Deathmatch 2022: Sideswipes - September 30

For me, the choice is High Time To Kill.

It has arguably the most original Bond plot, certainly the most original setting as it mostly takes place climbing up the world’s third highest mountain. It’s got good villains in Bond’s irritating and competitive rival Roland Marquis as well as the mysterious Union organization lurking in the background. You’ve got a race against time in which Bond’s mountaineering group is trying to beat two other countries up the tall mountain without going too fast and getting altitude sickness, while at the same time a mole is going around periodically sabotaging their mission. The Bond girls are top notch as is Bond’s ally Chandra Gurung. The action is good and tense, the climb is suspenseful, and the climax is highly satisfactory.

High Time To Kill is a great Bond novel and one of the top five, if not three, continuation novels in the series. :+1:

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I remember having been pleasantly surprised to learn that John Gardner finally quit his seemingly unloved task and another writer took over. Then reading Blast from the Past felt more than a little strange, an ambivalence that would hold on over Benson’s entire run. Here was an evidently serious and knowledgeable fan tasked to marry literary and film Bond, not always with the best results but usually at least with an effort to entertain.

Of his books I remember High Time to Kill the most vividly, a chase for a MacGuffin leading across Europe and into the Himalayas, a shady organisation, a nasty adversary. Other books may have the stronger scenes (the laser retina torture and Bond’s escape with a mouthful of rat for example), but High Time to Kill works best for me as a package. I think I even reread this one or two times more than I did the others.

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For September 7th:

The idiotic electorate of wherever-you-live have just voted me into office. I rule. A reign of terror shall ensue. Look, it can’t be any worse than [choice of cretin]. Told you.

I am now drunk both on power and this pert Fleurie I’ve downed for m’brekker. Despite my leader in-tray being full of considerably more serious matters, and a black sphere with a fizzing fuse in it (not sure what that is), my first act as your leader is to pass a law banning a given word appearing more than once in the title of any film or book in a franchise or series. Only one entity from that series with the word in it can survive.

Look, you’ll thank me for it - it has laid waste to Jason Bourne, Harry Potter and The Famous Five, which can only be a good thing. It was in the manifesto. I appreciate previous education cuts mean that you can’t read, but I only need you to put an X in a box every few years whilst one of my bemuscled goons pokes you in the spleen with a scimitar.

I haven’t included songs and computer games and any other cultural manifestation in the scheme as a) it’s knee-jerk populist legislation, it’s obviously full of holes and b) I’m as much of a troglodyte as [choice of cretin] and c) I’m a busy despot with peasantry to massacre.

Accordingly, you have to choose only one of the below to survive this purge. All the rest will be outlawed.

Vote or my heavily armed police will boil your feet. This is how democracy works. Later in the month (and I can’t expect my tyranny to see out the month, at least I am that self-aware) other words that make me paranoid and willing to press the big red button (Die, Kill, Live) will have to go, but for now it’s…

Forever is not Forever. Only one survives
  • Diamonds are Forever (novel)
  • Diamonds are Forever (film)
  • Nobody Lives For Ever (I’m including it)
  • Death is Forever
  • Forever and a Day

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Nobody Lives Forever is my choice. It’s one of the best continuation novels, if not THE best. It’s a great Bond story with a great premise of him being the subject of a worldwide assassination contest to stick his severed head on a silver platter for SPECTRE. It’s full of action and mystery as Bond never knows who is on his side or who and where the next attack will come from. It’s a great read. What’s not to like?

Oh, and Jim, in America, the For Ever is spelled as one word Forever over here so it would be most appropriate for NLF to be included in the above list over here.

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Ah yes, of course - thank you, Chief Cultural Adviser.

[Note to self: will have to watch this one; seems ambitious. I wonder if we have any of that iridium left?]

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I read through all the Gardner and Benson books earlier this year. I like quite a lot from Gardner (most actually), but the most enjoyable experience I had was with The Union Trilogy - and I’d rate High Time To Kill as Benson’s best. There was a real spark about everything - villains, concepts, action, etc, and reading those three books particularly made me question if Horowitz really is far and away the modern literary top dog. Both did really well with their approaches.

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He gets the nod from me purely on the strength of his prose. Horowitz simply writes better than Benson or Gardner in my opinion. There’s just a literary gap there.

Benson is not great at prose or characterization but his plots have real depth and delve into unique territory. Gardner is a better writer than Benson, but his growing disinterest in the series becomes more and more palpable as his run goes on.

Horowitz is clearly enjoying himself in all 3 of his. I also get the feeling that Benson enjoyed his tenure; he was just not the best at delivering a fully polished final product.

Again, all in my opinion. I don’t want to be accused of proclaiming my opinion as fact for everyone. Individual mileage may vary.

I am currently just over halfway through With a Mind to Kill and have Double or Nothing lined up (though my confidence level is low).

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Is this really a question?

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I went with Gardner’s Nobody Lives Forever. It’s possibly the one where he had the most fun without bogging it all down in pointless descriptions. That said, it’s also the one where I’d have preferred a longer tale, it all reads a bit hurried and breathless. But it’s good fun and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

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For September 8:

Continuing the theme of moral and creative bankruptcy, you find yourself tasked (whether or not you wanted to be) with expanding the “Bond Unlimited Multiverse” (BUM for short) for a streaming service.

What’s your first commission? The first thing that comes out of the BUM?

  • Villain Origins - using available material suggested by Fleming and the continuation authors i.e. before they fight Bond
  • Woman Origins - using available material suggested by Fleming and the continuation authors i.e. before they meet Bond
  • Women Thereafter - after they have encountered Bond, what did they go on to do (those who survived)
  • The further adventures of Felix Leiter
  • The 00 Section
  • Adapting Young Bond books
  • Licence to Mop - cleaning up (literally and diplomatically) after Bond has destroyed stuff
  • Another idea that will be explained in the thread below
  • Resigning on Day 1

0 voters

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Props on the backronym

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Ugh! That list. :nauseated_face: :grinning: Only two options even remotely entice me and those would be The Further Adventures Of Felix Leiter and Adapting Young Bond Books.

If EON were ever to do anything in the 007 universe starring anyone other than James Bond ONLY a Felix Leiter film/series would interest me. Having said that, I went with adapting the Young Bond books because it still deals with our favorite hero.

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Further Leiter, but only if it’s Jeffrey Wright. The character has been poorly served onscreen - the ghost of Jack Lord hanging over the franchise. Poor written and poorly cast, or the other way around depending on your viewpoint.

Wright, perfectly cast (and I think his scenes have been well written and clearly enjoyed by the actors), just underused.

I’ve been on the record about a good Blofeld origin story, and if Fleming took FRWL to set up Grant, then surely there’s something there too.

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My Idea is an elderly James Bond navigating the care home system. His last great mission. Think of a Ken Loach film crossed with One Flew Over The Cukoos Nest

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A Queue for a Pill

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I totally want to see Licence To Mop. It could be the Star Trek: Lower Depths of the Bondiverse. “The Double-Oh Section” would work in this capacity as well.

Fun fact: back in primary school my mate and I wrote some (very primitive) Bond fanfic based on two lesser double-Oh’s, 008 and 009, that had much more mundane assignments than their famous teammate (and were much less successful with the ladies).

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[Play suspended - will return September 10]

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I can’t decide if this is a Freudian slip or a deliberate dig, but either way it’s funny. :slight_smile:

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For September 10:

Amazingly, I am still in charge of your nation. The crowds mustered outside my very well-guarded palace are screaming my name and then “bastard” which I take as an advanced electorate celebrating the recent executive order changing the meaning of “bastard” to “big old scrumblenumpkin”. People are so nice.

Anyway, my cultural purge continues, and my edict that no book or film in a series can have the same word has done wonders to liberate us all - I am after all the Great Liberator of the Nation - from Star Trek and Star Wars and Peppa Pig. Amongst other means I have of forcing the woke liberals who push this stuff out to bend to my will, this one does actually require them to be more creative in their pursuit of their woke liberal millions of undeclared dollars.

I mean, I can use the scalpels, eye-gougers and ravenous Labradors if they prefer, and I suspect some of them might due to their intriguing perversions, but I am The Grand Benevolence. Today, anyway.

See? Told you it was for The Greater Good. It is a grand artistic triumph, just like my official portrait. No other leader would dare a nude. I mean, imagine [cretin of choice] in the nude. Makes me feel sick, and I haven’t even sipped that nice cup of tea brought to me by my bodyguard. Are purple fizzing lumps common to Earl Grey?

That brick that just flew through the window was a bit unnecessary. It’s a kind thought, but can you not see, you bastard, that the palace is made of the most wonderful bricks, people say they’re the best bricks, bricks made of gold. Mixed with the ground up pelvises of the abandoned elderly.

Anyway, as far as Bond is concerned - never say never at all. Only one of the below can survive my wrath - which is it?

  • Tomorrow Never Dies (novelisation (I will shortly ban the word novelisation))
  • Tomorrow Never Dies (film)
  • Never Say Never Again
  • Never Send Flowers
  • Never Dream of Dying

0 voters

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I am so surprised that I found myself compelled to go for NSNA…
Maybe it’s the reminder of childhood, perhaps it’s the performances of both villains. Possibly a combination of both.

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