Licence Expired: the Unauthorized James Bond

Comments

• Walecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service

  December 2016 Posts: 3,157

  @stag? Terrible? I enjoyed it a lot.
• Jaggedpulp

  December 2016 Posts: 20

  Where is the best place to get this for someone based in the UK?
• ClarkDevlin Martinis, Girls and Guns

  December 2016 Posts: 15,423

  I don't think outside Canada you can. It's illegal every place else where Bond isn't public domain.
• Dragonpol The Crazy World of David Dragonpol

  December 2016 Posts: 14,770

  Jaggedpulp wrote: »

  Where is the best place to get this for someone based in the UK?

  
  It seems there are channels on the Internet...
  
  
• QuantumOrganization We have people everywhere

  December 2016 Posts: 1,187

  Walecs wrote: »

  @QuantumOrganization
  
  It's just awful fanfiction.
  
  Cool username and pic, by the way. Welcome to the boards.

  Thanks! I like your family crest!
  
  
• stag In the thick of it!

  December 2016 Posts: 943

  Walecs wrote: »

  @stag? Terrible? I enjoyed it a lot.

  
  Personally I found it tedious in the extreme. As one commentator pointed out at the time, had the British government not made such a fuss it would have sold just a few copies before disappearing into oblivion.
  
  
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  January 2020 edited January 2020 Posts: 9,152

  Picking up on this Canada scenario playing out, so I'm aware Fleming and Bond material became public domain in Canada. 2015, Independent Toronto ChiZine Publications published an anthology of short stories Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond. Only available in Canada as noted in the OP. And including a contribution from Ian McLaughlin.
  
  

  

  

  A Dirty Business
  in Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond

  https://www.iainmclaughlin.co.uk/james-bond
  A Dirty Business
  

  In Paris, James Bond meets his match over appetizers and cocktails—with an aperitif of industrial espionage and chilly sadism. Off the coast of Australia, he learns about a whole new level of betrayal under the scorching light of a ball of thunder. In Siberia, he dreams of endless carnage while his fate is decided by one of his most cunning enemies and perhaps the greatest of his many loves.
  
  And in Canada—where Ian Fleming’s work has entered public domain—James Bond finds freedom.
  
  Licence Expired: The Unauthorized James Bond lives in this shadow space of copyright law: a collection of nineteen new, exciting, transformative James Bond stories by a diverse crew of 21st-century authors. Collected herein are new stories about Secret Agent 007, as the late Ian Fleming imagined and described him: a psychically wounded veteran of the Second World War and soldier of the Cold War, who treated his accumulated injuries with sex, alcohol, nicotine, and adrenaline. He was a good lover … but a terrible prospect.
  
  He was James Bond.
  
  And in Licence Expired, he’s back in action.

  Introduction by Matt Sherman
  • Foreword: The Bitch is Dead Now by David Nickle
  • “One Is Sorrow” by Jacqueline Baker
  • “The Gale of the World” by Robert J. Wiersema
  • “Red Indians” by Richard Lee Byers
  • “The Gladiator Lie” by Kelly Robson
  • “Half the Sky” by E.L. Chen
  • “In Havana” by Jeffrey Ford
  • “Mastering the Art of French Killing” by Michael Skeet

  • “A Dirty Business” by Iain McLaughlin

  • “Sorrow’s Spy” by Catherine McLeod
  • “Mosaic” by Karl Schroeder
  • “The Spy Who Remembered Me” by James Alan Gardner
  • “Daedelus” by Jamie Mason
  • “Through Your Eyes Only” by A.M. Dellamonica
  • “Two Graves” by Ian Rogers
  • “No Mr. Bond” by Charles Stross
  • “The Man with the Beholden Gun: an e-pistol-ary story by some other Ian Fleming” by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
  • “The Cyclorama” by Laird Barron
  • “You Never Love Once” by Claude Lalumière
  • “Not an Honourable Disease” by Corey Redekop
  • Afterword by Madeline Ashby

  Notes
  There are some characters that become part of your life without you really becoming aware of it. They're part of the social consciousness. I am immensely fortunate to have written for a number of them... Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes, Dennis the Menace, The Broons... and in 2015 I was incredibly pleased to add James Bond, 007 himself, to the list. Licence Expired, The Unauthorised James Bond was published in November 2015 in Canada where Bond has dropped out of copyright and into public domain. There's a real buzz in writing for a flawed hero like Bond. My story was titled "A Dirty Business".
  
  Writing Bond was an interesting challenge. There are so many iterations of the character that if you're not careful they can seep into the thought process when I'm typing away. I definitely tried hard to focus on Fleming's Bond and re-read a couple of Fleming novels before starting. I wanted anyone reading it to recognise this as the 007 of Fleming, not the film version, not John Gardner's Bond or Raymond Benson's. Bond has flaws, he has failings, he has his duty and he doesn't always like it. He doesn't always follow orders exactly to the letter either.
  
  The brief for this book was to do something different with Bond, and some of the authors really took that to heart. I know that some of the stories received mixed reviews. That's unavoidable in a book like this. When I was wondering what to do, I was limited by the fact that I felt it needed to feel like Fleming. I've always had doubts about the UK being a bit too eager to please America. British politicians can't stop themselves from fawning over their counterparts from the States, whether it's Tony Blair with George Dubya Bush or the current (at the time of typing in September 2017 though I hope she won't be when you read this) Prime Minister and the current (who who will hopefully be in jail by the time you read this) President of America. Our politicians are just a bit too eager to please for my tastes, and I wondered about Bond landing a job that's actually Britain doing America's dirty work. That felt like a contemporary theme and that was enough for me to give me just enough separation from Ian Fleming while still using Fleming's tropes and attitudes in the writing.
  
  The first draft of this ran to about 6400 words but in tidying it up I brought it down to exactly 5000. The only trims I regret making are at the start. Bond's scene with M was originally longer and the travelogue of him going to the island was more extensive and went into his boredom and his dislike for nuns. It didn't give the plot a huge amount extra but it gave that extra flavour of Bond. Ian Fleming did these lovely bits that sometimes feel self-indulgent... but self-indulgence is a theme of the Bonds, so it works.
  
  I actually wrote first drafts of three pieces and then selected the one I thought best. One,
  "Spider in the Web", was the opening chapter of a novel and finished on a real zinger of a historical incident - the idea being that the reader would have been disappointed to get only that chapter - while the other was "The Enemy Within", which I think had something but needed a lot of polishing. They both needed more Bond-like titles. I had a fourth idea, for an ageing Bond in his 80s who realises that he's dying and who leaves the nursing home he's been forced into in order to take one final mission, knowing he would die on it. That never got past the first few paragraphs. I just didn't want to write that Bond.
  

  
  And there is the example Bond Unknown, two Bond stories by Edward M. Erdelac aka @DrNo.
  
  

  

  https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/18207/bond-unknown-from-april-moon-books-james-bond-vs-cthulhu
  
  On Iaian McLaughlin's website there is a promotion for his future Bond novels.

  More 007 in Canada in 2019
  
  FIREWALKER
  
  FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY
  
  

  
  I also see an updated timeline to publish.

  https://mediaprocessor.websimages.com/width/145/crop/0,0,145x224/www.iainmclaughlin.co.uk/For-Queen-and-Country-cover-b.jpg

  FIREWALKER
  Winter 2020
  More info as it becomes available
  Only to be available in Canada.

  
  
  Can any Nade in Station C tracking these developments give a report on what's been published by Canadia. Of course comments on quality are welcome.
  
  

  
  
  
  

  

  
  
• Thunderfinger Enemy of the state

  January 2020 Posts: 41,656

  So that is where the Mosaic title stemmed from.
• RichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.

  November 2020 Posts: 9,152

  Came across this Canada item, floated as parody and satire in 2013. I know some are already aware, sharing here for completeness.
  
  Click on the Amazon link, then the cover image to access some pages.
  
  

  
  
  Contents

  

  The Last Temptation of Bond, Kimmy Beach, 2013

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16249683-the-last-temptation-of-bond
  
  Poet Kimmy Beach has succeeded where every Bond villain has failed: to kill 007.
  
  Paperback, 114 pages
  Published March 1st 2013 by University of Alberta Press (first published January 1st 2013)
  Literary Awards: London Book Festival Nominee for Poetry (Runner-Up) (2013)

  

  007 in Verse: James Bond Returns in New
  Book... of Poetry

  http://doubleosection.blogspot.com/2013/04/james-bond-returns-in-new-book-of-poetry.html
  
  

  

  The Last Temptation of Bond (Robert Kroetsch Series) Paperback – March 1, 2013
  by Kimmy Beach (Author)

  https://www.amazon.com/Last-Temptation-Bond-Robert-Kroetsch/dp/0888646437
  
  ...you can't stop it. everyone's expendable, James. everyone's replaceable. even you. especially you. In a penetrating, violent, sexy, and often hilarious apocalypse, a world-famous superspy meets his demise at the hands of an audacious, painstaking poet. Kimmy Beach fuses popular culture and narrative poetry to astonishing effect in this, her fifth book. Feasting on the tropes, traps, and types of the James Bond mythos and doubling back on the incendiary narrative of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, Beach and her cast of loved-and-left Bond Girls dismantle the man and his mysteries. Fans of Beach's tenacious poetry and readers seeking redemption in explosive narrative and fearless wit will love The Last Temptation of Bond.
  

  Front Flap: Kimmy Beach's The Last Temptation of Bond is a frisky and erudite romp into the world of pop culture icon, James Bond. As 007 comes to terms with his own mortality, the women in his life (and there are many), circle in for the kill. Parodies of pop culture have long been Beach's trademark territory, but what sets The Last Temptation of Bond apart from her previous work is the ease with which she straddles the perceived divide between contemporary pop culture and modernist literature. Raunchy and irreverent, The Last Temptation of Bond will appeal to the rabble and the literary aesthetes.

  Back Cover:
  Quote 1: Especially You you can't stop it. everyone's expendable, James. everyone's replaceable. even you. especially you.
  Quote 2: Making a Vesper Martini for You you pull me to you. I feel the Walther P99 under your dinner jacket. (damn it, I always have a bruise there.) you take my mouth. I taste lemon and dry gin, the precursor to your leaving. the edges of your jacket brush me as you turn to go, the screen door banging behind you. I lock the door, pour myself another, watch The Spy Who Loved Me. looking for the real you.

  Back Flap: Kimmy Beach is the author of four collections of poetry. Her second, Alarum Within: theatre poems has twice been adapted as a stage play. Kimmy has served as Writer in Residence for the Writers Guild of Alberta, the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild, and the Parkland Regional Library. Her work has appeared widely in journals across Canada and in the UK. She lives in Red Deer. Visit her online at www.kimmybeach.com. Other books by Kimmy Beach: Nice Day for Murder: poems for James Cagney, Alarum Within: theatre poems, fake Paul, in Cars.