We’re doubling up this week — and I’ll be up front about the reason why: I cannot stand The Spy Who Loved Me. It stands out like a sore thumb in the Bond canon — an experiment gone wrong, as if Fleming had taken his efforts to try other styles (like the Maugham-esque “Quantum of Solace” ) and expanded it to full novel length. Fleming recognized it as a failure himself, in fact — when he sold the film rights to the franchise, he specified that only the title of The Spy Who Loved Me could be used, and that the producers must develop their own original plot in its place.
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Tour de Bond: Thunderball (1961)
I have conflicted feelings about Thunderball. On the one hand, it’s one of the best novels — the final book in what I consider the series’ apex. It’s also the book that kicked off the Bond phenomenon, by leading film producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli to secure the rights to the franchise. However, the conflict over its origins mired Fleming in a lawsuit that some would argue led to his death in 1964, and kept a shadow over the franchise for decades to come.
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Tour de Bond: For Your Eyes Only (1960)
For Your Eyes Only is a monument to the adage that the best writers never let a good idea go to waste. In 1958, CBS Television offered Ian Fleming a contract for a television show based on the James Bond character. Fleming agreed and prepared a set of outlines for the first episodes of the proposed series — a combination of adaptations of his earlier novels, along with new material. Unfortunately, CBS eventually dropped the idea, and the series never happened. The new material Fleming had created, though, wouldn’t go to waste.
Gathering up the five original outlines that he had developed for the series, Fleming expanded them into short stories — the plots, developed for series television, weren’t detailed enough for full-length novels. The stories– “From a View to a Kill”, “For Your Eyes Only”, “Quantum of Solace”, “Risico” and “The Hildebrand Rarity” — were published as a collection originally titled For Your Eyes Only – Five Secret Occasions in the Life of James Bond (although the subtitle was dropped in later editions).
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