There are two collections of James Bond short stories – Quantum of Solace published in 1960 containing five stories – and Octopussy and The Living Daylights containing just those two stories and published in June 1966. When the paperback edition of the latter was published in 1967 another story, The Property of a Lady, was added; and the short […]
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The Man With The Golden Gun by Ian Fleming (1965)
Now the grey-blue eyes looked back at him from the tanned face with the brilliant glint of suppressed excitement and accurate focus of the old days. He smiled ironically back at the introspective scrutiny that so many people make of themselves before a race, a contest of wits, a trial of some sort. He had […]
Posted by Simon on May 28, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/28/the-man-with-the-golden-gun-ian-fleming/
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming (1964)
This is a strange and eerie tale about a ‘Garden of Death’ in remote and exotic Japan, so I liked it more than the straightforward adventure yarn of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, set in France and Switzerland. As often, Fleming uses a simple but attractive structure for his tale, in this case dividing it into […]
Posted by Simon on May 27, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/you-only-live-twice-ian-fleming/
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by Ian Fleming (1963)
Royale-les-Eaux The opening chapters are rather downbeat, casting a more sombre mood than we’ve been used to. The narrative skips the adventure recounted in The Spy Who Loves Me altogether and refers back to the events of the previous-but-one novel, Thunderball, ie the attempt by the fiendish Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his SPECTRE organisation to blackmail the West […]
Posted by Simon on May 24, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/24/on-her-majestys-secret-service-ian-fleming/
The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming (1962)
‘Bond. James Bond.’ ‘That’s a pretty chump name. From England, huh?’ (p.124) A colossal experiment, a James Bond adventure told from the point of view of its ‘Bond girl’, Vivienne ‘Viv’ Michel. Fleming had experimented with structure and time-frame in previous novels, but this is an extraordinary departure from the formula. It was panned by […]
Posted by Simon on May 20, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/the-spy-who-loved-me-ian-fleming/
Thunderball by Ian Fleming (1961)
Bond laughed, partly in admiration. ‘You’ve been taking mescalin or something. It’s a damned good sequence for a comic strip, but these things don’t happen in real life.’ (p.168) Shrublands The tremendous battering Fleming has submitted Bond to over the previous seven novels begins to show, as M – a recent convert to healthy living […]
Posted by Simon on May 18, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/thunderball-ian-fleming/
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming (1959)
Murder in Mexico Bond dislikes killing and it gives him a bad conscience. He tries to persuade himself it’s just part of the job, he does it then moves on, but in reality he broods and worries. Thus Goldfinger opens with Bond in the departure lounge of Miami airport, obsessively going over his most recent job […]
Posted by Simon on May 15, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/15/goldfinger-ian-fleming/
Dr No by Ian Fleming (1958)
It is several months after the cliff hanger ending of From Russia with Love. On the last page of that novel Bond was kicked in the calf by the head of SMERSH’s Execution Division, Rosa Klebb, with a pointed shoe tipped with poison. Now we learn that it was fugu poison from the Japanese globe-fish, and that Bond […]
Posted by Simon on May 12, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/dr-no-ian-fleming/
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming (1957)
Bond put the thought of his dead youth out of his mind. Never job backwards. What-might-have-been was a waste of time. Follow your fate and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist pickled in gin or nicotine, or a cripple – or dead. (p.148) […]
Posted by Simon on May 8, 2016
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2016/05/08/from-russia-with-love-ian-fleming/
Books & Boots 