Penguin has launched the new website for the forthcoming James Bond novel, Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks.
The site features a countdown, and a look at the book cover. (See here for a close-up look.)
Cool, and I’m certainly looking forward to it, but I have to admit I have a problem with the attribution: “Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming” — WTF??? I mean, it’s not like they haven’t touted the fact that Faulks was doing this one…and Ian Fleming was REAL, not a franchise name. It comes off like Faulks telling readers “this is only a pastiche…it’s not a serious novel, like the ones I usually write….”
The whole thing strikes me as a bit disrespectful and off-putting, especially since it’s being done for Ian Fleming’s Centenary. I mean, why not just “Ian Fleming’s James Bond in…. DEVIL MAY CARE, by Sebastian Faulks”?
One wonders if it will be a period Bond piece or contemporary.
V.C. Andrews was ghostwritten for many years after her death. By her sister, I think.
Faulks has said that it will be a period piece, set as a follow-on to Fleming’s novels, with Bond towards the end of his career — so the mid-to-late 1960s.
I understand the whole ghostwriting thing, but in this case, a “name” author was chosen specifically because he is a “name”, and they’re up front about him doing it…..so the sort of half-assed “ghostwriting” credit, for an author who has been dead for 40 years, seems…..odd.
I agree with you regarding the “writing as.”
But that cover… DAMN! It’s great.
Given the mid/late 1960s setting (which I am very happy about), I hope that the chronological placement of the novel does not dispense with Amis’ COLONEL SUN.
I’m with you on that. COLONEL SUN is one of my favorites — I really wish it had done better upon release, as I wonder at what could have come from a “Robert Markham” line of Bond novels extending from the 60s into the 70s.
Methinks it is to distance it from the John Gardner and Raymond Benson versions.
Faulks’ name was originally being kept under wraps but IIRC got leaked. This, plus some of the original press releases described it as the first new James Bond novel published since Fleming’s death lead me to suspect they were originally going to publish it under the name Ian Fleming.
It cannot be any greater disrespect than the traveshamockery that was Doubleshot.
I’m not too keen on the attribution either, but I chalk it up to just trying to be too creative in coming up with an alternate method of evoking the Fleming name, e.g., “Ian Fleming’s James Bond in Devil May Care”.