Harry: names ring a bell. I'm in your neck of the woods some time next week, but it's a flying visit (for reasons I think you're aware of). Maybe in late September?

Charlie, the next time you're in my neck of the woods I'll introduce you to Boysie Oakes and Philip McAlpine, if you haven't already met them.

Tony:

Kim Newman answers this question rather nicely in Anno Dracula 1959, which has an evil shapeshifting mastermind in the form of a white cat who selects convincing humans on whose lap to sit and be stroked by while thinking up evil masterplans.

Two true things....

James Bond was my great-uncle.

I dropped off to sleep while watching TV last night, and woke with the cat sprawled on my chest.

Now I'm worried.

All the movies including the revisionist Never Say Never Again (a remade Thunderball<? I'd be surprised to find that being sold as part of the same package. And do you want to look into the original tv episode of Casino Royale? (Good luck finding it.)

Although now I come to think of it, the Cat Theory *would* explain all the overly-elaborate sadistic deathtraps that show up...

"Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?"
"No, Mr Bond, I expect you to play mousie..."

(Have you ever wondered about that white cat Blofeld is always carrying around? And how the cat always escapes, even when the supposed bad guy bites the dust and his island fortress explodes or something? That cat is up to something. In fact, where most real felines have a parting in their fur under the jaw, this one probably has a zip fastener ...)

Be Thou Careful Thou Doeth Not Infringe The Copyright Of Steve Jackson (GURPS IOU for those who care...)

Edited by author 08-18-2004 12:19 PM
By a strange coincidence, Kevin Myers has a column in today's Irish Times on this same topic. Inspired by news that Quentin Tarantino wants to direct a Bond movie but set in the 1960s, Myers points out that Casino Royale is actually set in 1953, a decade before the movies were made.

So James Bond's sexual liasons were not set in the permissive 1960s but in the altogether different decade of the 1950s, when most Englishwomen still lost their virginity on their wedding nights. The Bond heroines are therefore women of some courage and spirit, and Bond really is an utter cad.

Further down he says

Some aspects of the novels have been sacrificed for the sake of the market. Fleming filled all his Bond works with gratuitous sadistic violence, true portrayals of which would have given the films a commercially disastrous 'X' rating. And his sex scenes were, at the time, among the most graphic and explicit in English literature, which if properly depicted, would also have earned X ratings.

Hooray! More talking cats (or even better, nameless horrors disguised as talking cats). Go for it!

this one probably has a zip fastener

Tut Charlie - I thought you of all people would have noticed the important thing; It's not that the cat escapes everytime...it's that everytime the Cat leaves its puppet (Blofeld) to fend for itself - bond gets the upper hand.

The cat doesn't have a zip... The bald man does - to make space for the controls.

The literary James Bond isn't just a psychopath; he is in fact a pervert. In the books I've read (just Casino Royale<i> many years ago and, more recently, <i>Doctor No, there is a strong, virtually undisguised sadomasochistic element. Le Chiffre tortures Bond in a lovingly described scene in Casino Royale. So does Doctor No, by running Bond through a maze. And when the adventure in the Caribbean was over, Bond gave himself over to Honey Ryder for "slave time". Rrrrowl, behave!

Fie on you, by the way, for describing the film Casino Royale as "revisionist". It sticks closer to the plotline of the book than do some of the later Broccoli efforts do to the books with their titles.

Chris: what I said was, "I want to do for Ian Fleming what I did for Len Deighton in THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES." That's your hook, all in one go: THE JENNIFER MORGUE is going to be explicitly a sequel to THE ATROCITY ARCHIVES, and it's not about James Bond, it's about a confused slashdot-reading geek called Bob, who's fallen into a James Bond novel and can't get out. With added shoggoths, of course.

(Have you ever wondered about that white cat Blofeld is always carrying around? And how the cat always escapes, even when the supposed bad guy bites the dust and his island fortress explodes or something? That cat is up to something. In fact, where most real felines have a parting in their fur under the jaw, this one probably has a zip fastener ...)