It would be safe to say that virtually every adult in the English-speaking world, and almost certainly the rest, has heard of James Bond, British secret agent 007, the glamorous spy with the high-tech gadgets who saves the day while killing over-the-top villains and romancing beautiful women. The Bond series is, after all, one of the most popular movie franchises of all time. While I do enjoy the movies a great deal, I also enjoy Ian Fleming’s novels quite a bit.
Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond novels, spent the first part of his career in British Naval Intelligence, and was a key figure in several military operations in World War II. When he switched to writing novels, he brought a great deal of that knowledge to his books. They were therefore more grounded in the spycraft of the time, in more realism than one might expect.
It’s also interesting to note that Fleming created Bond to be an intentionally dull protagonist who had interesting things happen to him. It’s a curious literary choice, but it worked well for him. In the 1950s and ’60s, his books were some of the biggest sellers in the world. John F. Kennedy even said From Russia, With Love was his favorite book.
I first read this series fifteen or twenty years ago. I actually read them in order, as I tend to do sometimes. I enjoyed them not in spite of their differences from the films, but because of them. They were all one unique voice, and that they didn’t have what had become the rather formulaic elements we got in the films. I also like how grounded in reality they were, and while some of the films adhered closely to the source material, others were drastically different. If I’m not mistaken, the only thing Moonraker the movie had in common with Moonraker the book was the title.
I will note that those books were very much products of their time, with story elements and plot points that certainly wouldn’t be welcome in books published today. It has been some time since I have read them, though, so I can’t speak to particulars.
Fleming only wrote 14 James Bond novels and short stories before he died, but he left behind a legacy. Many other writers have written their own, authorized novels in the series, but I haven’t red those yet. I may, someday, but I hold those originals with a particular fondness.
I would like to reread them all again, to see how well they hold up. Maybe I’ll even do it this year. It’s certainly doable, but after last year’s challenge and my plan to finish off another favorite series this year, I may hold off for a little while.
The results, to use a terrible joke, will not be for my eyes only.