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THUNDERBALL


                                             August 04, 2009
                                             August 22, 2013
Recommended by Peter Coffin of
alt.gothic. This was one of the
few Flemings I didn't own.
Maybe not an accident?  Maybe
it's the one everyone keeps.

       Certainly this had the most
       faithful movie adaptation.
       The plot of the novel can hold
       very few surprises for us now.

       The interesting things
       are in the details.

       The frogman battle, for example,
       shows the good guys distinctly
       under-armed: they're the crew of      And Bond has no
       an American nuclear submarine,        superpowered
       they're not intended to be any        underwater drive
       kind of infantry, certainly not       at his disposal.
       underwater infantry.  They fight
       with improvised spears: knives
       mounted on broom sticks.

       Fleming continues his
       obsession with
       torture: in this           SPOILERS
       version of the story
       Domino has to stand-up     She escapes and
       to a hot cigar scene.      ultimately takes her
                                  tormentor out with a        So Bond is once
       Note though that           spear gun...                again saved by
       while the scenario                                     someone else, in
       here is essentially        Felix Leiter comments       violation of
       the ticking atomic         "I 'll never call a         Lester Dent's
       time-bomb scenario         girl a 'frail' again".      dictum.
       beloved of the
       likes of Fox and           The sexism index            Possibly, this
       Dershowitz, neither        here is much lower          works because
       Bond or his CIA            than for "Casino            the main job
       co-hort consider           Royale".                    was really
       resorting to                                           completed
       torture themselves.           And the stuff            through his
                                     said about               efforts...
          And Bond keeps             gambling is              survival is not
          reiterating that           much less nutty:         really the goal
          their hands are                                     of the game.
          tied until they            "And, after all,
          get hard evidence.         the table has no
                                     memory.  Luck, he
                                     told himself, is
   Though in the early               strictly for the
   stages, Bond has a                birds."
   good reason for
   worrying about the                Far saner than
   weakness of the evidence:         "Casino Royale":
   if he gets everyone's
   hopes up too soon,                   ODDS_ARE
   they're never going to
   forgive him if he's
   gotten it wrong.            Realistically, if
                               he says the wrong
                               word in his
                               nightly reports,
                               the operation
                               could turn into a        A nice touch: the
                               mess, as a dozen         reason Bond and
                               cooks try to get         Leiter are on
                               their hand in at         their own despite
                               the last moment.         the importance of
                                                        the mission: no
                                                        one really
                                                        believes that
                                                        Bermuda is the hot
                                                        spot.  This is a
                                                        long-shot, just a
                                                        hunch on M's part.
          Everyone keeps
          forgetting the
          urgency of the
          present situation.
          they go rambling      Felix Leiter rants
          on about almost       about being ripped
          anything:             off by hotel
                                martinis that are
                                all olive.

                                Leiter and Bond
                                lament their horrible
                                hotel food service.



Some of the more interesting material
is at the beginning, where Bond is
ordered into a health spa by M.  The        That's "Never Say Never", 
film has Bond refusing to take it           the later version, not 
seriously, smuggling in a case of           the original named  
cheese and caviar.                          "Thunderball".

The novel has Bond, despite initial
skepticism, emerging as a complete
convert -- he feels twice as              Moneypenny on the new Bond:
energetic, he's much more sensitive
to his surroundings and so on.  The       "The Old Man was like that for a
women in his life *hate* the new          couple of weeks after he had got
Bond.  Moneypenny philosophizes that      back from that damned nature-cure
it's better for men to constantly be      place.  Itt was like working for
drunk or hung-over, and when the          Gandhi or Schweitzer or someone.
"Thunderball" operation kicks in,         Then a couple of bad cases came up
Bond immediately concludes "I can't       and rattled him and one evening he
do my work on carrot-juice."  (p.76)      went to Blades-- to take his mind
                                          off things I suppose-- and the next
   It's better for super-spies to be      day he felt awful, and looked it,
   lethargic and unobservant?             and from then on he's been all right
                                          again.  I suppose he got back on the
   The idea seems to be that the          champagne cure or something.  It's
   Bonds of the world need to be          really the best for men. It makes
   all male, all yang.                    them awful, but at least they're
                                          human like that.  It's when they get
       Bond then orders a                 godlike one can't stand them."
       four egg breakfast,
       with mashers and                   -- p.58, "Fasten Your Lap-Strap"
       bacon.  For some
       reason, he prefers
       white bread toast to
       whole grain.


           I wondered if the idea might be
           that you can't be no goody-two-shoes
           and get this tough job done, but
           it doesn't seem like that's it.

           The bad guys are bad, and the good
           guys good-- there is no "Badness Gap",
           we don't need to keep up with the
           badness to compete: that's more of
           a modern disease.


                     When Bond gets the news about
                     the stolen nukes he goes  
                     from "trying to cut down" to
                     chain-smoking in the space of
                     a few minutes. (p.62)

                     And in contrast, we have
                     the opposition:

                     "He reached into his overalls and
                     took out a packet of Camels.  He
                     offered one to the killer, who
                     took it, broke it carefully in
                     half, put one behind his ear, and
                     lit the other half.  The killer          Why doesn't
                     was a man who rigidly controlled         Fleming ever
                     his weaknesses."                         call Bond
                                                              "The Killer"?
                        -- p.85, "Multiple Requiem"           That's what
                                                              the 00 is 
                                                              about, yes?

                              Maybe:

                              The bad guys are
                              fanatics, the good
                              are more "human".


         The bad guys here also have a tendency
         to kill their own at the drop of a hat.
         One is killed for failure, having gotten
         distracted by a vendetta against Bond
         which you could argue was-- at the
         outset at least-- just good, ruthless
         business: plugging a possible leak.

            The air force pilot they corrupt
            (yes, Domino's brother, though
            how that coincidence works out
            is never explained) is simply
            killed after he does the job.

              At least in this story, one of
              the bad guys starts worrying
              that the boss may be planning on
              shafting them once the payoff
              has been made...  but this is
              treated as an example of crazy
              Russian paranoia.

              This strikes me as an obvious,
              prudent worry, and one of the
              reasons that in the real world
              you can't run an operation the
              way these ruthless bad guys
              run theirs.

                 Being ruthless is
                 often not practical.     Caveat: I can't explain why
                                          Microsoft and Intel are as
                                          succesful as they are.

                                                  (Intel is a meat-grinder
                                                  for it's employees, and a
                                                  business partnership with
                                                  Microsoft is a guarantee of
                                                  expensive litigation and
                                                  little else.)

Felix Lighter lays out the case for
nuclear submarines as missle platforms
in "When the Kissing Stopped" (p. 190):
   
    "Good deterrent when you come to    
    think of it.  You don't know where  
    they are or when.  Not like the     
    bomber bases and firing pads and so 
    on you can track down and put out of
    action with your first rocket wave."
                                        
    Bond commented drily, "They'll find 
    some way of spotting them.  And     
    presumably an atomic depth charge   
    set deep would send a shock wave    
    though hundreds of miles of water   
    and blow anything to pieces over a  
    large area."                        


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