The two continuation novels penned by Christopher
Wood in the late 1970s, based on "The
Spy Who Loved Me" which
he co-wrote
with Richard Maibaum, and his solo effort "Moonraker",
are now available as e-books. Their publication means that all
of the
post-Ian Fleming 007 novels are
now available as e-books. The original titles for these continuation
novels were "James Bond,
The Spy Who Loved Me" and "James Bond and Moonraker" to
distinguish them from Ian Fleming's originals. The e-books are
available
from Amazon (Kindle), Sony and Kobo.
Major Anya Amasova had scored well in the course on ‘sex
as a weapon’, although the SMERSH report had noted a risk
of emotional attachments. James Bond was as wary of her presence
in Cairo as he was charmed by her proud self-assured beauty.
Where did the Russians find such women? But Bond was not an agent
to be distracted from his mission: someone had learned to plot
the course of nuclear submarines and, impossible as it sounded,
M told him in London that the 370-foot nuclear-powered H.M.S.
Ranger was ‘missing’.
Not since Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger has Bond locked wits with
an opponent so dedicated to his private obsession or shielded
by such deadly cunning as Sigmund Stromberg. His double-0 prefix
meant that Bond was used to death, but what Stromberg’s
killer could do with his two rows of stainless steel teeth was
an obscenity.
American space shuttles don’t just disappear. M knows
they had better not even seem to disappear when on loan to the
British Government if Anglo-American relations are to avoid taking
a pounding. So Miss Moneypenny has her instructions: find 007.
Now.
Bond’s first port of call is a dumb-founding French Renaissance
chateau and space complex in the Californian desert, where the
unlovable Hugo Drax first manufactured the shuttle Moonraker
and from which he now conducts 40 per cent of the American space
programme. As Drax’s appealing helicopter pilot Trudi puts
it, ‘What he doesn’t own he doesn’t want.’
From there to Venice, where Bond discovers a dastardly Drax
laboratory in the bowels of a Venetian glass factory which, when
he comes to reveal it, has vanished during the night. On to a
pent-house in Rio de Janeiro - so palatial that it seems
to stop just short of the Pacific coast and comes complete with
swimming pool and shapely swimmer. Outside, however, amongst
the revelling Brazilian throng, is a carnival figure sporting
an obscene set of jagged stainless steel teeth which Bond is
soon to recognize as belonging to killer Jaws. His next stop
after a deadly chase over squalling falls in a tropical rain
forest is - unbelievable - outer space.
Christopher Wood’s astonishing new Bond adventure was
written under licence from Glidrose, which owns Ian Fleming’s
copyrights, from the script he wrote for the latest Bond film.
The title James Bond and Moonraker itself retains the firmest
link between Fleming’s original story and the events that
take place on and around Hugo Drax’s malignantly conceived
space utopia. Bond is at it again - raucous, dashing, cheeky
as ever - and as the song says, nobody does it better.
