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I aim to please. ;)
I don’t think AH will skip over CS after saying it was one of the best novels, even over Fleming’s novels. I do remember that AH said that he didn’t like Devil May Care or Carte Blanche for unknown reasons. He said that he was a bit fond of Solo though, from Bond’s character standpoint.
The only way he could skip over it is if his new Bond novel takes place before the events of Colonel Sun which it sounds like it might. I do agree though that Colonel Sun has a pedigree that no other Bond continuation novel since has ever attained. It's as close to canon and an honorary Fleming Bond novel as we're ever likely to get. The fact it was written in the 1960s not long after the Fleming Bond novels certainly helps its prestigious status among the continuation novels. It has that air of authenticity about it that no later attempt at a period set novel can accurately replicate. There's no beating the real thing!
Quite true when it comes to the real feeling, when something was truly made in it’s time! Also, for those of you hoping for Rosa Klebb to come back, it sounds like he already tried in Trigger Morris, and was told no. But people can change their minds overtime. Maybe it might be someone from the movies: Alec Trevelyan, Elliot Carver etc. However, I hope it’s a drugs or a doomsday machine villain’s plot AGAIN. In the last five books the villains plot has alternated between drugs or a doomsday machine. Please be a bit more original this time Mr. Horowitz!
I agree with Horowitz in terms of ‘Solo’.
Oh, Happy belated Birthday, Mr. Fleming!
Really? That’s interesting, thank you.
As for the "old enemy", by far the best speculation I have read so far is Colonel Boris who brainwashed him between YOLT and TMWTGG. In the timeline he isn't that old of an enemy but it would make sense to go after him right after he has successfully completed his "redemption mission" of killing Scaramanga.
Good shout. That would make sense, going after Colonel Boris. Maybe he tails him down in Hong Kong, and secretly kills him without disclosing it to M. Then covers up the mission in Hong Kong, when he says to Tanner in CS that nothing much happened, and it was a bungled operation.
I'd love a 60's period piece set in Hong Kong, as it's my favourite city.
Indeed, this seems to be the most likely prospect. I easily imagine that Colonel Boris could also lead Bond back to Kissy Suzuki and her son. Such horizon is truly exciting as it could close Fleming's storyline.
These are great thoughts. Even if this book isn’t about those I’d like to see them explored in another!
Outside of Fleming, I only consider Colonel Sun, Pearson’s Biography of Bond and Horowitz’s work as part of the Bond canon.
He should just be setting it post Colonel Sun. :) Bond returns from Greece to encounter an old enemy. It’s quite possible that Horowitz has disregarded anything post Fleming.
This gives him between around August, 1964 and January of 65 (around four months) to get himself into trouble...or maybe I’ve missed something. Four months could be fine obviously depending on the nature of his adventure.
Solo, Napoelon Solo, Fleming's other spy always comes to mind when I hear this title.
Leaves of autumn tones, clinging to the window under the battering of the 64 rain, obscured the otherwise arresting view from M’s ninth floor office... ;)
Yes, it's a nice title actually.
If IFP have given their writers carte blanche to ignore the work of all other continuation authors that would include ignoring Colonel Sun. Personally, I would prefer that all of the work of the continuation authors be held as canonical and treated as such in new installments, unless a new author were to regard their book as some kind of an Elseworlds Bond tale.
Things did get weird when Benson started having Fleming's Bond interact with the likes of Rene Mathis and Tiger Tanaka in the late 90s and early 00s when they all would have been quite, quite elderly, but other than that everything up through the end of Gardner's run holds up. For modern literary interpretations of Bond set in the present day, I'd prefer they go the route of Deaver and make Bond a modern agent, appropriately aged, without some Methuselahen legacy of spy work behind him.
I’m not really sure how you do that, especially with all of the different timelines. Plus you have Benson erasing all of the stuff Gardner set up with Captain Bond, Microglobe One etc so they don’t even really fit with each other. Best not to worry too much.
Like I said, things got weird when Benson took over. But you were never going to be able to bring Fleming’s Bond into the new millennium and have it make sense, age-wise at least. I’m referring more to if new authors, like Horowitz, want to go back in time and insert new Bond adventures into the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. I’d prefer they respect all that’s been written for those time periods already, regardless of whether Fleming wrote it or not.
It was even a tad more complex than that when it came to Benson. He was told he could keep or discard what he liked from Gardner. Benson had a kind of pick 'n' mix attitude to the Gardner novels by which I mean he kept what he liked and discarded that which he didn't like or wanted to change. Benson does refer back to the Gardner novels at times but where it threatens to tie his hands (such as Gardner stating in Nobody Lives Forever that Marc-Ange Draco was dead) he clarifies that that was a false rumour and that Draco's still alive in order to bring the old Fleming character back in Never Dream of Dying (2001). However, as you say @mtm, it's very difficult if not close to impossible to reconcile all of the different timelines of the now many hands involved in the Bond continuation novels. It's probably best to take a laissez-faire attitude to continuity in the Bond continuation project if you want an easy life!
Yes, and I'm on record as saying on the Spybrary podcast on the John Gardner Bond novels that I appeared on in 2019 that that was a step too far in terms of continuity and trying to tie everything up. Logic and rationality are more important things than strict continuity and that is the best example of how not to do it. Common sense must prevail and though lightning can strike twice it is surely a rare enough occurrence not to feature in two separate narratives in the same book series.
Raymond Benson once said in an interview that he viewed his three Bond film novelisations as being separate from his own original Bond novels. To be honest I think that's the best way of viewing them as the Bond films and the Bond novels have at times been so divergent in style, tone and sensibility. Gardner seemed to take the opposite view to Benson on this issue and his obsessiveness with continuity between the film novelisation and his original novels. This obessiveness with continuity at all costs carried over into GoldenEye as well, though without as obvious an example as the repeat Leiter shark attack in Licence to Kill!
Perhaps though he did have to wholesale invent a background for Elliot Carver that didn't feature in the TND film script. I'm thinking about the stuff with Carver's father, Lord Roverman, and how Carver took over control of his media empire. There's always a certain amount of filling in of the blanks involved in writing up a film script into a novelisation as they're two completely different mediums. Gardner had to do the same with his film novelisations For example explaining how Bond had to take a charter flight to another country in his Licence to Kill novelisation whereas in the film it just cuts neatly from scene to scene. That can't be done as easily in a book. More in the way of exposition and explanation of how Bond got from A to B is required than the knowing assumptions of a cinema audience watching an edited film with a set running time.
I think it should have been used a bit more for the movie. Namely, Elliot Carver’s backstory.
The problem was it wasn't in the original film script but was purely the inventiom of Raymond Benson. That's not to say that it wasn't very good and gave some much needed background and motivation for Carver's villainy in the film. It would've been nice indeed to have seen some of that in the finished film.