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Colonel Sun
Novel by Kingsley Amis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham". Colonel Sun is the first James Bond continuation novel published after Ian Fleming's 1964 death. The novel centres on the fictional British Secret Service operative James Bond and his mission to track down the kidnappers of M, his superior at the Secret Service. During the mission he discovers a communist Chinese plot to cause an international incident. Bond, assisted by Ariadne Alexandrou, a Greek spy working for the Russians, finds M on a small Aegean island, rescues him and kills the two main plotters: Colonel Sun Liang-tan and a former Nazi commander, Von Richter.
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Amis drew upon a holiday he had taken in the Greek Islands to create a realistic setting and characters. He emphasised political intrigue in the plot more than Fleming had done in the canonical Bond novels, also adding revenge to Bond's motivations by including M's kidnapping. Despite keeping a format and structure similar to Fleming's Bond novels, Colonel Sun was given mixed reviews, with many reviewers commenting that Amis lacked Fleming's style in writing.
Colonel Sun was serialised in the Daily Express newspaper from 18 to 30 March 1968 and adapted as a comic strip in the same newspaper between 1969 and 1970. Elements from the story have been used in the Eon Productions Bond series: the 1999 film The World Is Not Enough used M's kidnapping; the name of the villain in the 2002 film Die Another Day, Colonel Tan-Sun Moon, comes from Colonel Sun Liang-tan; and one scene inspired an element of the 2015 film Spectre.
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Plot
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Kidnappers violently take the Secret Service chief M from his house and almost capture James Bond, who is visiting his superior. Intent on rescuing M, Bond follows the clues to Vrakonisi, one of the Aegean Islands. In the process, Bond discovers the complex military-political plans of Colonel Sun of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Sun had been sent to sabotage a Middle East détente conference which the Soviet Union is hosting. He intends to attack the conference venue and use M and Bond's bodies to blame Great Britain for the disaster, leading to a world war. Bond meets Soviet agents in Athens, led by Major Piotr Gordienko, and they realise that not only is a third country behind the kidnap, but that there is a traitor in Gordienko's organisation. An attack on the Soviet headquarters kills all the agents except Ariadne Alexandrou, a Greek Communist. As he is dying Gordienko encourages Bond and Ariadne to work together to prevent an international incident.
Ariadne persuades Niko Litsas, a former Second World War resistance fighter and friend of her late father, to help them by telling him about the involvement in the plot of a former Nazi war criminal, Von Richter. Trying to find M and Colonel Sun, Bond is nearly captured by the Russians, but is saved by Litsas. Finally, Bond finds Sun's headquarters, but is knocked out by one of Sun's men; Bond learns that Von Richter will use a mortar to destroy the conference venue and that Bond will be tortured by Sun, before his inevitable demise. Sun tortures him brutally, until one of the girls at the house is ordered by Sun to caress Bond fondly. In the process she cuts one of Bond's hands free and provides him with a knife. She tells Sun that Bond is dead: when examined Bond stabs Sun. He then frees other captives who help Bond stop Von Richter. Sun, however, survives the stab wound and kills several of the other escapees; Bond tracks down Sun and kills him. The Soviets thank Bond for saving their conference, offering him the Order of the Red Banner for his work, which he politely declines.
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Background and writing history
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Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, died in the early morning of 12 August 1964, eight months before the publication of his twelfth and final novel, The Man with the Golden Gun.[1][2][a] After his death the Fleming-family-owned Glidrose Productions (now Ian Fleming Publications) held the rights to his works and they decided to publish the short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights on 23 June 1966.[4]
Glidrose took legal advice and found the Bond character could not be copyrighted. They decided that to avoid the possibility of other people publishing works about Bond, they would commission a sequel to retain their rights in the Bond product.[5][b] Initially they approached the author James Leasor to write a continuation novel, but he declined.[7] Glidrose then commissioned the writer Kingsley Amis.[8] Fleming's wife, Ann, did not endorse any further Bond works, which she saw as cashing in on his work. She disliked Amis and said:
Since the exploiters hope Colonel Sun will be the first of a new and successful series, they may find themselves exploited. Amis will slip 'Lucky Jim' into Bond's clothing, we shall have a petit bourgeois red brick Bond, he will resent the authority of M, then the discipline of the Secret Service, and end as Philby Bond selling his country to Spectre.[9]
The Sunday Telegraph asked her to review the novel, but her resulting criticism was never published as it was thought it could have been libelous.[9][10]
Amis was known by Glidrose to be an afficionado of Fleming's novels. In 1964 Fleming's publishers, Jonathan Cape, were concerned enough about the manuscript of The Man with the Golden Gun to ask Amis to read it and give his thoughts on whether it was viable for publishing. He was paid £35 15 shillings for his thoughts and advice, although his subsequent suggestions for alterations to the plot were not used.[4][c] Cape had taken the step because they thought the novel was not up to Fleming's usual standard.[4] In 1965 Amis wrote The James Bond Dossier—a critical analysis of the Bond books under his own name—and The Book of Bond, a tongue-in-cheek manual for prospective agents, published using the pseudonym Lt.-Col. William ("Bill") Tanner.[12] The novelist Sally Beauman observed that it was "unusual, not to say unprecedented, for an established author to pick up the torch" in the way Amis did with the Bond novels, although she thought that "Bond [is] too big, and too profitable, a property to be placed in the hands of an unknown".[13]
When deciding where to set the novel, Amis considered several locations, but was persuaded on Greece after he was invited to join friends who summered there every year. He later explained his thought process:
Greece? Yes—Bond never been, I never been, sounds good, islands just right. Also, Eastern Mediterranean a sphere of Russian expansion, British interests there too. (This was September 1965.) But Russia versus Britain too old-hat. Then Red China versus Britain and also versus Russia. So Bond could team up with Russian agent. Female. Tough, like all Bond’s girls. And Red China as villain is both new to Bond and obvious in the right kind of way. And Chinese master-villain would be fun ...[14]
In May 1967 Amis wrote to his friend, the poet Philip Larkin and mentioned that he had finished writing the novel.[15][16]
Glidrose decided to publish Amis's novel under the pseudonym Robert Markham. Fleming's bother, the writer Peter Fleming, suggested the name "George Glidrose", but this was rejected and Markham chosen instead.[4] The initial thought was that the Markham name would be used for all future Bond novels, regardless of who the author was, but Colonel Sun was the only one published under the name.[17]
Colonel Sun is set a year or so after the events depicted in The Man with the Golden Gun.[17] Although Fleming did not date the events within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—have identified an in-universe timeline: Chancellor put the events of The Man with the Golden Gun in 1963; Griswold is more precise and considers the story to have taken place between November 1963 and the end of February 1964.[18][19][d]
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Development
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Inspirations
Amis and his wife Jane spent September 1965 holidaying on the Greek island of Spetses. He Amis used the experience to provide the background to Colonel Sun.[20] Amis followed a tradition set by Fleming of using the names of people he knew or had met during the researches for his book[21] and he drew on the names of people he met in Greece for the novel. The boat Bond uses—The Altair—was the name of the boat Amis and his wife used on holiday, while the Bond girl's fictitious colleagues, "Legakis" and "Papadogonas" were friends who helped Amis in Greece, while the doctor who treats Bond in Chapter two was named after Amis and Jane's own doctor.[22]
Characters
Raymond Benson—the author of the continuation Bond novels—considers Amis's version of Bond to be close to that developed by Fleming. Benson describes this personality as a natural continuation of the Bond developed in the final three Fleming novels. In all three novels, the events take a toll on Bond: he loses his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; he loses his memory in Japan in You Only Live Twice; and he is brainwashed in Russia, is de-programmed by MI6 and almost dies from Francisco Scaramanga's poisoned bullet in The Man with the Golden Gun.[23] Benson also sees a humourless side to the character, one which Fleming used in his earlier novels.[24]
The main villain of the novel is Colonel Sun Liang-tan (Chinese: 孙良坦; pinyin: Sūn Liángtǎn). Sun is a member of the Special Activities Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army as well as a sadist and skilled torturer. Benson calls him "very worthy of inclusion in the Bond saga".[25] Sun is a sadist and desires power over an individual and the ability to hurt them solely for the sake of causing pain. After Bond has been captured, Sun explains to him his approach to torture:[26]
You must understand that I'm not the slightest bit interested in studying resistance to pain or any such pseudo-scientific claptrap. I just want to torture people. But—this is the point—not for any selfish reason, unless you call a saint or a martyr selfish. As de Sade explains in The Philosopher in the Boudoir, through cruelty one rises to heights of superhuman awareness, of sensitivity to new modes of being, that can’t be attained by any other method.[27]
The cultural historian Jeremy Black sees similarities between Sun and Fleming's villain Julius No from the 1958 novel Dr. No because of the Chinese villains used in both. In both books the characters are shown as having a disregard for human life.[28] The reviewer John Dugdale, in a 2018 retrospective review, called Sun "the most repellent racial caricature of all, a descendant of Fu Manchu and other fiendish orientals".[29]
The role of M in the novel changed from that the character had played in Fleming's works. Instead of being the figure who instructs Bond on his mission, he becomes the cause of the mission. The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and Tony Bennett consider that as M does not give Bond's mission its necessary ideological perspective, Bond's "duel with Colonel Sun becomes little more than a personalised feud.[30] Amis did not like the character of M and, as one reviewer pointed out, had "spent a chapter running him down" in The James Bond Dossier.[31] Benson considered that M's character evokes an emotional response from the reader because of the change from his usual, business-like manner to a semi-catatonic state upon being kidnapped.[25]
Themes
Benson observes an increased level of political intrigue in Colonel Sun compared to the earlier Bond novels. Bond acts in concert with the Russians against the Chinese, which Benson sees as demonstrating the theme of peacekeeping between nations.[24] Black considers the novel reflects the realities of the late-1960s as China had developed hydrogen bomb capability in 1967 and the Sino-Soviet split that took place across the 1960s culminated in 1969 with the Sino-Soviet border conflict. Reflecting this, the novel shows a shift in the balance of world power away from two-party Cold War politics.[32]
Black observes an emotional and social sadness throughout Colonel Sun. The social sadness is a reaction to the culture of modernity and mourning what was being lost in its place. In England Amis describes "the ugly rash of modern housing – half-heartedly mock-Tudor villas, bungalows and two-storey boxes with a senseless variegation of planking, brick and crazy paving on the front of each and the inevitable TV aerial sprouting from every roof";[33] in Greece he writes:[34]
In thirty years, he reflected, perhaps sooner, there would be one vast undifferentiated culture, one complex of super-highways, hot-dog stands and neon, interrupted only by the Atlantic, stretching from Los Angeles to Jerusalem; possibly, by then, as far as Calcutta, three-quarters of the way round the world. Where there had been Americans and British and French and Italians and Greeks and the rest, there would be only citizens of the West, uniformly affluent, uniformly ridden by guilt and neurosis, uniformly alcoholic and suicidal, uniformly everything.[35]
This treatment by Amis is similar to Fleming's nostalgia in describing Paris in "From a View to a Kill".[36] Benson identifies Bond's desire for revenge as a central theme of the novel. The plot centres on Bond's need to avenge the death of the Hammonds and M's kidnapping. Benson describes this as particularly striking: "Bond is particularly brutal in achieving his goal ... The revenge is very satisfying. This is Bond at his toughest."[24]
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Publication and reception
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Publication history
Jonathan Cape published Colonel Sun on 28 March 1968;[37] the book was 255 pages long and priced at a guinea.[38][e] It was listed as the second best seller in the "Books in demand" list of the Financial Times for March and April 1968.[37][40] The novel sold well and the journalist and author Eric Hiscock states that by 1980 it had sold over 500,000 copies worldwide.[41] The paperback version was also popular and was reprinted ten times in three years.[42] Harper & Row published Colonel Sun in the US on 1 May 1968;[43] it ran to 244 pages.[44] In June 1969 the book was listed seventh in The Washington Post's paperback best seller list.[45]
Reception
Colonel Sun received mixed reviews from the critics; Benson considers this is because of the different styles between Amis and Fleming.[46] Many of the critics reviewed the novel not just on its own merits, but also compared it to Fleming's works.[f] Roger Baker, writing in The Times, considered that from while Colonel Sun was a good thriller, it was different, given it was a recreation of Bond, and one written by Amis. Baker sees the novel does not include "the patina of sophisticated hedonism that made Bond the great pop-hero" and that the writing lacks Fleming's "off-beat kinkiness".[47] Baker thought that with Amis writing the story, "one might, justifiably, have expected a joyous rejuvenation or at least a devastating detour from the Fleming pattern. We get neither. It is a pale copy."[47] Writing in The Guardian, Malcolm Bradbury thought the book readable, but that it was not representative of either Fleming or Amis. He thought it lacked "a convincing rhetoric ... and the traditional Fleming frissons emerge only in muted form".[49] Maurice Richardson, reviewing for The Observer, thought it was what he described as Fleming's "spontaneous élan" that was missing from the novel. He continued that Amis tried to keep the novel credible, but "missed ... [Fleming's] particular ambience, especially that infections, cocky sense of well-being".[50]
S. K. Oberbeck, writing in Chicago Tribune, sees the character of Bond changed under Amis, humanising him into "a sensitive man-of-ethics"; this adversely affected the formula Fleming used when writing.[51] Donald Stanley, writing in Life magazine was unconvinced by the changes to Bond, observing that his "essential swinishness is being replaced by some kind of dilute humanism".[31] Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, the writer Simon Gray, unimpressed with the novel, called the Bond in Colonel Sun "a chuckle-headed imposter whose arthritic thought processes would be a liability in a 'physical tussle' down at the pub".[38] Sally Beauman, writing for New York, complains that Bond is far too gloomy and is more like one of Ingmar Bergman's characters than Fleming's.[13]
Several reviewers liked Amis's interpretation of Fleming's universe.[g] D. J. Enright, writing in The Listener, considered that, in literary terms, Fleming's "inheritance has been well and aptly bestowed", calling it "Good dirty fun, once read and soon forgotten".[52] The Daily Mirror's reviewer, Alexander Muir, considered the book to be "an exciting, violent, sadistic and sexy piece of reading matter".[48] Stanley praised Amis for emulating "the celebrated Fleming Effect".[31] The reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin, stated that he still enjoyed the novel, saying that it left "intact the reputations of both Messrs. Amis and Fleming",[43] although he thought that it "lacks the garish, outrageous, ridiculous, symbol-witted touch of the original article".[43]
Bradbury called the novel "a reasonable read but no more: neither vintage Fleming nor vintage Amis."[49] Bradbury also noted that "it lacks a convincing rhetoric ... and the traditional Fleming frissons emerge only in muted form."[49] Oberbeck, thought Amis "never quite captures the bizarre beat of a Fleming pace".[51] Richardson wrote that when being judged as a thriller, the novel "is vigorous, quite exciting, rather disorderly, a bit laboured".[50] Beauman believed that Amis had ensured all the usual elements of Fleming's novels were there—an exotic location, lots of gunplay, a beautiful female character and a strong villain—yet, she wrote, "the book drags and becomes a bore". She attributes the novel's failure to the "differing characters of the authors".[13]
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Adaptations
Colonel Sun was serialised on a daily basis in the Daily Express from 18 March 1968[53] to 30 March 1968.[54] Colonel Sun is the only non-Fleming Bond novel adapted as a comic strip by the Daily Express. It was written by Jim Lawrence and drawn by Yaroslav Horak and published from 1 December 1969 to 20 August 1970; it was subsequently syndicated worldwide.[55] In December 2005 Titan Books reprinted Colonel Sun and included River of Death, another original James Bond comic strip story published before the Colonel Sun strip in 1969.[56] Titan reissued the strip again in The James Bond Omnibus Vol. 003, published in 2012.[57]
Elements of Colonel Sun have been used in the series of Bond films by Eon Productions and the kidnapping of M was used as a plot device in the 1999 film The World Is Not Enough.[58] For the 2002 film Die Another Day, Eon wanted to use the name Colonel Sun Liang-tan for the main villain, but when the Fleming estate insisted on royalties for its use, Eon changed the name to Colonel Tan-Sun Moon.[59] A scene in Colonel Sun also inspired an element of the 2015 film Spectre.[60]
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See also
Notes and references
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