Alternate reading order?
IstvanTheHun007
Posts: 75MI6 Agent
Thoughts on making this deviation, for the purposes of serialized story flow:
-Goldfinger
then
-For Your Eyes Only
then
-The Spy Who Loved Me
then
-Thunderball
then
-OHMSS and you read the SPECTRE trilogy as a natural trilogy.
Thoughts? Any reason why not to read them in this order?
Comments
One problem: TSWLM references SPECTRE, which was introduced in TB. And though SPECTRE existed prior to TB, it didn't become an outright enemy of the Secret Service until it hijacked the bombers.
can you pinpoint the reference for me please?
you havent read it before Istvan? its a bit of a spoiler, but not a biggy
in chapter 11 BedTime Story, Bond keeps Vivienne distracted for a bit by telling her the story of his last mission, in which he foiled a SPECTRE plot in Toronto. He says "Less than a year ago there was this business of the stolen atomic bombs. It was called Operation Thunderball. Remember?" His eyes went far away. "It was in the Bahamas."
and she responds "Oh, yes. Of course I remember. It was in all the papers. I could hardly believe it. It was like something out of a thriller. Why? Were you mixed up in it?" Then Bond spends the rest of the chapter telling her about a very recent mission against SPECTRE, which he is just returning home from when he stopped at the motel where she works.
continuity wise, the thing is nobody's heard of SPECTRE before Thunderball, so this adventure therefor has to happen after. But its just a flashback in one chapter, and doesnt affect the main plot.
funny thing is, OHMSS contradicts this, as Bond says in the opening chapters that he has spent over a year since the Thunderball adventure searching for Blofeld and SPECTRE and found no sign of either. tSwLM got notoriously poor reviews which Fleming took personally, so I wonder if he rewrote that passage in OHMSS at the last minute to imply the last book was not part of the Canon?
Yes, that is the stumbling block you are going to come up against if you try to change the reading order away from the publication order. Although SPECTRE aren't the villains in TSWLM as @Revelator points out they are referenced by Bond in a story he tells Vivienne Michel. This led me to call the novels from TB-YOLT "the SPECTRE Quartet" in one of my blog articles. It's probably not the correct term but I'm sure you get my point nonetheless.
Ah, I forgot about that reference to Thunderball.
Also, I think you are supposed to read two of the short stories BETWEEN chapters of OHMSS!
So.. Bond completes the Thunderball mission. Then he goes searching for SPECTRE and lands in Toronto and then in Upstate NY for TSWLM and then we go into OHMSS?
I think Bond in NY is also supposed to be read at this point.
The short stories that made up Octopussy were written around that time and slot in between those novels. The Bond Files (by Andy Lane and Paul Simpson) puts the short stories in a certain order between the novels so it could be consulted for some pointers as to the exact reading order.
Interesting, but I've always read the Fleming novels in the order they were published as, to me, they provide the timeline to Bond's career.
Author of 'An Ungentlemanly Act' and 'Execution of Duty'. The WW2 espionage series starring Harry Flynn.