Octopussy and The Living Daylights
Octopussy and [|The Living Daylights] is the fourteenth and final James Bond book written by Ian Fleming. The book is a collection of short stories published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape on 23 June 1966, after Fleming's death in August 1964.
The book originally contained two stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights"; subsequent editions also included "The Property of a Lady" and then "007 in New York". The stories first appeared in different publications: "Octopussy" was serialised in the Daily Express in October 1965; "The Living Daylights" appeared in The Sunday Times colour supplement on 4 February 1962; "The Property of a Lady" was commissioned by Sotheby's for the 1963 edition of their journal, The Ivory Hammer; and "007 in New York" appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1963.
Many of the elements of the stories are from Fleming's own interests and experiences, including climbing in Kitzbühel, Austria, wartime commando deeds and the sea-life of Jamaica. He used the names of friends and acquaintances for characters within the stories and also used a recipe for scrambled eggs given to him by a friend.
The two original stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", were adapted for publication in comic strip format in the Daily Express in 1966–1967. Elements from the stories have also been used in the Eon Productions Bond films. Octopussy, starring Roger Moore as James Bond, was released in 1983 as the thirteenth film in the series and Fleming's story provided the background for the character Octopussy; "The Property of a Lady" was closely adapted for an auction sequence in the film. The Living Daylights, released in 1987, is the fifteenth Bond film produced by Eon and stars Timothy Dalton in his first appearance as Bond. "007 in New York" provided character and plot elements for the first two films starring Daniel Craig as Bond, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
Plots
"Octopussy"
The Secret Service operative James Bond travels to Jamaica to interview Major Dexter Smythe, a former Royal Marine officer implicated in the murder of Hannes Oberhauser, an Austrian mountain guide, and the theft of a cache of Nazi gold estimated to be £40-50,000. Bond appears only briefly in this story, which is mostly told from the perspective of Smythe. Smythe remained in Kitzbühel, Austria, after the war, found the gold with the help of Oberhauser and killed him. Bond was put on the case after the guide's body fell out of a glacier over fifteen years after the murder; Oberhauser had been Bond's skiing instructor and, as Bond describes it, "something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one".Bond chooses not to take Smythe into custody immediately, but leaves him to contemplate his options: suicide or a court martial. While hunting for a scorpion fish to feed Octopussy—an octopus that lives offshore of his beach—Smythe is stung by the fish. When he goes to feed Octopussy, he is dragged underwater by it as the poison sets in. Bond views the death as a suicide, but classifies it as an accidental drowning to spare Smythe's reputation.
"The Living Daylights"
Bond is assigned sniper duty to help a British agent—code number 272—escape from East Berlin. Bond's duty is to safeguard his crossing into West Berlin by eliminating a top KGB assassin codenamed "Trigger", who has been dispatched to kill 272. Bond takes up a position on the western edge of the border, in a hotel overlooking the no-man's land that 272 will have to cross. On each of three nights, he sees a female orchestra arrive for rehearsal and leave, and he takes particular notice of a beautiful blonde cellist. Once 272 starts to cross the border, Bond sees Trigger get in position to kill him and he realises that she is the cellist. He adjusts his aim at the last moment and shoots her weapon instead of killing her, allowing 272 to reach safety."The Property of a Lady"
The Secret Service learns that Maria Freudenstein, one of their employees known to be a double agent working for the Soviet Union, has just received a valuable item of jewellery crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé and is planning to auction it at Sotheby's. Bond suspects that the resident director of the KGB in London will attend the auction and underbid for the item to drive the price up to the value needed to pay Freudenstein for her services. Bond attends the auction, spots the man, and leaves to make arrangements for his expulsion from London as persona non grata."007 in New York"
A brief tale in which Bond muses about New York. He is on a quick mission to the city to warn a female ex-employee of MI6 that her new boyfriend is a KGB agent. It includes reference to Solange, a young lady of Bond's intimate acquaintance who works in Abercrombie's; it also includes Fleming's recipe for "scrambled eggs 'James Bond'".Background and writing history
By the time Fleming died of a heart attack on 12 August 1964, he had published eleven novels and one short story collection in his James Bond series. Eight months later his twelfth and final novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, was published. The rights to his works were held by the Fleming family-owned Glidrose Productions and the company decided that two short stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", would be published in 1966.In July 1962 Fleming was in the midst of marital troubles with his wife, Ann. While in New York he sent her a telegram saying that he needed "time to rest and reflect on our future which at present looks intolerable", and travelled to his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica. While there, he wrote "Octopussy". The story has Bond as catalyst for a narrative told in flashback, rather than as the main character for action; as such, it is told in the manner of "Quantum of Solace", a short story first published in 1959 and then included in the collection For Your Eyes Only. "Octopussy" was serialised in the Daily Express from 4–8 October 1965.
The Sunday Times decided to launch a colour magazine, to start on 4 February 1962, and asked Fleming—one of their columnists—to write an article for it. He wrote a piece titled "The Guns of James Bond", but this was rejected as being too long and specialised for the target audience; accordingly, he wrote the story of Bond as a sniper. As background research to the story, he corresponded with Captain Le Mesurier, the secretary of the British National Rifle Association at Bisley for information, and to correct some of the more specialist areas of knowledge required for sniper shooting. Fleming originally titled the story "Trigger Finger", although it was published under the title of "Berlin Escape". It was also published in the June 1962 issue of the American magazine Argosy under the same name. For The Sunday Times, Fleming had commissioned Graham Sutherland to undertake the artwork to accompany the piece, at a cost of 100 guineas, although the artwork was not used in the published edition.
File:London sothebys 09.03.2013 12-35-21.jpg|thumb|upright=1|alt=A four-storey Georgian building with the name Sotheby's on the front|The Sotheby's auction house on New Bond Street, London
"Property of a Lady", which was written in early 1963, was commissioned by Sotheby's for use in their annual journal, The Ivory Hammer, and published in November 1963. The Sotheby's chairman Peter Wilson is mentioned by name in the story. Fleming was so unhappy with the final piece, he wrote to Wilson and refused payment for something he considered so lacklustre. Fleming's original names for the piece were "The Diamond Egg" and "The Fabulous Pay-Off".
In 1959 Fleming was commissioned by The Sunday Times to travel around the world and write a series of articles based on world cities, the material for which later was collected into a book entitled Thrilling Cities. Although he liked New York, his experiences on the trip soured his view of the city, and he wrote: "Go into the first drugstore, ask your way from a passer-by, and the indifference and harshness of the New Yorker cuts the old affection for the city out of your body as sharply as a surgeon's knife." Because of his harshness toward the city, his American publishers asked him to modify the chapter; Fleming refused. By way of recompense, in August 1963 he wrote a short story from the point of view of Bond. "007 in New York" was originally titled "Reflections in a Carey Cadillac". The story was first published in the New York Herald Tribune in October 1963 as "Agent 007 in New York", but was subsequently renamed as "007 in New York" for the 1964 US editions of Thrilling Cities.
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 timelines based on episodes and situations within the novel series as a whole. Chancellor puts the events of "The Living Daylights" in October 1959; "Octopussy" in 1960; "007 in New York" in early 1961; and "The Property of a Lady" in June 1961. Griswold differs and considers "Octopussy" to have taken place in July 1960; "The Living Daylights" at the end of September to the beginning of October 1960; "The Property of a Lady" in June 1961; and "007 in New York" at the end of September 1961.
Development
Inspirations
Fleming's biographer Andrew Lycett and Chancellor consider that much of the background of "Octopussy" is directly from Fleming's own interests and experiences, including wartime commando deeds, climbing in Kitzbühel, hidden gold and the sea-life of Jamaica. Fleming had often hiked and skied in Kitzbühel in the late 1920s, while he was attending a small private school to study for entry into the Foreign Office. He knew the area well and his experiences were used as the part of the story where Smythe hunted for the gold. Fleming had an interest in octopuses and observed one—which he named "Pussy"—regularly while diving at his beach at Goldeneye; he wrote an article about the animal for The Sunday Times in 1957, "My Friend the Octopus". One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica, and later his lover, was the heiress Blanche Blackwell. She had given Fleming a coracle, which he named Octopussy; he then used the name for the story. Smythe's wartime unit, the "Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau", was a fictional version of Fleming's 30 AU unit. Fleming had a long-standing interest in hidden gold and was involved in the commissioning of an article for The Sunday Times about Nazi gold that had supposedly been dumped in Lake Toplitz, Austria.Part of the background to the plot of "The Living Daylights" included using the noise of the orchestra to cover the crossing over no-man's land. This was inspired by Pat Reid's escape from Colditz prisoner-of-war camp, during which two escapers ran across a courtyard under the cover of the noise from an orchestra. The conductor of the Colditz orchestra was Douglas Bader, who played golf with Fleming on several occasions. The assassin, Trigger, was partly based on Amaryllis, Fleming's half-sister. She was a concert cellist with blonde hair, and Fleming managed to get a passing reference to her in the story, saying: "Of course Suggia had managed to look elegant, as did that girl Amaryllis somebody." Fleming used the surname of one of his acquaintances—the wartime head of MI6, Sir Stewart Menzies—for Corporal Menzies, who aids Bond during his rifle practice at the start of the story.
Fleming was a lover of scrambled eggs and included in "007 in New York" a recipe for the dish. This originally came from May Maxwell, the housekeeper of Fleming's friend Ivar Bryce. Fleming also used her name for Bond's own housekeeper, May.