a series about a secret agent
exotic locations
colorful descriptive passages
attention to detail
the need for a dictionary and an encyclopedia
Contrasts
The David Falkayn and Dominic Flandry series are biographical. We follow Falkayn from apprentice to acting CEO and Flandry from Ensign to Fleet Admiral. By contrast, Bond is always active in whichever year Fleming is writing the new novel. Information about Bond's s earlier life and career is fragmentary and contradictory. This literary eternal present was ended by Fleming's ill health and death, not by Bond aging. In fact, Bond's early biography was revised to knock a decade off his age. Originally, he had been active before and during the war whereas, later, he joined the Navy and Intelligence only during the war and then only by lying about his age.
In the later episodes of a biographical series, readers should be able to share the central character's nostalgia for events in earlier episodes. Despite the contrast noted in the previous paragraph, I think that Fleming wrote this kind of fictional nostalgia better than Anderson.
In Royale-les-Eaux, Bond remembers:
"...the great battle across the baize he had had with Le Chiffre so many years ago. He had come a long way since then..."
-Ian Fleming, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (London, 1965), 2, p. 21.
- and, in Jamaica:
"...his survival against the mad Dr. No..."
-Ian Fleming, The Man With The Golden Gun (New York, 1965), 4, p. 41.
Having created such memorable characters, Fleming deploys their names to good effect in later episodes.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I think you are right about Ian Fleming getting somewhat muddled about the internal chronology of James Bond's life. And quite needlessly so, IMO. I recall Bond thinking in MOONRAKER, that at age 35, he had only eight more years to go before he would be retired by mandate from field service. And, also, given that, theoretically, he might be assigned as many as 24 more cases that would be dangerous, Bond did not think he would survive that long!
Flandry had to eventually give up doing field work himself because he eventually became far too prominent and high ranking for that to be wise.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Since MOONRAKER was first pub. in 1955, and James Bond called himself 35 years old in that book, I naturally thought of him as being born in 1920. And I think that makes sense!
Ad astra! Sean
Series that go on longer than their creator intended often run into chronological problems like that. Poul handled it better than Fleming, but then he had a broader pallette to work on.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. That broader palette gave Anderson more options and choices.
Ad astra! Sean
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