Fleming's Uncompleted Short Stories and Notes

Stumbled across this gem.

https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/ian-flemings-second-uncompleted-short.html?m=1

Not only does it highlight Fleming's desire to keep going with Bond beyond TMWTGG, but also what some of those ideas might have been, and further, a glimpse into his writing process.

One of these ideas highlights what may have been inspiration for Bond, err, clowning around in Eon's Octopussy. However, it wasn't a circus, but a masquerade ball, and it wasn't Bond in costume, but a Russian killer whereby a real fight is perceived as part of the night's entertainment.

Peruse and discuss. There's quite a bit to unpack, particularly from the second half of the article.

Nice find, Fields. Utterly fascinating in its way.

After Patrick O'Brian died, there was published the "The Unfinished Last Voyage of Jack Aubrey" which had a body of text and where it ended abruptly, via O'Brian's death, the rest was handwritten notes. Surely must be a way of doing this for Fleming. In light of no new Bond novels just yet and the films in limbo, would be pretty decent to have some 'unfound' Fleming come to light.

As said in the Benign Bizarre thread, the world beyond '64 is an interesting thought to consider, if he had lived a while longer.

Hilly wrote:

In light of no new Bond novels just yet and the films in limbo, would be pretty decent to have some 'unfound' Fleming come to light.

I think this is as good as it gets, at least for a while. There are quite a few scribblings of potential plot ideas, discussion and quotes of the two uncompleted short stories and even an attempt at venturing outside of James Bond for a new novel.

I wrote this article a good few years ago. Good to see it being discussed here. I've been meaning to get back into writing again but it's hard keeping at it. I did intend to do a follow up article looking at the ideas Fleming had for Bond novels that he sadly never lived to write.

Maeve Horton wrote:

I wrote this article a good few years ago. Good to see it being discussed here. I've been meaning to get back into writing again but it's hard keeping at it. I did intend to do a follow up article looking at the ideas Fleming had for Bond novels that he sadly never lived to write.

Maeve, that is always an interesting subject, same as the snippets of television drafts he did. I would like to see some of that incorporated in future films, not so interested in what a hack fan fictionist like Horowitz does with it.

Yes, very interesting article.

As to the question you posit at the end about whether he would've continued to write...I think so long as he was healthy he'd have kept at it. The more interesting question for me is how he would've seen the world from that point in time forward.

Seemingly with TMWTGG he repositions the Soviets as the nemesis after having moved away from them. I wonder what new arms of the Soviet espionage apparatus he would've illuminated and concocted.

I would say that Fleming would have turned his attention again to the Soviets if they were once more destined for the doghouse by their actions on the international stage. He had been giving them as break or at least the benefit of the doubt by switching from the defunct SMERSH to SPECTRE in Thunderball. I recall Fleming saying in an interview that if the Soviets kept carrying out assassinations such as the Bohdan Stashynsky cyanide water pistol case in West Germany then he would have to start ragging them again. I think there's some evidence from interviews that Fleming gave shortly before his untimely death in 1964 that he might have had a Red Chinese villain or plot involving them. There's also evidence in interviews and at least one of the novels that the emerging new African states could have thrown up some inspiration for villainy. Happily, these themes in villainy were later followed up by Kingsley Amis in Colonel Sun (1968) and William Boyd in Solo (2013).

A Red Chinese villain seems most likely. Fleming perhaps could have been influenced by the films... The success of Goldfinger, not yet released at the time of Fleming’s death, and the peripheral involvement of the Chinese in Auric’s plan, may have inspired his next villain and scheme.

Do you have links to those interviews you reference, Maeve?

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang wrote:

A Red Chinese villain seems most likely. Fleming perhaps could have been influenced by the films... The success of Goldfinger, not yet released at the time of Fleming’s death, and the peripheral involvement of the Chinese in Auric’s plan, may have inspired his next villain and scheme.

Do you have links to those interviews you reference, Maeve?

Yes, I think so myself, MKKBB. Another thing to bear in mind is that about two months after Fleming's death Red China detonated their first nuclear bomb. So the potential threat from Red China as a belligerent state certainly grew from October 1964 onwards. Coincidentally they first dropped the bomb at the same time as the 1964 British General Election was going on (which Harold Wilson would narrowly win) and at the time Khrushchev had been deposed in the Soviet Union. So it was a time of the changing of the guard, flux and change.

You can watch Fleming's great interview at Goldeneye with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1964 here:



From memory I think he mentions the potential for new villainy from from Red China and the emergent newly independent African states.

I think the line about the Soviets moving into the doghouse may be mentioned in that interview too or else the 1964 Playboy interview with Fleming:

https://www.scribd.com/document/390148643/Playboy-Ian-Fleming-Interview-December-1964

The full Playboy interview can also be read at the following link, at the bottom of the page:

https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/21262/interviews-with-ian-fleming/p3