Gardner's World: John Gardner's James Bond Continuation Novels (1981-1996) General Discussion

As today, 20 November 2023, marks what would have been John Gardner's 97th birthday I thought it was time we had a general discussion thread on the longest serving and most prolific James Bond continuation author. Between 1981 and 1996 John Gardner wrote 14 original adult James Bond continuation novels and two film novelisations, namely Licence to Kill and GoldenEye. So this is the thread to ask any general questions about John Gardner's 15 year tenure as Bond author from 1981 to 1996 or to post any observations about his novels, novelisations, plots, characters, themes and so on.

Here's a US radio interview with John Gardner from 16 October 1984 to get the ball rolling and a rare chance to hear JG in conversation:

Was it his own surname that made him so fascinated with horticulture? (Never Send Flowers, Maeve Horton and so on?).

Anyway, I enjoyed the first few Gardners 40 years ago, but the more I read of Fleming, the more I realized Gardner was a hack.

Phantom Commander wrote:

Was it his own surname that made him so fascinated with horticulture? (Never Send Flowers, Maeve Horton and so on?).

Anyway, I enjoyed the first few Gardners 40 years ago, but the more I read of Fleming, the more I realized Gardner was a hack.

It could have been a knowing little joke, yes. It's not unlike something he would sprinkle into his novels. From a quick internet search:

The Gardner surname is believed to originate in England. It is Anglo-Norman and derives from the Middle English 'Gardiner'. It is an occupational name, given to someone who tended to a garden and cultivated vegetables or flowers, and their offspring.

So it's the usual thing of surnames named after professions or qualities - Armstrong meant someone of strength - strong arms and so on. There's some nice symbolism used in Never Send Flowers in particular - with the calling card of the white blood-tipped roses, the serial killer ex-actor villain with the surname Dragonpol and his equally mad sister with the surname Horton, as you mention. Never Send Flowers has long felt like Gardner's attempt at a You Only Live Twice type Bond story, what with senseless killings seemingly just for the hell of it, a castle on the Rhine and Disneyland being referenced and featuring (Euro Disney). Gardner's second Herbie Kruger spy novel was called The Garden of Weapons (1980) too though the title was of course figurative rather than literal. It was the second in the first Herbie Kruger trilogy and a good novel as I recall. I read it many years ago. The Herbie Kruger novels are well worth a read and are what Gardner's reputation was most based on as a serious author of novels of espionage. I think that Gardner was far from being a hack but I would concede that continuation novels never tend to be as appreciate as original works from an author and are often, rather unfairly, just seen as a quick money grab.

The issue with Bond continuation authors, I feel, is that none of them can hope to 'be' Bond to the extent that Fleming was. So much of him went into his creation.

I liked Gardner' GOLGOTHA a lot more than his Bond novels, and I remember there was a sort of epic novel he wrote about generations of spies that started strong but I couldn't finish it. Honestly, the Wood novelizations have more the flavor of Fleming, for me at least, as does the Pearson 'bio' of 007, which I never tire of rereading.

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

Phantom Commander wrote:

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

Pearson invents a couple of bits that don't contribute at all to the character or the mythos (specifically, an older brother named Henry), but outside of that, and of course the 'reason' for Bond's actual missions being depicted as fiction, it mostly feels Fleming-like. The one weird takeaway I have is that I have never, in 48 years of reading and rereading the book, ever been able to hear or see this Bond as anything other than Connery. With Fleming, I can see Dalton in the latter books and in the first three or four (and with Amis' COLONEL SUN, I see Peter Mark Richman, but that is probably because that is what Bond looks like on the cover of the paperback edition.)

Phantom Commander wrote:

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

The only one I've read is Amis' Colonel Sun. It was pretty good, but not a patch on the least of Fleming's Bond novels, such as "Gun" or "Goldfinger."

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Phantom Commander wrote:

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

The only one I've read is Amis' Colonel Sun. It was pretty good, but not a patch on the least of Fleming's Bond novels, such as "Gun" or "Goldfinger."

Funny you mention Goldfinger. It is one of my absolute favourites.

Phantom Commander wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Phantom Commander wrote:

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

The only one I've read is Amis' Colonel Sun. It was pretty good, but not a patch on the least of Fleming's Bond novels, such as "Gun" or "Goldfinger."

Funny you mention Goldfinger. It is one of my absolute favourites.

I can't get past the implausibility of Goldfinger giving Bond chance after chance to destroy him and his plans despite it being quite obvious Bond is his enemy. With so much on the line, he should have eliminated Bond the first chance he got. That's what you'd expect a man of his ilk to do.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Phantom Commander wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Phantom Commander wrote:

I have never read any non-Bond material by any of the continuation authors. It could well be that I would enjoy some of those books, and that it is the comparison with Fleming that puts me off. At least for some of them. They all pale. Trevanian, I have not read Pearson, but agree about Wood.

The only one I've read is Amis' Colonel Sun. It was pretty good, but not a patch on the least of Fleming's Bond novels, such as "Gun" or "Goldfinger."

Funny you mention Goldfinger. It is one of my absolute favourites.

I can't get past the implausibility of Goldfinger giving Bond chance after chance to destroy him and his plans despite it being quite obvious Bond is his enemy. With so much on the line, he should have eliminated Bond the first chance he got. That's what you'd expect a man of his ilk to do.

True, but everyone cannot be Safin.

The thing about the GF novel is just about everything relies on luck or serendipity, and it's well beyond the happenstance/coincidence/enemyaction line. Even the Hail Mary note to Leiter seems incredibly weak ... yet I kept reading and rereading it. I think the thing that bothered me the most -- and this goes back to when I was 15 and reading it for the first time -- is what I guess you'd now call the SKYFALL effect ... that Bond fails in his mission, that he doesn't get the gold back and it all goes to the bottom of the ocean. But on a gut level, I still can't get over the rush of reading Bond announcing his identity on the plane's radio to the air traffic controllers, that's a real grabber for me. I guess as a writer Fleming just skills his way past however many plot hiccups there are.

Fleming did say that you had to keep things moving at enough of a pace to prevent the reader stopping to ponder a plot's idiosyncracies.

trevanian wrote:

The thing about the GF novel is just about everything relies on luck or serendipity, and it's well beyond the happenstance/coincidence/enemyaction line. Even the Hail Mary note to Leiter seems incredibly weak ... yet I kept reading and rereading it. I think the thing that bothered me the most -- and this goes back to when I was 15 and reading it for the first time -- is what I guess you'd now call the SKYFALL effect ... that Bond fails in his mission,  that he doesn't get the gold back and it all goes to the bottom of the ocean. But on a gut level, I still can't get over the rush of reading Bond announcing his identity on the plane's radio to the air traffic controllers, that's a real grabber for me. I guess as a writer Fleming just skills his way past however many plot hiccups there are.  

Exactly. Fleming could take a Dick-and-Jane reader and turn it into something fascinating based upon his style alone. And that's why, even though Goldfinger's plot is a load of hokum, I still look forward to reading it.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Fleming did say that you had to keep things moving at enough of a pace to prevent the reader stopping to ponder a plot's idiosyncracies.

He certainly did that! There has never been a greater master of the page-turner.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Fleming did say that you had to keep things moving at enough of a pace to prevent the reader stopping to ponder a plot's idiosyncracies.

He certainly did that! There has never been a greater master of the page-turner.

One of the many reasons the increasingly long running times of Bond films are ridiculous; they fly in the face of the short, sharp pulpy thrillers they should be.

Calvin Dyson's summing up of the John Gardner Bond continuation novels:

I see the same account on YouTube has now uploaded a video version of the November 1985 John Gardner interview with Don Swaim:

It's a lot easier to enjoy the Gardner novels if you stop comparing his writing style with Fleming's. If you want more Flemingesque prose, read Leslie Charteris, Sapper or Gardner's Liquidator series.

James Bond survived into a more technological era, and Gardner had graduated from writing humourous thrillers to more sophisticated espionage sagas. In other words, he was the perfect author for a new era.

One thing I did find a bit annoying was his insistence on having at least one double-agent in every story, and Bond never cottons on until the double reveals himself (except in NLF and SeaFire). Icebreaker is loaded with them, but if you imagine it was written by Alistair MacLean it's perfectly enjoyable.

Having collected the Boysie Oakes novels beforehand, I looked forward to Licence Renewed - and every subsequent publication - with relish.

So to wrap up the Gardner's World thread for 2023 (though not for good of course!) here is a rare chance to see John Gardner on ATV back in (I think) May 1981 promoting his first James Bond continuation novel, Licence Renewed. Gardner does so with the help of a fully kitted out Saab 900 Turbo. Please ignore all the little mistakes they make during the piece, right down to the spelling of the author's name (honestly!

So he could start his car from a distance? Far fetched.

At least it wasn't invisible.

The car kitted out with the same gadgetry that it has in the book is quite a bit of promo effort to go to, especially 40+ years ago.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

The car kitted out with the same gadgetry that it has in the book is quite a bit of promo effort to go to, especially 40+ years ago.

Yes, that's definitely true. The return of the literary Bond was met with much fanfare as the following article from Artistic Licence Renewed makes clear:

https://literary007.com/2015/12/02/john-gardners-licence-renewed-and-the-original-return-of-james-bond/