interest in order after Fleming (or in other words, I'd be very fine with reading certain authors before others), After some surfing online and my own conclusions I'm afraid that I have no interest in reading the 'Young Bond' novels, or the movie-to-novelization books written (unless they are a least a bit different enough from the films where a read through would be worth the money). 

 

So my inquiry lies within question form: Where should I go from reading the original Fleming novels, if I wish to kind of stay close to the Flemingesque realm? Sebastian Faulks, Robert Markham (Kingsley Amis), and Raymond Benson all seem like likely candidates for where I should begin. Any further recommendations would be highly appreciated as there isn't a better group to ask of course!

 

Thanks in advance! 

 

 

[Guy Haines]

I'd start with Colonel Sun. Kingsley Amis was the first to attempt a continuation novel, only a couple of years after the last Fleming material was published. And it really is a pretty good attempt.

 

Amis also wrote a critique of Fleming and Bond - The James Bond Dossier. That, too, is well worth a read if you can get hold of a copy.

 

However, and this is just my personal opinion, none of the continuation novelists quite matched Ian Fleming. I think it's because Fleming invested so much of himself in Bond - background, tastes, experiences etc. - that, for me, it didn't read as quite authentic coming from another author, however distinguished. The more I read the Fleming books, the more they came across, to me, as a kind of fictional biography of a character inspired, to be sure, by other people he knew, but mostly based on Fleming himself.

[ggl]

I agree with Guy Haines.

 

Colonel Sun must be the next, but remember that all the other writers try to be Fleming (descriptions, places, breakfasts...), but neither of them comes closer to the Master.

[Dustin]

If you are looking for the Fleming vibe I would suggest turning to an author who neither liked Fleming, nor did he pen an impressive number of continuations: Christopher Wood. His tie-in to TSWLM actually reads in parts like a FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE Part II, including a nasty torture scene evocative of CASINO ROYALE's, which you certainly wouldn't imagine possible in a Roger Moore Bond film. His other Bond effort, the tie-in to MOONRAKER, actually reads like a decent experiment at updating Bond, while avoiding the Gardner approach of explicitly downsizing cigarettes and alcohol. After reading 'James Bond and Moonraker' I dare say you won't be able to help wondering what further Bond adventures by Wood might have read like.

COLONEL SUN itself starts out pretty rich but somehow loses steam after the initial setup. It's decent enough but personally I was reminded more of a Modesty Blaise adventure tweaked into a Bond continuation. It may have been possible that Amis, himself an admirer of Blaise and Garvin, was inspired by their exploits for his own go at genre fiction. However, I think CS is actually a bit overrated in fan circles and would have probably not fared much better in fan rankings than the recent CARTE BLANCHE/SOLO releases if it had seen the light of day only last week. As it is it's considered a classic, but its main asset is the unique - until then, see Gardner's COLD of 1996 - premise and its somewhat unpretentious execution. A highlight of the thriller genre it is not IMO.

If you'd be willing to consider going completely out-of-the-box you might pick up Jack Higgins's SOLO (published in 1980 but set in 1972) and read it with an eye on what happened 1981 with Bond at the hands of Glidrose's second attempt at continuing 007's exploits: there is a SAS Colonel here, aged 49, with a flat in a posh London part of the city, with a basement garage and a Porsche Targa to park there. Divorced, effectively married to his SAS career, a soldier monk with little personality outside his profession. Mind you, this is of course not Bond. But with just a few tweaks it easily could have been. SOLO, while being very brief and told mostly in quick scenes that handle all the necessary narrative, is actually a more entertaining book than some continuations. The villain in this is practically the main protagonist, and not that far from the actual hero. A non-continuation, if you will.

[Guy Haines]

I liked both of the Christopher Wood novelisations, particularly the one for TSWLM. He created a really strange villain in "Sigmund Stromberg" and, like Fleming, spent a couple of chapters introducing him to the reader. Other than the webbed fingers, the Stromberg of the book is, physically, quite different from the villain played by the late Curt Jurgens. (Did Wood have Donald Pleasance's Blofeld in mind when he wrote the book?)

 

As for Wood's version of MR, it's a glimpse of what might have been without the over-reliance on visual gags in the film, plus at least one scene which, if it was shot, was never used, although stills of another scene also not used hint at it -  two of Drax's perfect people "doing what comes naturally" to produce perfect offspring.

[Dustin]

Impossible to say without asking Wood himself - somebody should consider this - but from reading his two tie-ins it seems clear Wood started out with Fleming's Bond in mind, not the film version Eon had established by then. Especially TSWLM features heavily the one guideline for the various screenwriters, that the eponymous spy has to be a Russian woman. Some writers supposedly wanted to bring back Tatjana from FRWL and Wood, too, seems to have drawn inspiration from that classic. But it would of course have been difficult to explain how Tatjana, happily living in the free West after the events of FRWL one assumes, should have gone back to Moscow and work again for the KGB. So creating Anja Amasova - in the book a much more detailed character reminiscent of Fleming's Tatjana - was in fact the better solution, albeit the execution in the film was not as convincing as the book's version.

With MOONRAKER it's much the same, the book is firmly rooted in the literary Bond-universe with nary a hint of the character Moore depicted. Wood astonishingly seems to often have been at odds with the actual state of the script, as some of the scenes clearly divert from actual set pieces. It's interesting you mention the absence of many gags from the novel. In fact the book draws a much clearer picture of the genocide/superhuman race breeding scheme than the film does, for obvious reasons. Somewhere during the last year or so I must have posted something to the effect of MOONRAKER in my view being a lot like the Fleming novel, albeit on a different scale. The film tie-in certainly supports my impression.

[Guy Haines]

One of Stephen Jay Rubin's books about the Bond films mentions a screen treatment involving Bond, Tatiana Romanova and Sir Hugo Drax - and a secret submarine base in Scotland - as the basis for the film of TSWLM. That said, there must have been a lot of ideas floating around for that film, given that only the title could be used.

 

You are right about both of the Wood novelisations. It was almost as if he was writing them as Ian Fleming might have done, even though the films were somewhat removed from the Fleming originals, to put it mildly.

 

I can certainly see the "Nazi" connection in the film of Moonraker, which might have hit home if the film hadn't been made in such a light hearted way. The Drax of the 1950s wanted revenge - and there was a less than subtle message in Fleming's novel, namely "don't re-arm Germany", which at the time was topical. The Drax of 1979 was taking the Nazi "Lebensborn" programme to an extreme, albeit in a non-racial way. It also improved on the one flaw of the villain's plan in TSWLM - if you are going to wipe out civilisation and create something new, who is going to people it? That said, the gene pool would be rather limited!

[AMC Hornet]

IMO:

 

Colonel Sun: a very effective literary continuation that did not attempt to compete with the screen 007.

JB: The Authorized Biography: The chapters about Bond's youth weren't as OTT as Higson's (IMO unnecessary) stories. It's a bio and a novel - a very interesting experiment.

JB,TSWLM: Wood wrote as if this novel was the basis for the movie, rather than vice versa. Much better that JBAMR.

LR: Fleming had been gone for 17 years by this time. Nobody writes his way anymore, people - get over it. John Gardner was the perfect choice (read his Boysie Oakes novels as well).

Icebreaker, Nobody Lives Forever, Scorpius, Win, Lose or Die, Brokenclaw: All masterpieces. Just stop expecting Fleming and you'll enjoy them much more.

Zero Minus Ten: a sincere effort to bring back the 'Fleming sweep'. Benson deserves full marks for this one.

HTTK: If you like Icebreaker you'll like this one - another refreshing change of pace.

 

That's it for now. I'd rather read one of my less favorite Gardners than any of the other stories published since 1999.

[Professor Pi]

If you can find Christopher Woods' The Spy Who Loved Me, definitely read that.  I think it's online somewhere.

 

Colonel Sun had the most sexual passages and a disturbing torture scene, if I recall correctly.  Also, the villain addresses the hero by his first name, which added a threatening intimacy to this villain.

 

For Special Services by John Gardner follows up on some Fleming characters (Felix Leiter and one other, but I won't spoil it.)  No Deals, Mr. Bond by Gardner I found entertaining, albeit not the page turner Icebreaker is.

 

High Time To Kill may be Benson's best, and is the beginning of his Union Trilogy, though as a math teacher I enjoyed his Facts of Death.  Blast from the Past is a good short story from Benson as well (I believe that was his audition for the job.)

 

I haven't read the authors after that, but based on CBn'ers' opinions here, am not in a big hurry to do so.

 

Many of these authors have omnibus collections of three or more novels, so I'd pick up one of those.

Edited by Professor Pi, 03 January 2014 - 07:34 PM.

[Revelator]

The best post-Fleming Bond book is John Pearson's James Bond: The Authorized Biography. After that I recommend Amis's Colonel Sun. To be brutally honest, none of Gardner's books are necessary reading. Even his earlier, better efforts have a bland air of pastiche to them, and Gardner is nowhere near the stylist Fleming was. The same goes for Benson--I read only his first novel and had no desire to read further. I have not read any of the later continuations. After Amis and Pearson, you're probably best off reading other non-Bond spy novelists instead. Better yet, read the writers who influenced Fleming: Buchan, Sapper, Sax Rohmer, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Dennis Wheatley, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler--put all of those in a blender and you'll get something more Fleming-like than any continuation author.

Edited by Revelator, 03 January 2014 - 08:57 PM.

[tdalton]

There are certainly some worthwhile efforts out of the bulk of the continuation novels. 

 

Gardner has some pretty good ones to his name.  For Special Services, Icebreaker, and Scorpius are the ones that I remember liking quite a bit (it's been a long while since I've picked up a Gardner Bond novel, and I can't say that I've read them all yet).  I do also seem to remember enjoying Cold Fall (or COLD as it's otherwise known).  Seems like I'm the only one that did, though, and given how long ago I read it, who knows if I would enjoy it if I gave it a re-read. 

 

With Benson, I think it's more about enjoying the ideas that he comes up with and less about enjoying the actual writing.  He's not the most talented writer in the world, but the ideas that he comes up with are, for the most part, rather entertaining.  Doubleshot and Never Dream of Dying were both interesting concepts that were entertaining reads, mostly because they felt quite a bit different from what you generally get from a Bond novel or film. 

 

I've started Colonel Sun, but haven't made it all the way through at this point (not due to quality, but more a lack of time), and it seems like it's right up there with the very best of the continuation efforts.  Given the praise that the Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me novelizations are getting here, those are two that I'll have to add to my reading list.

[Trevelyan 006]

Well, I can say that I've made a few confident purchases so I can thank you all for that! I have ordered a copy of Colonel Sun and will be starting with that first. I found a copy on eBay for under five dollars, so needless to say that was an immediate purchase. Next on my list will be Christopher Wood's novels, as they seem to be rather liked by the majority of you that have responded (however, hunting down reasonably-priced copies is something else entirely, as I have discovered).

 

... I also simply had to get the novelization of GoldenEye. Of which, should come as no surprise.

(It was also right around five dollars, so even if it is the movie in writing I won't lose out on very much!)

 

I hope to receive and read my copy of Colonel Sun sooner rather than later and perhaps provide some type of reaction as well!

 

Thanks again.

[billy007]

I agree that JAMES BOND AUTHORZIED BIOGRAPHY should be read ,Pearson comes close to the "Fleming Sweep"

[Guy Haines]

I agree about John Pearson's "authorised biography" of Bond. Worth a read. As is his biography of Ian Fleming - again, if it is still in print.

[Professor Pi]

Well, I can say that I've made a few confident purchases so I can thank you all for that! I have ordered a copy of Colonel Sun and will be starting with that first. I found a copy on eBay for under five dollars, so needless to say that was an immediate purchase. Next on my list will be Christopher Wood's novels, as they seem to be rather liked by the majority of you that have responded (however, hunting down reasonably-priced copies is something else entirely, as I have discovered).

 

... I also simply had to get the novelization of GoldenEye. Of which, should come as no surprise.

(It was also right around five dollars, so even if it is the movie in writing I won't lose out on very much!)

 

I hope to receive and read my copy of Colonel Sun sooner rather than later and perhaps provide some type of reaction as well!

 

Thanks again.

 

Try this.

 

Get the paperback, (not the $3200 hardback!)