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 ...)

[I'm in fine commenting company today - hi Syd, Marcus]

Charlie, if I bang on the wall of my office I can shake the bookcase of a mate who is an expert in all things Bond and most things Fleming. Let me know if you have questions for him. But what can be done with Bond that hasn't already been done? Don't answer that.

ObSF for the 'Bond is a Communist' theme is of course Mack Reynolds' _Subversive_.

Oh, and by the way, I finally read _Singularity Sky_. sporks. lovely.

I might have to make the odd excursion in the direction of Austin Powers territory, just to keep the Evil Overlord from MST3K'ing the canon, or launching on Kennebunkport, or something.

Ah, the misuse of Ian Fleming. A fine, fine thing.

Charlie's readers may be please to know that Dr Anthony Mayer's fine alternative history site http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~aem3/ah/history.html now has three Thomas More adventures:
 - On His Majesty's Most Secret Service
 - From Geneva with Love
 - Thou Art Only Born Again Once

[Anthony Mayer's site is more famous for hosting Jonathan Edelstein's superb Spinoza in Turkey as well as the more modest Thaxted, a novel that tells how the Iron Lady became a Trot and what happened next.]

Because, and this is something of an embarrassing admission, I've come to look down my nose at Bond. He's a snob, a poseur, and a borderline sociopath. The world has changed: the individualist anti-hero (or gentleman amateur, if you want to damn Fleming's creation with faint praise) is no longer in demand.

Damned straight!

Just so long as its not followed by a Casino Royale style extrem beating to the goolies. Ouch!

Steve: the gambling scene was the second one to suggest itself to me, a couple of years ago, when I began thinking about this book. Let's just say, it's going to be fun to write.

Let's just say, I'm planning on deconstructing Bond. Throwing away the commander and parachuting Bob (from the Laundry) in.

Bond is eminently deconstructable. An acquaintance once pointed out to me that it's pretty easy to demonstrate that Bond is actually a communist agent -- I mean, aren't most of his enemies capitalist entrepreneurs? Doesn't he work for a shady state bureaucracy in a shappy quasi-socialist realm that's seen better days? The dust-ups with SMERSH are just cover and the sort of bad-tempered bickering that had the KGB and Romanian secret police at each other's throats. And so on.

And then, there's the nature of the Bond villains. As someone else pointed out, when talking about Teledesic (in its' original 1100 satellite, mostly-owned-by-Bill-Gates incarnation circa 1998), "isn't this the sort of thing we have James Bond to protect us from?"

Personally I like the idea of Bond versus Larry Ellison. Ellison likes his toys -- ocean-going yachts, and his little supersonic runabout that the FAA won't flight-certify (because they don't like civilians owning aircraft that can outrun and probably out-fight an Air National Guard F-16). And he's clearly got some long term game in mind which will culminate in the announcement "all your data are belong to us!!"

Except Bond wouldn't know his shift key from his caps lock -- that's what Miss Moneypenny is there for. (Which is why Bob would be a more appropriate hero for this particular theme I'm planning on exploring.)

See Also: Kim Newmans Hamish Bond

Odd that you should mention "Quantum of Solace" as I have to admit it's my only exposure to the written Bond (Along with the other short stories in the collection I read). What comes across from those works is Bond's contempt for women. Either Fleming had serious problems in this area or he was able to construct a very convincing character with a pathological hatred of women.

As for the screen Bond I demand the return of Vulcan bombers tout-fuckin'-suite.

Which takes precedence -- Ian Fleming's Mary-Sue adventure yarns (his ID number, as secretary to the Head of Naval Intelligence in the Admiralty during the Second World War was, tellingly, 007), or the Broccoli family's technofantasy series?

I can't help thinking there's a potential for a great study in schizophrenia set in the mind of a Bond who tries to be *both*...

(I wonder how many who like the cinematic Bond have ever read "The Hildebrand Rarity" or "Quantum of Solace"? Admittedly, he only played a passive part as a listener in the latter.)

Sounds like great fun! A very interesting thread snuck into the Bond films with the first Pierce Brosnan role (was it Goldeneye?) and the new M as "the evil queen of numbers", where she accused him of being a cold war relic; that could have gone someplace very interesting, but it looks like that storyline damped out very quickly in the films. The transition from Cold War to Information Age might produce a lot of interesting conflict for telling a story.

Reading this made me perk up - Bond! The books are fabulous, and if you're going to go on a magical Fleming book tour, please give us your itinerary so some of us can follow along at home. Not that I need an excuse to read them all again (I have all the books, although not, alas, the movies), but because it'll be fun to see your thoughts compared to ours.

Long time reader, first time commenter. There you go - I've been tempted to delurk :)

DebXena, all the way from New Zealand

So, Charles, will you be staying at Willard Whyte's establishment in Las Vegas during your stay in the Colonies?

It seems to me that no Bond movie (Connery version) is complete without at least one gambling scene. It might be interesting to see your new anti-hero lose his (or more importantly, HER) shirt.

Respects,
Steve
From Flyover Country, U.S.

Go for it, you know you want to...

Cinematic Bond versus Cthulhu, now there's a thought. "Pay attention, 007. As part of your cover as an occult investigator from Arkham University you'll need to be familiar with the Necronomicon, the Revelations of Glaaki, and the King in Yellow. Since we obviously don't have time for that I've programmed this PDA with all of these works. Just press the key combination FTAGN to access them..."