thunderball

THUNDERBALL by Ian Fleming

(1961) 2004. Penguin Modern Classics. Paperback.

This is the archetypal Janes Bond story, thanks to its treatment in two
James Bond movies and also its take-off in the first and best Austin
Powers film, "International Man of Mystery".

With SMERSH disbanded (this is probably a true political event) Ian
Fleming is forced to create new villains. In the short story
collection For Your Eyes Only, he toyed with a small third-party group
in the story "From a View to a Kill". In Thunderball he goes the whole
way with SPECTRE, an organised group of super-villains who have made
millions over the six years of their existence and will perform one
final great criminal act. They'll steal two atomic weapons and ransom
the world for one hunderd million pounds.

I have a memory that Ian Fleming was working on this story with
another writer and there were some editions with joint-authorship but
this edition is credited to Fleming only (I'll check the internet
later and see what it comes up with). The book is very well written
and I expected its final hundred pages to be pretty hard going because
I already knew the story, but it went by very well indeed. This is
possibly on a par with Moonraker as the equal third best James Bond
book and, as I said before, the archetypal Bond story.

The electrocution of a SPECTRE member at their meeting was too good a
scene not for Austin Powers to parody, together with ransoming the
world for (dramatic pause) ONE MILLION DOLLARS! The original Sean
Connery Thunderball movie won an award for the underwater finale
special effects. The theme song is very similar to the Goldfinger
song, and is sung by then up-and-comer Tom Jones. The whole story was
basically re-filmed for the non-Brocolli. non-canonical 1980s Sean
Connery bonus final outing as James Bond, "Never Say Never
Again". Never Say Never Again came out about the same time as the
official Roger Moore film Octopussy, and did a lot better.

Stolen Atomic Weapons. A luxury super-yacht called the Disco
Volante. Blofeld's Number Two, Emilio Largo, has a beautiful Italian
mistress Domino, whose brother Petacci was involved in the theft of
the missiles. Put all these elements together, and you've got
Thunderball.

The health spa episode at the start works very well. This is an
excellent book and a fine finish to my third trio of James
Bond books: Goldfinger, For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball.

Authorship: Jack Whittington collaborated with Kevin McClory and Ian
Fleming and created several versions of the Thunderball story in 1960,
which Fleming used as the ninth James Bond novel. Some versions of the
book had the addendum "based on the screen treatment by Kevin McClory,
Jack Whittington, and Ian Fleming" and the very fine print of the
publised by Penguin Group page includes this sentence, although
amusingly Kevin and Jack are initialled. The Penguin addendum reads:

This story is based on the screen treatment by K. McClory,
J. Whittington and Ian Fleming.

Ian Fleming had to overcome a lawsuit from the aggreived co-writers;
the addendum was probably the outcome of that lawsuit.

                                             27th February 2024

My book reviews are at https://github.com/stucooper/booksiveread