I'm solo again with a short episode about the third James Bond novel,
Moonraker. It's a unique entry in the Bond series, offering a glimpse at Bond's daily life while also sending him to solve a murder at a remote country estate where he meets one of the most remarkable women of his career.
Download or listen to the episode here.
1 comment:
Good morning, Michael. Long time, no talk. First of all, I'd like to thank you for this format; the reality is that I simply don't have a 3+ hour block to sit and listen to the After Lunch podcast, and I miss the nerds tremendously.
But, to business. My first encounter with Bond was via Dr. No and From Russia with Love, seen as a double feature in 1963. I was blown away, and tracked down the 11 original Fleming novels for my reading pleasure. My 14-year-old self was greatly disappointed by the very pedestrian Casino Royale. The promise of voodoo got me to read Live and Let Die, which was a thrill ride a teenager could get behind, but then Moonraker was another gab-fest, at least the first part. But I stuck it out for the closing action, and that turned out well. Once I moved on to Diamonds are Forever, the Bond we all know and love was firmly in place, and the rest of the series didn't disappoint.
I've gone back and read several of them two or three times, but Moonraker wasn't on that list... and that abominable movie didn't do anything to make me change my mind, either! But your thorough coverage of the novel here made me realize that the book was far too mature to be enjoyed by a shoot-em-up-loving 14-year-old, and I may have to track it down for another read. No, its premise would be considered ludicrous today, but the post WWII fears of resurgent Nazis and the V-2 strikes, compounded by the Soviet acquisition of The Bomb make this fly as much as anything intrinsic to the plot. You've done a great job explaining why this is a novel worth reading today, although I doubt that younger people who never lived with weekly tests of air-raid sirens and the hard-sell marketing of backyard fallout shelters would understand the subtext.
I greatly enjoyed this short format podcast, and hope to see more in the future. And say hello to the Nerds for me. I miss them!
Happy Holidays,
~ Jack "Blimprider" Tyler
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