Continuity: dating the Fleming novels

Sir_James_Moloney

I'm currently re-reading the Fleming novels - just started FRWL - and there's a greater emphasis on internal continuity than in the films. But, as with everything Bond, the continuity is a bit of a mess.

Year One
CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)

Year Two
LALD takes place the following February (Bond's briefing is the first time he's seen M since "the end of last summer" following the skin graft on his hand)
MR takes place three months later in May (this is explicitly stated by Fleming in a footnote)
DAF takes place two months later in July (Bond's just returned from his leave in France and notes that MR was his last mission)

Year Three
FRWL takes place in July, almost exactly 1 year after DAF. DAF was his last mission and Bond has been living "the soft life" for a year. Tiffany Case has just moved out of his flat and back to the States.

All pretty straightforward so far.

But FRWL is where we start to hit trouble because during the SMERSH briefing General G. states that "the rocket affair [i.e. Moonraker] was three years ago" but that "the diamond smuggling affair [i.e. Diamonds Are Forever]. That was last year." It seems that this is the point where Fleming decides to retcon the dating of the novels in order to keep the stories contemporary to their publishing dates.

Just interested to hear people's thoughts on this. It's the first time I've re-read Fleming in many years and I'm sure there will be more examples as I get through the later novels. It seems clear that Fleming didn't really have a plan and just retconned the continuity as he went. Has anyone found a way of figuring out a "fan continuity" for the novels that works?

Sir_James_Moloney

Thinking about it, the easiest way to do this would be to assume that Bond went on a very similar mission to MR (received a new Beretta from M and went on leave to France) almost exactly 2 years after MR. That would make the internal continuity work as we'd have:

Year One
CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)

Year Two
LALD takes place the following February (Bond's briefing is the first time he's seen M since "the end of last summer" following the skin graft on his hand)
MR takes place three months later in May (this is explicitly stated by Fleming in a footnote) and receives a new Beretta as a gift from M and takes two weeks' leave in France.

Year Three
?

Year Four
Bond ends a mission in late Spring and receives a new Beretta as a gift from M and takes two weeks' leave in France.
DAF takes place two months later in July.

Year Five
FRWL takes place in July, almost exactly 1 year after DAF. DAF was his last mission and Bond has been living "the soft life" for a year. Tiffany Case has just moved out of his flat and back to the States.

Although it's a bit unwieldily as it leaves over 2 years of Bond's career unaccounted, means that M gives him 2 new Berettas in that time, raises a question over what exactly Bond means when he reflects that M has "recently" developed the bad habit of becoming involved in other departments' business in DAF (strongly implied to be MR and DAF in the text), and means that he's probably stretching things slightly when he tells Tiffany he's "under 40" in DAF.

Gerard

One thing is certain: TMWWTGG takes place in 1964. The clue : The Gleaner has an article which discusses the recognition by France of the People's Republic of China. So, we can infer that YOLT happens in 1962-1963 (to allow for the "big hiatus" due to Bond being amnesiac, then later brainwashed by the KGB).

Sir_James_Moloney

Thanks @Gerard. I haven't read TMWTGG in years so didn't remember that at all.

I've only been looking at the internal references to continuity up to this point and haven't even begun to look at the dates as I imagine this is where is will get really tricky. There are a few mentioned in the early novels too - we know that MR takes place in May 1954 at the earliest because Sir Hugo hosted a Coronation reception (which would have been in June 1953) and a few years are mentioned in FRWL too.

It's going to be fun piecing it all together even though I'm sure there's no way of making it all add up. Any other dates would be helpful too!

007InVT

Reading OHMSS now, seems directly after Operation Thunderball.

Sir_James_Moloney

Thanks @007InVT. Haven't read either of them in a while but I think that TSWLM maybe falls in between them (I think Bond's hunting for Blofeld in North America at the time?)

Samuel001

@Sir_James_Moloney, per Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_novels_and_short_stories#Fictional_chronologies

Sir_James_Moloney

Thanks @Samuel001. I hadn't seen that before (or heard of the chronologies.) I think that their decision to ignore any dates given by Fleming and any references to actual historical events is a good one as there would be no way of making any sort of workable chronology otherwise.

I have to say that I disagree with both sets of interpretations, dating of LALD and MR a year apart, as it's explicitly stated in the text that MR takes place a few months after LALD. Not a criticism as it's pretty much impossible to square Fleming's chronology as he plays fast and loose with it and contradicts himself.

I might have a go at doing my own as I re-read the rest of the series.

Dragonpol

There's a great book by John Griswold that covers the Bond chronologies.

007InVT

The continuity of the short stories is this, punctuated by major missions:

"Risico" October 1957
"Quantum of Solace" February 1958
"The Hildebrand Rarity" April 1958
"From a View to a Kill" May 1958
"For Your Eyes Only" September to October 1958
[Thunderball May to June 1959]
"Octopussy" June 1960
"The Living Daylights" September to October 1960
"The Property of a Lady" June 1961 June 1961
[Chapters 1–5 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service September 1961]
"007 in New York" end of September 1961 1961

Gerard

From Pearson's book, I got the impression that "The Hildebrandt Rarity" happened after the war, while Bond was unemployed.

timmer

Dragonpol wrote:

There's a great book by John Griswold that covers the Bond chronologies.

Yes, independent Bond-scholar, John Griswold already did this work. He published a book too

here's a wikipedia link to Griswold's chronology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_novels_and_short_stories#Fictional_chronologies

Another Bond-scholar Henry Chancellor, also made a chronology which broadly agrees with Griswold.

Cameron_Mott

In my opinion John Griswold definitively nailed the chronology as best it can be according to the novels.

Sir_James_Moloney

Thanks @Samuel001, @timmer and @Dragonpol for pointing me to John Griswold. I will have to read his book.

@Cameron_Mott, you may well be right. I'm up to DN now in my Fleming Marathon and it's pretty clear by this point that he's abandoned all attempts to maintain chronological continuity and is retconning the timeframe he established in earlier novels like mad. It's now "five years" since LALD. This is despite the fact that LALD, MR and (probably) DAF were all established as taking place during the same year and that FRWL was exactly one year later. Does Griswold try to explain Fleming's inconsistencies?

Dragonpol

Just get a copy of John Griswold's book to answer all and any chronolgy/ciontinuiuty questions re the Fleming Bond novels! You won't regret investing in this book. It also has encyclopedic entries for unusual terms etc.

Perdogg

"CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)"

Not so. The latest that Bond could have killed the Japanese Diplomat would have been in 1941. According to Goldfinger, the events of CR takes place in 1953 or twelve years later.

We know that FRWL takes place in 1954 since Friday August 13th, could have only taken place in the decade of the 50s in 1954.

Perdogg

007InVT wrote:

The continuity of the short stories is this, punctuated by major missions:

"Risico" October 1957
"Quantum of Solace" February 1958
"The Hildebrand Rarity" April 1958
"From a View to a Kill" May 1958
"For Your Eyes Only" September to October 1958
[Thunderball May to June 1959]
"Octopussy" June 1960
"The Living Daylights" September to October 1960
"The Property of a Lady" June 1961 June 1961
[Chapters 1–5 of On Her Majesty's Secret Service September 1961]
"007 in New York" end of September 1961 1961

Spy Who Loved Me takes place in October 1961 (Friday October 13th)

Dragonpol

Perdogg wrote:

"CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)"

Not so. The latest that Bond could have killed the Japanese Diplomat would have been in 1941. According to Goldfinger, the events of CR takes place in 1953 or twelve years later.

We know that FRWL takes place in 1954 since Friday August 13th, could have only taken place in the decade of the 50s in 1954.

Quite, Perdogg. I don't know who came up with those dates, but they're wrong, that I do know.

Sir_James_Moloney

Perdogg wrote:

"CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)"

Not so. The latest that Bond could have killed the Japanese Diplomat would have been in 1941. According to Goldfinger, the events of CR takes place in 1953 or twelve years later.

Hi @Perdogg. You're right - it's not necessarily two years.

Here's the passage from CR I was thinking of, "In the last few years I've killed two villains [...] for those two jobs I was awarded a Double O number in the service." I was misremembering it as two years. But it would be a bit of a stretch to think that "a few years" could mean 12 years. Also, it would mean that Bond doesn't kill anyone in over a decade as a OO Agent (until LALD, in fact.)

I don't remember that passage from Goldfinger. Working my way back through Fleming and now up to DN so should be coming back to this very soon. But I guess this is a perfect example of my point about Fleming not giving a damn about continuity as a "few years" suddenly becomes 12 years!

Also, I might be misremembering, but doesn't Junius Du Pont date CR as Summer '51?

Perdogg wrote:

We know that FRWL takes place in 1954 since Friday August 13th, could have only taken place in the decade of the 50s in 1954.

Dates seem to be a real problem for Fleming which is why I'm so interested to see how Griswold works his way through the mess. MR has to take place in 1954 too, as it takes place in May and we know that Drax held a coronation reception for charity the year before (Queen Elizabeth was crowned in June 1953.)

It's a tangle, isn't it?

Perdogg

I apologize. CR takes place in 51 not 53. If you read Chapter 2 of Goldfinger

"He [Mr Du Pont] Picked up his own and lit the cigarette. "France,'51, Royale les Eaux."

The events in From Russia with Love take place on Thursday August 12th. The only time this could have occurred would have been in 1954.

Perdogg

Dragonpol wrote:

Perdogg wrote:

"CR takes place in late summer (less than two years after Bond receives his 00 status)"

Not so. The latest that Bond could have killed the Japanese Diplomat would have been in 1941. According to Goldfinger, the events of CR takes place in 1953 or twelve years later.

We know that FRWL takes place in 1954 since Friday August 13th, could have only taken place in the decade of the 50s in 1954.

Quite, Perdogg. I don't know who came up with those dates, but they're wrong, that I do know.

I made a mistake about CR it was 1951 not 1953, but I stand by FRWL in 1954.

"At 730 on the morning of Thursday, August 12th, Bond awoke in his..."

Sir_James_Moloney

Perdogg wrote:

I apologize. CR takes place in 51 not 53. If you read Chapter 2 of Goldfinger

"He [Mr Du Pont] Picked up his own and lit the cigarette. "France,'51, Royale les Eaux."

So that would mean - I think - that, at the latest, he killed the Japanese diplomat and earned his licence to kill in 1939? He would have only been 15 according to his obituary in YOLT! (then again, according to the same snippet from YOLT, he would have been only 9 when he bought his 4.5ltr Bentley in 1933...)

Perdogg wrote:

The events in From Russia with Love take place on Thursday August 12th. The only time this could have occurred would have been in 1954.

That's faultless logic but the problem, aside from the point about MR and the coronation, is that the text dates it as 1955 at the earliest. Before he gets involved with the Spektor plot, Bond is appointed to a Committee of Inquiry under Paymaster Captain Troop which M had initiated "purely as a sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the Prime Minister had ordered in 1955."

Dating is not the only inconsistency in FRWL. Fleming also declares that Bond has never killed in cold blood and Bond tells Darko that his mother, "Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud" according to YOLT, is from Somerset.

Dragonpol

I think that once you get into the whole dates and continuity thing, the Bond novels and films lose some of their fun. Best not to read too much into the dates, methinks.

Dragonpol

Sir_James_Moloney wrote:

Perdogg wrote:

I apologize. CR takes place in 51 not 53. If you read Chapter 2 of Goldfinger

"He [Mr Du Pont] Picked up his own and lit the cigarette. "France,'51, Royale les Eaux."

So that would mean - I think - that, at the latest, he killed the Japanese diplomat and earned his licence to kill in 1939? He would have only been 15 according to his obituary in YOLT! (then again, according to the same snippet from YOLT, he would have been only 9 when he bought his 4.5ltr Bentley in 1933...)

Perdogg wrote:

The events in From Russia with Love take place on Thursday August 12th. The only time this could have occurred would have been in 1954.

That's faultless logic but the problem, aside from the point about MR and the coronation, is that the text dates it as 1955 at the earliest. Before he gets involved with the Spektor plot, Bond is appointed to a Committee of Inquiry under Paymaster Captain Troop which M had initiated "purely as a sop to the Privy Council Inquiry into the Security Services which the Prime Minister had ordered in 1955."

Dating is not the only inconsistency in FRWL. Fleming also declares that Bond has never killed in cold blood and Bond tells Darko that his mother, "Monique Delacroix, from the Canton de Vaud" according to YOLT, is from Somerset.

I've missed that Somerset reference. I really need to re-read FRWL, then!

Sir_James_Moloney

Just re-read TB and Felix's leg has miraculously grown back!