Didn't realize that TLD was commissioned in the same way by the Sunday Times like the Thrilling Cities installments. I don't consider TLD "inferior" if it's one of the two Caractacus was referring to; I think it's one of Fleming's more exciting and interesting short stories!
There's also "007 In New York", of course, which is certainly inferior.
Fleming publishing TLD in the "Times" didn't go down well with the "Express", which was running the Bond comic strip. He had some apologising to do afterwards.
Edit: I see Caractacus has clarified above! Thanks and apologies for the confusion. Almost simultaneous posts.
By coincidence, I'm shopping for a hardback edition of Thrilling Cities to complete my 007 Jonathan Cape display (which would result in three symmetrical rows of five books each), but the Jonathan Cape Thrilling Cities doesn't include "007 in New York," so I was going to compromise with the First American Edition, the first version of TC to include "007 in New York,"...but nuts, its dimensions are different from the 5"x 7" Jonathan Cape Bonds! What to do?! Is there such thing as a Jonathan Cape hardback of TC that includes "007 in New York"?
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Welcome to my world! I gave up worrying about that years ago, tbh- as long as it's all there, that's all that matters to me.
The funny thing is without realizing till now the significance of this thread to my quest, my display is entirely dependent on canon. I’m tempted on getting a Jonathan Cape TC and pasting in the pages of “007 in New York”!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
hey superado, sorry if I confused you up above, or babbled too far off topic
the weathers been stinking hot where I live and my brains been running even less linear than usual, I may have to step away from the keyboard.
I really like the idea of 14 books forming The Canon, its actually kind of an esoteric number: 14 Stations of the Cross, 14 cards per suit in the Tarot, and best of all, Fourteen is double Seven!
here is a fourteen pointed star, just cuz I went looking for one:
but as long as you have vintage editions (inherently cooler than recent editions) you do need an American edition of Thrilling Cities to get 007 in New York (is it even in the more stylish PAN paperback set?)
so as you say that's 15 books, a very nice number too that can be split over three shelves, or even five really skinny shelves
I used to like the way the PANs officially included Colonel Sun and Pearson's Bond Biography in their series list, because that made sixteen, a really nice square number that divides several ways!
just in case we need esoteric numerologic rationals to determine what is Canon (there goes my humidity soaked brain again, must stop posting...)
I have the Signet Thrilling Cities, which is much uglier than the stylish PAN 2 volume set. Does anybody know if the PAN maybe does include 007 in New York? if so I will have to upgrade
until it too was added to recent printings of Octopussy, 007inNY had its own semi-mythic rarity status. Bet lots of people searched long and hard to find that one, then read it expecting the secrets to be revealed only to find … it's just a recipe for scrambled eggs!!!
Does anybody know if the PAN maybe does include 007 in New York? if so I will have to upgrade
Mine doesn't.
Caractacus, you are funny! I love the heat, but might think otherwise when I find myself sizzling in it! My interests in numbers in not as esoteric as it is aesthetic since I wish to have my Cape Bonds displayed in a neat rectangular arrangement as possible!
Don't know about the Pan edition, but I'm sure you know yourself, that the Signet paperpack which I also have, includes "007 in New York." I am now listening to the recently released audio version, which I'm disappointed to discover doesn't include it, despite it being "unabridged"; I guess "unabridged" is conditional, which I had hoped would have been more liberally applied since this collection of cities had themselves a varied publishing history...and to think that the audiobook is just a bit over nine hours long and they couldn't spare another five minutes for 007 in New York?!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
I just discovered that apart from the exclusion of "007 in New York" in the Cape editions, "Property of a Lady" is also missing from "Octopussy and the Living Daylights." I guess I'll need to loosen up a bit on the ideology I'm trying to preserve for my Cape display!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
the Pan paperback contained OP, TLD and TPOAL in its first book appearance
the Penguin edition had OP, TPOAL, TLD + 007 in NY all together for the first time.
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
I'm a bit surprised it took that long since that Penguin edition is pretty recent.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Didn't realize that TLD was commissioned in the same way by the Sunday Times like the Thrilling Cities installments. I don't consider TLD "inferior" if it's one of the two Caractacus was referring to; I think it's one of Fleming's more exciting and interesting short stories!
There's also "007 In New York", of course, which is certainly inferior.
Fleming publishing TLD in the "Times" didn't go down well with the "Express", which was running the Bond comic strip. He had some apologising to do afterwards.
Edit: I see Caractacus has clarified above! Thanks and apologies for the confusion. Almost simultaneous posts.
I'm surprised the Express felt they had any claim to Fleming and Bond beyond the contract for the newspaper strip. After all,m Fleming was a longstanding employee of the Times under both Kemsley and Roy Thomson and a board member of the Sunday Times. He was partially responsible for the introduction of The Sunday Times Colour Supplement so naturally wanted to support its introduction.
I'd always assumed the strip version of Thunderbolt was curtailed due to the court case and consequent uncertainty over where the rights to the property lay.
EDIT: Clearly I was wrong, which I didn't make clear in my initial reply.
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
It led to the TB strip being brought to a very premature end, and about two years before the next one (OHMSS) began.
Yep, a very ugly ending, but at least there was concern for the sake of the readers I suppose to attempt in tying it all up, though not neatly. Reminds me of the US TV show "Last Resort" about a crew of a nuclear sub that went rogue; when the producers were abruptly notified that their show was getting cancelled mid-season, their last episode awkwardly tied up all the story arcs with a whimper. Though the new comics may eventually do the rest of the Fleming stories, a properly concluded TB drawn by McLusky was a missed opportunity.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Now that you mention The Battle for Bond. I want that book, but there was some kind of controversial in the past, even some kind of ban on it? Anybody knows what could be the complete version I should buy? Thanks.
It wasn't quite banned. The first edition printed images of Fleming's letters without proper authorization, which led to legal trouble and a halt in further publication. The second edition removed the images--which weren't necessary in the first place, since the texts of the letters were already quoted in full. So any edition will do, though the first edition is crammed with spelling and grammatical errors (I guess Tomahawk Press was too cheap to use copy-editors!). Also keep in mind that the book is firmly in Whittingham's camp and profoundly biased.
question: should Canon include Fleming's abandoned and incomplete plots or other fragments?
e.g. his early ideas for Thunderball (mostly unrelated to the final story), at least what's been published in books such as Sellers'?
e.g. the two raw synopses in the back of some editions of Horowitz's two books?
e.g. the two very short fragments within Pearson's Fleming bio?
I feel the literary canon should not include materials designed a different medium. So scripts and synopses for movies or television would not go in. To take a similar case, Conan Doyle wrote a couple of Sherlock Holmes plays (The Speckled Band and The Crown Diamond) but neither of these belongs to the literary Sherlockian canon. Transporting a character into a different medium creates a separate continuity and involves a translation between media that involves a fundamental rethinking of the material and recreation of the character.
Fleming's literary fragments are a trickier case. If he intentionally abandoned the material, it probably doesn't belong in the canon of finished, published works. The canon itself consists of all the completed novels and short stories (TMWTGG was technically completed) written by Fleming. The only non-Fleming work I would include is Colonel Sun, since it's the only continuation novel written and set in the 60s and thereby closest to Fleming's time; furthermore, it directly follows the continuity of Fleming's last book, and was written by an author with unparalleled deep knowledge of Fleming who also happened to a novelist of equal or greater skill. No other continuation book combines all these attributes.
Conan Doyle wrote a couple of Sherlock Holmes plays (The Speckled Band and The Crown Diamond) but neither of these belongs to the literary Sherlockian canon.
But they don't have to, since both have literary counterparts (that of The Crown Diamond being The Mazarin Stone*) which do belong to the canon.
* one of the worst Doyle/Holmes stories! IMHO
superadoRegent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,656MI6 Agent
{[] Barbel!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
If I may take that one, the answer is yes. This was part of the settlement. Having said that, I'm sure that I've seen (and at one point owned) at least one edition without that acknowledgement.
I think it was this one:
which was a book club edition, but since it disappeared during a divorce many years ago (among other things ) I can't be sure now. I hope at least one person reading this has that edition and can check!
..the obvious comparison is to Sherlock Holmes- new stories are regularly being created both in print (some by Anthony Horowitz) and on film/TV alongside new adaptations of the older original stories. Maybe someday there'll be as many film/TV versions of, say, TB as there are of "Hound of the Baskervilles"!
I feel the literary canon should not include materials designed a different medium. So scripts and synopses for movies or television would not go in. To take a similar case, Conan Doyle wrote a couple of Sherlock Holmes plays (The Speckled Band and The Crown Diamond) but neither of these belongs to the literary Sherlockian canon. Transporting a character into a different medium creates a separate continuity and involves a translation between media that involves a fundamental rethinking of the material and recreation of the character.
There's a whole Wikipedia page about what is and is not Sherlock Holmes canon! Those fans are way more advanced than us. Consensus seems to be: exactly what Doyle wrote and published, and nothing anybody else created, and nothing else Doyle wrote that might either have been incomplete, or other Doyle stories with pseudo-Holmes-appearances.
...and a separate Wikipedia page about trying to resolve Holmes continuity into a larger saga based on random biographical clues within Doyle's canon! We're not weirdos! There are other people out there who use their brains the way we do!
One thing with Sherlock Holmes … it's been so long since Doyle quit writing the stories, and so many adaptations have been made in the century since, most of those adaptations have sort of blurred into lesser significance and what is still remembered is what Doyle wrote.
Did any of the Sherlock Holmes adaptations ever gain the same cultural importance as the EON Bond series? The Rathbone/Bruce series maybe? Ancient history in itself to most. Certainly not the Downey/Law films which I've already deleted from my memory banks.
Revelator: that's an interesting argument that works for different media may contradict and should be treated separately … but above we suggested Canon could be self-contradictory, and the original religious definition of Canon includes New Testament Gospels which apparently contradict each other.
I see what you mean about works for different media having different requirements to make those types of stories work. But if they're all from one author's mind, why not? They're still just different aspects of a greater whole.
How would folks treat Modesty Blaise, where Peter O'Donnel created a very long-running comic strip, then 5 years later he also began a series of 13 novels? I know the story of Modesty's recruitment by Sir Gerald Tarrant is different in both versions, and both can't be true. But, I don't think the novels are lesser than the comic strip, or vice versa, and I think regardless of occasional contradictions they are all part of Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise canon.
Any other examples of the same author successfully adapting his own creation to other media?
I still like the Star Wars approach, which has five levels of canonicity, I think something like that can handle the problem where one author writes contradictory works for different media. Not that Fleming's abandoned film plots need apply, really, we've never actually seen what he wrote … but the two and a half EON films he did live long enough to be involved with deserve a higher status than what came after his death.
Regarding Fleming's incomplete fragments, there's a really good article on the Bondologist Blog that includes some known examples of what survives. (That's Silhouette Man's website, isn't it?)
Two passages that had originally appeared in Pearson's Fleming Biography are reproduced there:
One excerpted from an abandoned story where Bond meets a real life gambler named Zographos. Apparently Fleming wrote a page and a half before setting it aside, but only a couple of paragraphs appeared in Pearson's book.
The other is a brief passage where Bond wakes up in the morning and scoffs at boring normal peoples lives. Could have fit in anywhere, I don't think Pearson tells us when it was written. The Zographos fragment was from very near the end.
Then there's a long list of half sentence story ideas taken from Fleming's own notebook: -fight on a roller coaster, -fight under Niagara Falls, -a killer clown, that sort of thing. Sort of like an artist's sketchbook.
Silhouette Man, if that's your article, where did you find that list? is there a more complete version that you were quoting from?
Such raw, incomplete idea may be obscure, and at a much lesser level of Canonicity than the 14 books. But I still rank Fleming writing "...a fight on a roller coaster..." and leaving the rest to our imagination, as being more authentic than a later generation of filmmakers deciding Bond and Blofeld were long lost foster brothers.
If I may take that one, the answer is yes. This was part of the settlement. Having said that, I'm sure that I've seen (and at one point owned) at least one edition without that acknowledgement.
I think it was this one:
which was a book club edition, but since it disappeared during a divorce many years ago (among other things ) I can't be sure now. I hope at least one person reading this has that edition and can check!
There is another exception, Dr Barbel! In 2015 the Canadian bookshop chain Indigo re-published all of the Bond novels (except TMWTGG and the short story collections) in a set of paperbacks with simple black covers with the title in white and a cut out hole with a graphic on the page beneath. Rather an attractive looking set, although sadly incomplete given the missing volumes. However, not only were some books missing but also any reference to Messrs McClory and Whittingham.
Was this a mere oversight by Indigo or intentional? The copyright page reads: "Thunderball was first published in 1961. This title is in Canada's public domain and is not subject to any licence or copyright." It goes on to state "All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical...etc etc...without permission in writing from the publishers."
I find it amusing that Indigo choose to mention that the book is not subject to any licence or copyright in Canada but then go on to assert their licence and copyright over their edition.
Any other examples of the same author successfully adapting his own creation to other media?
I just thought of a biggie: HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Douglas Adams created the radio series. Then he wrote the books, which I find is the version most people know.
Same story written for two different media by the same author, Which one is canon?
(personally I found the first book read like something that would work better as a radio play, whereas the sequels flowed more like proper novels)
There were also LPs that were similar but unique from the radio series.
I don't know how involved Adams was in the TV series or the film, but that's a lot of versions of the same story across different media, at least three of which the same author was directly responsible for.
Comments
By coincidence, I'm shopping for a hardback edition of Thrilling Cities to complete my 007 Jonathan Cape display (which would result in three symmetrical rows of five books each), but the Jonathan Cape Thrilling Cities doesn't include "007 in New York," so I was going to compromise with the First American Edition, the first version of TC to include "007 in New York,"...but nuts, its dimensions are different from the 5"x 7" Jonathan Cape Bonds! What to do?! Is there such thing as a Jonathan Cape hardback of TC that includes "007 in New York"?
the weathers been stinking hot where I live and my brains been running even less linear than usual, I may have to step away from the keyboard.
I really like the idea of 14 books forming The Canon, its actually kind of an esoteric number: 14 Stations of the Cross, 14 cards per suit in the Tarot, and best of all, Fourteen is double Seven!
here is a fourteen pointed star, just cuz I went looking for one:
but as long as you have vintage editions (inherently cooler than recent editions) you do need an American edition of Thrilling Cities to get 007 in New York (is it even in the more stylish PAN paperback set?)
so as you say that's 15 books, a very nice number too that can be split over three shelves, or even five really skinny shelves
I used to like the way the PANs officially included Colonel Sun and Pearson's Bond Biography in their series list, because that made sixteen, a really nice square number that divides several ways!
just in case we need esoteric numerologic rationals to determine what is Canon (there goes my humidity soaked brain again, must stop posting...)
I have the Signet Thrilling Cities, which is much uglier than the stylish PAN 2 volume set. Does anybody know if the PAN maybe does include 007 in New York? if so I will have to upgrade
until it too was added to recent printings of Octopussy, 007inNY had its own semi-mythic rarity status. Bet lots of people searched long and hard to find that one, then read it expecting the secrets to be revealed only to find … it's just a recipe for scrambled eggs!!!
Mine doesn't.
Caractacus, you are funny! I love the heat, but might think otherwise when I find myself sizzling in it! My interests in numbers in not as esoteric as it is aesthetic since I wish to have my Cape Bonds displayed in a neat rectangular arrangement as possible!
Don't know about the Pan edition, but I'm sure you know yourself, that the Signet paperpack which I also have, includes "007 in New York." I am now listening to the recently released audio version, which I'm disappointed to discover doesn't include it, despite it being "unabridged"; I guess "unabridged" is conditional, which I had hoped would have been more liberally applied since this collection of cities had themselves a varied publishing history...and to think that the audiobook is just a bit over nine hours long and they couldn't spare another five minutes for 007 in New York?!
I'm surprised the Express felt they had any claim to Fleming and Bond beyond the contract for the newspaper strip. After all,m Fleming was a longstanding employee of the Times under both Kemsley and Roy Thomson and a board member of the Sunday Times. He was partially responsible for the introduction of The Sunday Times Colour Supplement so naturally wanted to support its introduction.
EDIT: Clearly I was wrong, which I didn't make clear in my initial reply.
Yep, a very ugly ending, but at least there was concern for the sake of the readers I suppose to attempt in tying it all up, though not neatly. Reminds me of the US TV show "Last Resort" about a crew of a nuclear sub that went rogue; when the producers were abruptly notified that their show was getting cancelled mid-season, their last episode awkwardly tied up all the story arcs with a whimper. Though the new comics may eventually do the rest of the Fleming stories, a properly concluded TB drawn by McLusky was a missed opportunity.
It wasn't quite banned. The first edition printed images of Fleming's letters without proper authorization, which led to legal trouble and a halt in further publication. The second edition removed the images--which weren't necessary in the first place, since the texts of the letters were already quoted in full. So any edition will do, though the first edition is crammed with spelling and grammatical errors (I guess Tomahawk Press was too cheap to use copy-editors!). Also keep in mind that the book is firmly in Whittingham's camp and profoundly biased.
I feel the literary canon should not include materials designed a different medium. So scripts and synopses for movies or television would not go in. To take a similar case, Conan Doyle wrote a couple of Sherlock Holmes plays (The Speckled Band and The Crown Diamond) but neither of these belongs to the literary Sherlockian canon. Transporting a character into a different medium creates a separate continuity and involves a translation between media that involves a fundamental rethinking of the material and recreation of the character.
Fleming's literary fragments are a trickier case. If he intentionally abandoned the material, it probably doesn't belong in the canon of finished, published works. The canon itself consists of all the completed novels and short stories (TMWTGG was technically completed) written by Fleming. The only non-Fleming work I would include is Colonel Sun, since it's the only continuation novel written and set in the 60s and thereby closest to Fleming's time; furthermore, it directly follows the continuity of Fleming's last book, and was written by an author with unparalleled deep knowledge of Fleming who also happened to a novelist of equal or greater skill. No other continuation book combines all these attributes.
But they don't have to, since both have literary counterparts (that of The Crown Diamond being The Mazarin Stone*) which do belong to the canon.
* one of the worst Doyle/Holmes stories! IMHO
Another question, is it compulsory by law that the names McClory and Witthingham must appear in every edition of Thunderball since 1963?
I think it was this one:
which was a book club edition, but since it disappeared during a divorce many years ago (among other things
...and a separate Wikipedia page about trying to resolve Holmes continuity into a larger saga based on random biographical clues within Doyle's canon! We're not weirdos! There are other people out there who use their brains the way we do!
One thing with Sherlock Holmes … it's been so long since Doyle quit writing the stories, and so many adaptations have been made in the century since, most of those adaptations have sort of blurred into lesser significance and what is still remembered is what Doyle wrote.
Did any of the Sherlock Holmes adaptations ever gain the same cultural importance as the EON Bond series? The Rathbone/Bruce series maybe? Ancient history in itself to most. Certainly not the Downey/Law films which I've already deleted from my memory banks.
Revelator: that's an interesting argument that works for different media may contradict and should be treated separately … but above we suggested Canon could be self-contradictory, and the original religious definition of Canon includes New Testament Gospels which apparently contradict each other.
I see what you mean about works for different media having different requirements to make those types of stories work. But if they're all from one author's mind, why not? They're still just different aspects of a greater whole.
How would folks treat Modesty Blaise, where Peter O'Donnel created a very long-running comic strip, then 5 years later he also began a series of 13 novels? I know the story of Modesty's recruitment by Sir Gerald Tarrant is different in both versions, and both can't be true. But, I don't think the novels are lesser than the comic strip, or vice versa, and I think regardless of occasional contradictions they are all part of Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise canon.
Any other examples of the same author successfully adapting his own creation to other media?
I still like the Star Wars approach, which has five levels of canonicity, I think something like that can handle the problem where one author writes contradictory works for different media. Not that Fleming's abandoned film plots need apply, really, we've never actually seen what he wrote … but the two and a half EON films he did live long enough to be involved with deserve a higher status than what came after his death.
Two passages that had originally appeared in Pearson's Fleming Biography are reproduced there:
One excerpted from an abandoned story where Bond meets a real life gambler named Zographos. Apparently Fleming wrote a page and a half before setting it aside, but only a couple of paragraphs appeared in Pearson's book.
The other is a brief passage where Bond wakes up in the morning and scoffs at boring normal peoples lives. Could have fit in anywhere, I don't think Pearson tells us when it was written. The Zographos fragment was from very near the end.
Then there's a long list of half sentence story ideas taken from Fleming's own notebook: -fight on a roller coaster, -fight under Niagara Falls, -a killer clown, that sort of thing. Sort of like an artist's sketchbook.
Silhouette Man, if that's your article, where did you find that list? is there a more complete version that you were quoting from?
Such raw, incomplete idea may be obscure, and at a much lesser level of Canonicity than the 14 books. But I still rank Fleming writing "...a fight on a roller coaster..." and leaving the rest to our imagination, as being more authentic than a later generation of filmmakers deciding Bond and Blofeld were long lost foster brothers.
Yup!
Nope!
Yup!
There is another exception, Dr Barbel! In 2015 the Canadian bookshop chain Indigo re-published all of the Bond novels (except TMWTGG and the short story collections) in a set of paperbacks with simple black covers with the title in white and a cut out hole with a graphic on the page beneath. Rather an attractive looking set, although sadly incomplete given the missing volumes. However, not only were some books missing but also any reference to Messrs McClory and Whittingham.
Was this a mere oversight by Indigo or intentional? The copyright page reads: "Thunderball was first published in 1961. This title is in Canada's public domain and is not subject to any licence or copyright." It goes on to state "All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical...etc etc...without permission in writing from the publishers."
I find it amusing that Indigo choose to mention that the book is not subject to any licence or copyright in Canada but then go on to assert their licence and copyright over their edition.
Douglas Adams created the radio series. Then he wrote the books, which I find is the version most people know.
Same story written for two different media by the same author, Which one is canon?
(personally I found the first book read like something that would work better as a radio play, whereas the sequels flowed more like proper novels)
There were also LPs that were similar but unique from the radio series.
I don't know how involved Adams was in the TV series or the film, but that's a lot of versions of the same story across different media, at least three of which the same author was directly responsible for.
Thank you, TDE, I didn't know about that!
I seem to remember Adams saying that he deliberately wrote the various versions to be incompatible- but I don't have a quote or source for that.
Illegal? Nobody cares?
???