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Continuity: dating the Fleming novels
I'm currently re-reading the Fleming novels - just started FRWL - and there's a greater emphasis on internal continuity than in the films. But, as with everything Bond, the continuity is a bit of a mess.
Year One
CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)
Year Two
LALD takes place the following February (Bond's briefing is the first time he's seen M since "the end of last summer" following the skin graft on his hand)
MR takes place three months later in May (this is explicitly stated by Fleming in a footnote)
DAF takes place two months later in July (Bond's just returned from his leave in France and notes that MR was his last mission)
Year Three
FRWL takes place in July, almost exactly 1 year after DAF. DAF was his last mission and Bond has been living "the soft life" for a year. Tiffany Case has just moved out of his flat and back to the States.
All pretty straightforward so far.
But FRWL is where we start to hit trouble because during the SMERSH briefing General G. states that "the rocket affair [i.e. Moonraker] was three years ago" but that "the diamond smuggling affair [i.e. Diamonds Are Forever]. That was last year." It seems that this is the point where Fleming decides to retcon the dating of the novels in order to keep the stories contemporary to their publishing dates.
Just interested to hear people's thoughts on this. It's the first time I've re-read Fleming in many years and I'm sure there will be more examples as I get through the later novels. It seems clear that Fleming didn't really have a plan and just retconned the continuity as he went. Has anyone found a way of figuring out a "fan continuity" for the novels that works?
Year One
CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)
Year Two
LALD takes place the following February (Bond's briefing is the first time he's seen M since "the end of last summer" following the skin graft on his hand)
MR takes place three months later in May (this is explicitly stated by Fleming in a footnote)
DAF takes place two months later in July (Bond's just returned from his leave in France and notes that MR was his last mission)
Year Three
FRWL takes place in July, almost exactly 1 year after DAF. DAF was his last mission and Bond has been living "the soft life" for a year. Tiffany Case has just moved out of his flat and back to the States.
All pretty straightforward so far.
But FRWL is where we start to hit trouble because during the SMERSH briefing General G. states that "the rocket affair [i.e. Moonraker] was three years ago" but that "the diamond smuggling affair [i.e. Diamonds Are Forever]. That was last year." It seems that this is the point where Fleming decides to retcon the dating of the novels in order to keep the stories contemporary to their publishing dates.
Just interested to hear people's thoughts on this. It's the first time I've re-read Fleming in many years and I'm sure there will be more examples as I get through the later novels. It seems clear that Fleming didn't really have a plan and just retconned the continuity as he went. Has anyone found a way of figuring out a "fan continuity" for the novels that works?
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Comments
Year One
CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)
Year Two
LALD takes place the following February (Bond's briefing is the first time he's seen M since "the end of last summer" following the skin graft on his hand)
MR takes place three months later in May (this is explicitly stated by Fleming in a footnote) and receives a new Beretta as a gift from M and takes two weeks' leave in France.
Year Three
?
Year Four
Bond ends a mission in late Spring and receives a new Beretta as a gift from M and takes two weeks' leave in France.
DAF takes place two months later in July.
Year Five
FRWL takes place in July, almost exactly 1 year after DAF. DAF was his last mission and Bond has been living "the soft life" for a year. Tiffany Case has just moved out of his flat and back to the States.
Although it's a bit unwieldily as it leaves over 2 years of Bond's career unaccounted, means that M gives him 2 new Berettas in that time, raises a question over what exactly Bond means when he reflects that M has "recently" developed the bad habit of becoming involved in other departments' business in DAF (strongly implied to be MR and DAF in the text), and means that he's probably stretching things slightly when he tells Tiffany he's "under 40" in DAF.
I've only been looking at the internal references to continuity up to this point and haven't even begun to look at the dates as I imagine this is where is will get really tricky. There are a few mentioned in the early novels too - we know that MR takes place in May 1954 at the earliest because Sir Hugo hosted a Coronation reception (which would have been in June 1953) and a few years are mentioned in FRWL too.
It's going to be fun piecing it all together even though I'm sure there's no way of making it all add up. Any other dates would be helpful too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_novels_and_short_stories#Fictional_chronologies
I have to say that I disagree with both sets of interpretations, dating of LALD and MR a year apart, as it's explicitly stated in the text that MR takes place a few months after LALD. Not a criticism as it's pretty much impossible to square Fleming's chronology as he plays fast and loose with it and contradicts himself.
I might have a go at doing my own as I re-read the rest of the series.
"Risico" October 1957
"Quantum of Solace" February 1958
"The Hildebrand Rarity" April 1958
"From a View to a Kill" May 1958
"For Your Eyes Only" September to October 1958
[Thunderball May to June 1959]
"Octopussy" June 1960
"The Living Daylights" September to October 1960
"The Property of a Lady" June 1961 June 1961
[Chapters 1–5 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service September 1961]
"007 in New York" end of September 1961 1961
here's a wikipedia link to Griswold's chronology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_novels_and_short_stories#Fictional_chronologies
Another Bond-scholar Henry Chancellor, also made a chronology which broadly agrees with Griswold.
@Cameron_Mott, you may well be right. I'm up to DN now in my Fleming Marathon and it's pretty clear by this point that he's abandoned all attempts to maintain chronological continuity and is retconning the timeframe he established in earlier novels like mad. It's now "five years" since LALD. This is despite the fact that LALD, MR and (probably) DAF were all established as taking place during the same year and that FRWL was exactly one year later. Does Griswold try to explain Fleming's inconsistencies?
Not so. The latest that Bond could have killed the Japanese Diplomat would have been in 1941. According to Goldfinger, the events of CR takes place in 1953 or twelve years later.
We know that FRWL takes place in 1954 since Friday August 13th, could have only taken place in the decade of the 50s in 1954.
Spy Who Loved Me takes place in October 1961 (Friday October 13th)
Quite, Perdogg. I don't know who came up with those dates, but they're wrong, that I do know.
Hi @Perdogg. You're right - it's not necessarily two years.
Here's the passage from CR I was thinking of, "In the last few years I've killed two villains [...] for those two jobs I was awarded a Double O number in the service." I was misremembering it as two years. But it would be a bit of a stretch to think that "a few years" could mean 12 years. Also, it would mean that Bond doesn't kill anyone in over a decade as a OO Agent (until LALD, in fact.)
I don't remember that passage from Goldfinger. Working my way back through Fleming and now up to DN so should be coming back to this very soon. But I guess this is a perfect example of my point about Fleming not giving a damn about continuity as a "few years" suddenly becomes 12 years!
Also, I might be misremembering, but doesn't Junius Du Pont date CR as Summer '51?
Dates seem to be a real problem for Fleming which is why I'm so interested to see how Griswold works his way through the mess. MR has to take place in 1954 too, as it takes place in May and we know that Drax held a coronation reception for charity the year before (Queen Elizabeth was crowned in June 1953.)
It's a tangle, isn't it?
"He [Mr Du Pont] Picked up his own and lit the cigarette. "France,'51, Royale les Eaux."
The events in From Russia with Love take place on Thursday August 12th. The only time this could have occurred would have been in 1954.
I made a mistake about CR it was 1951 not 1953, but I stand by FRWL in 1954.
"At 730 on the morning of Thursday, August 12th, Bond awoke in his..."
That's faultless logic but the problem, aside from the point about MR and the coronation, is that the text dates it as 1955 at the earliest. Before he gets involved with the Spektor plot, Bond is appointed to a Committee of Inquiry under Paymaster Captain Troop which M had initiated "purely as a sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the Prime Minister had ordered in 1955."
Dating is not the only inconsistency in FRWL. Fleming also declares that Bond has never killed in cold blood and Bond tells Darko that his mother, "Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud" according to YOLT, is from Somerset.
I've missed that Somerset reference. I really need to re-read FRWL, then!
CR: June/July 1951. Dated as such by Goldfinger
LALD: 1952. Occurs in January and February and CR is referred to as "last summer."
MR: May 1953. Bond has a 1953 model of car. It also is May, far too early for 1953 models to be released in 1952. In addition, due to the ship mentioned this cannot occur after 1954. But the Queen was coronated in June 1953 and Drax clearly dates his letter as such, and Gala has been on the Moonraker for 18 months. As a solution, I think it's best to pretend the coronation occurred straight after the King's death (maybe slightly earlier than what we know) and then the eighteen months is a bit of a dramatisation.
Bond also still has a suntan here, but I guessed that it was from subsequent leave over the winter and not from LALD
DAF: Late July, August 1953. Bond has come back from holiday in France and gets involved straight away. However, the sixth day of week being August forth happened in 1954. I just have this as a mistake.
FRWL: August 1955. The PM has made a committee that is mentioned to be at this date. The narrator also describes SMERSH in 1955. Supposedly this is "three years" after the rocket affair (MR) but this can waved off as the rocket affair getting its start in '52.
Curiously, Bond also mentions that SMERSH haven't touched him for two years, and along with the Friday the Thirteenth stuff, makes a good case for 1954. However, I believe that The extra year in between cases is probably the best case to explain his extreme boredom. I would assume Bond would be used to one case a year. It also explains the marriage shouts between him and Tiffany a bit better. I think this is the novel with the most work to do chronologically
DN: March 1956. Back to simple work. Even though M mentions 5 years from LALD, we can just call this a rough approximation (even though it appears almost ten times). This can be justified by Pleydell-Smith saying "four, five years ago." But Dr. No bought Crab Key in 1942 and mentions fourteen years in it.
GF: May 1957. DB III came out in 1957.
FAVTAK: May 1958. May is mentioned and could not coincide with Goldfinger.
FYEO: October 1958. October mentioned direct in the story, and Castro is said to be on the way in that winter (he came in in early 1959)
QOS: Earlier than FYEO. Bond sympathises with the Castro rebels who seem to him as underdogs. But Bond mentions an agreement about sugar. This agreement was created in 1951, expired in 1953, and seems to have been re-signed in 1958, which fits the timeline for this story.
Risico: October 1957. Occurs in October, but clearly not after Thunderball, and no mention/proximity to FYEO, which is more glued into its year.
THR: April 1958. Mentions passed Humphrey Bogart (Jan 1957). Lean toward 1958 as Bond would have been occupied with Mexicans in Goldfinger.
TB: June 1959. Mentioned in the story.
TLD: Late summer (August/September) 1960. Mentions plans for 1961 as if goals for the new year.
Octopussy: Spring 1960. Bond has free time here, which he himself mentions that he has. Also no mention of Jamaican independence.
TSWLM: October 1961. Friday the 13th in October.
Property of A Lady: June 1962. Maria became a British citizen in 1959, went for a year in Russia and worked 3 years in HQ. However, Bond hasn't seemed like he lost his wife recently, so I pushed it a year back to fit in with the Bond's SPECTRE gap (and the publication date).
OHMSS: September and December 1962. January 1963. Blofeld was born in May 1908 and is fifty-four years old.
YOLT: September/October 1963. Mentioned as eight months after Bond's wife dying
TMWTGG: Late January to February 1964. De Gaulle recognises Red China.
007 in NY: Late September 1964. McCone is mentioned as CIA chief, prep for World's Fair in 1964-1965 also mentioned.