Once she makes an appearance in the movies, it’ll probably happen. I don’t think that IFP would sink that low. I wish that the Jinx spinoff would have given a novelization, as 2002-2008 should have had a few more books like that and Everything or Nothing by Raymond Benson. We know that James Bond will return, it’s just a matter of when. I’ve always been a fan of Q, he deserves at least one story to himself (or herself if we get there again one day). Maybe they can use the subplot from SP of Q being kidnapped by SPECTRE in the future.
Still can’t get over the ludicrous title „Quantum of Menace“.
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The more I think about it, the more lidicrous I think this is. It’s a typical case of “we want to do something Bondian to get the fans’ money, but we haven’t worked enough to deliver a good Bond story, so we’ll just lazilly come up with a side-story for a by-character”. Lazy and greedy. I’ll pass…
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Especially after EON getting so much flak for the use of words which apparently many critics were not aware of.
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Completely agreed. There was so much complaining about that word, and about the film in general, that EON did their usual thing and completely distanced themselves from the film with Skyfall to the point of derailing the new continuity from a narrative standpoint, only to later double down on one of the things people complained about by going back to it in the title of this new “James Bond” adventure.
I do wonder if we’ll find out that this new Bond universe is a bit like the 60s version of Casino Royale. Perhaps we’ll find out that all of these new 00 Agents, Q, Moneypenny, and the whole lot, are actually just various James Bonds that are there to confuse not only the enemy, but the readers themselves.
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It fits with the other titles for a planned trilogy:
“Scintilla of Suspense”
“Iota of Intrigue”
They don’t want over-promise.
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Do IFP have the right to use the Quantum organisation or would Eon need to approve it? It seems like Quantum would have to be involved in the plot but then again I wouldnt be suprised if it’s just intentional baiting by IFP (which I can’t imagine Eon would be happy about).
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Good question. I suppose as an invention of the film series the organisation itself would be off limits for the books - unless Eon agrees to it being used. I doubt it’s going to feature in this Q-mystery.
If it doesn’t (and how could that make sense?) the title gets even sillier.
Up next:
-A thunderball of catnip
-Moonraking my garden
-Octopussy for desert
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Nah, I doubt they can use the organisation itself, without EON’s approval. This is more a reference to the title of the short story, while also no doubt tying into quantum computing in some way.
Mind you, Kim Sherwood’s first book did make a reference to 006 being a former friend of Bond’s who turned rogue…
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What a fresh idea.
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All double-Ohs save Bond either go rogue, get killed or both. Similarly, all Starship captains except Kirk go insane (Decker, Tracy, Garth) or are incompetent (Estevez, Styles, Harriman).
Luckily one or two rare individuals manage to emerge as heroes in spite of everything, but on the whole the success rates of the training programs for both MI-6 and Starfleet is in the negative range.
Maybe the key is to be named “James”?
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The training sessions apparently lend themselves to a mockumentary like „The Office“.
Note to EON/Amazon: clear rights to the title „Rogue Nation“. Damn, too late. Then „Quantum of Mania“?
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Then there’s also the fact that the 00 Section suddenly had a surge in fatalities during the 80’s.
009 is killed in 1983. Then 003 in 1985. 006 in 1986. Finally 004 in 1987.
This, on top of the fact that 002 couldn’t even pass a simple training exercise in 1987, and 007 going rogue in 1989…
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Maybe an agent’s number is based on the scores they earned in Survival Training, and there’s an implied decimal in front of those zeroes.
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In Thunderball, when the various 00 receive their assignment in that large hall, there are nine seats occupied, including Bond himself, are they all secret agents from the 00 department and have they all been mentioned in a film or murdered?
It’s what the Bond franchise has been built on for the past couple of decades: stale ideas.
Moneypenny says, “Every double-oh man in Europe’s been rushed in…” so it’s certainly implied that’s who’s in those nine seats. Also note that if you count from Bond’s left, seat #7 was saved for him, implying that the numbers run 001 to 009, even though the Fleming novels established that (1) the section usually had three agents at any given time and (2) at one point there was a 0011.
The list of KIAs is upthread, but it’s reasonable to assume the numbers were reassigned when the former owners died. I would add that Bill Fairbanks, the dead agent mentioned in TMWTGG, was a 002, meaning we’ve actually seen two fatalities with that number. Also 008 has been mentioned twice: once by Bond in GF when he says 008 will replace him should he fail, then again in TLD when M says he’ll call in 008 to kill Pushkin since Bond can’t follow orders. This was always an interesting subplot to me; the idea that 007 for all his successes might live in the shadow of a slightly better agent that we never see. Like the old Hertz ads, he’s #2 so he tries harder. LOL
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In the Fleming novels, Bond is already established in Moonraker as being the senior-most 00 agent. Bear in mind, that as per the timeline established in later novels (and adopted by Horowitz in Forever and a Day), Bond would only have been 007 for a few years by the time of Moonraker 
00’s have a very short life expectancy, indeed…
There are plenty of times in the films (and a few times in the novels too, iirc) that Bond is explicitly said to be the ‘top man’ or the ‘best we have’. And unless you assume that the other 00’s are also routinely saving the world, its hard to argue against that. But I think the thing with 008, and possibly other 00’s as well, is that they’re more likely to follow orders without any complications, unlike Bond. They don’t give M or the Service any trouble, but they’re not as good as Bond, whose maverick tendencies are what more often than not save the day.
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I had always assumed Bond’s time as a 00 would have been relatively short.
Remember people in military-type professions usually retire in their early 40’s. If Bond was a Naval commander he would have already put a pretty full career in the Navy and be in his mid 30’s by the time he started as a 00.
If the 00 section was real I’d guess the average career to be maybe only 8 years?
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