The Living Daylights (short story)
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''Octopussy and The Living Daylights'' (sometimes published as ''Octopussy'') is the 14th and final James Bond book written by
Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...
in the Bond series. The book is a collection of short stories published posthumously in the United Kingdom by
Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
on 23 June 1966. The book originally contained two stories, "
Octopussy ''Octopussy'' is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by John Glen and the screenplay was written by G ...
" and "
The Living Daylights ''The Living Daylights'' is a 1987 spy film, the fifteenth entry in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by John Glen, the film's ...
", with subsequent editions also including "
The Property of a Lady ''Octopussy and The Living Daylights'' (sometimes published as ''Octopussy'') is the 14th and final James Bond book written by Ian Fleming in the Bond series. The book is a collection of short stories published posthumously in the United Kin ...
" and then " 007 in New York". The stories were first published in different publications, with "Octopussy" first serialised in the ''
Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'' in October 1965. "The Living Daylights" had first appeared in '' The Sunday Times'' on 4 February 1962; "The Property of a Lady" was commissioned by Sotheby's for the 1963 edition of their journal, ''The Ivory Hammer''; while "007 in New York" first appeared in the ''
New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...
'' in October 1963. The two original stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", were both adapted for publication in
comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...
format in the ''Daily Express'' in 1966–1967. Elements from the stories have also been used in the Eon Productions Bond films. The first, ''
Octopussy ''Octopussy'' is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by John Glen and the screenplay was written by G ...
'', starring
Roger Moore Sir Roger George Moore (14 October 192723 May 2017) was an English actor. He was the third actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in seven feature films between 19 ...
as James Bond, was released in 1983 as the 13th film in the series and provided the
back story A backstory, background story, back-story, or background is a set of events invented for a plot, presented as preceding and leading up to that plot. It is a literary device of a narrative history all chronologically earlier than the narrative of p ...
for the film Octopussy's family, while "The Property of a Lady" was more closely adapted for an auction sequence in the film. ''
The Living Daylights ''The Living Daylights'' is a 1987 spy film, the fifteenth entry in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by John Glen, the film's ...
'', released in 1987, was the 15th Bond film produced by Eon and starred Timothy Dalton in his first appearance as Bond. "007 in New York", meanwhile, provided character and plot elements for the first two films starring Daniel Craig as Bond, '' Casino Royale'' and ''
Quantum of Solace ''Quantum of Solace'' is a 2008 spy film and the twenty-second in the List of James Bond films, ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sequel to Casino Royale (2006 film), ''Casino Royale'' (2006). Directed by Marc Forst ...
''. In 2008, the stories in ''Octopussy and the Living Daylights'' were combined with those of '' For Your Eyes Only'' to form a new Penguin Books compilation titled ''Quantum of Solace'' as a tie-in with the film.


Plots


"Octopussy"

Secret Service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For ...
operative James Bond, code name 007, is assigned to apprehend a hero of the Second World War implicated in a murder involving a cache of
Nazi gold Nazi gold (german: Raubgold, "stolen gold") is gold possessed by Nazi Germany. Much of the focus of the discussion is about how much of this was transferred by Germany to overseas banks during World War II; the ruling Nazi party executed a policy o ...
. Bond appears only briefly in this story, which is told mostly in flashback from the perspective of Major Dexter Smythe, the man Bond has been sent to bring in. Smythe remained in
Kitzbühel Kitzbühel (, also: ; ) is a medieval town situated in the Kitzbühel Alps along the river Kitzbüheler Ache in Tyrol, Austria, about east of the state capital Innsbruck and is the administrative centre of the Kitzbühel district (). Kitzbühel ...
, Austria, after the war, found the gold with the help of a mountain guide, and killed the guide to keep the gold for himself. Bond was put on the case after the guide's body fell out of a glacier, over 15 years after the murder, and he recognised the man as a ski instructor and father figure from his youth. Smythe is now a melancholy alcoholic widower living alone on the beach, interacting mainly with the residents of its coral reef – including the titular Octopussy, a beloved 'pet'
octopus An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttle ...
that he feeds and talks to. Bond chooses not to take Smythe into custody immediately, but leaves him to contemplate his options – suicide or a court martial. While hunting for scorpion fish to feed Octopussy, Smythe suffers a sting and is dragged underwater by Octopussy as the poison sets in. Bond views the death as a suicide, but classifies it as an accidental drowning in order to spare Smythe's reputation.


"The Living Daylights"

An unusually morose Bond is assigned sniper duty to help British agent 272 escape from
East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
. 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 him. Bond takes up a position on the western edge of the border, in a hotel overlooking the
no-man's land No man's land is waste or unowned land or an uninhabited or desolate area that may be under dispute between parties who leave it unoccupied out of fear or uncertainty. The term was originally used to define a contested territory or a dump ...
of broken, brightly lit ground that 272 will have to cross. On each of three nights, he sees a female orchestra arrive for rehearsal and leave, taking particular notice of a beautiful blonde cellist. Once 272 starts to cross the border, Bond sees Trigger get in position to kill him and realizes that it is the cellist. He adjusts his aim at the last moment and shoots her weapon instead of killing her, allowing 272 to reach safety. Afterward, Bond admits to his spotter that he did not try for a kill shot only because Trigger had been a woman. The spotter is obliged to include this fact in his report, but apologises for having to do so. Bond muses that even though 272 is safe, the mission will be considered a failure because he did not kill Trigger, and he hopes that M will strip him of his 00 number for it.


"The Property of a Lady"

The Secret Service learns that Maria Freudenstein, an employee known to be a double agent working for the Soviet Union, has just received a valuable item of jewelry crafted by
Peter Carl Fabergé Peter Carl Fabergé, also known as Karl Gustavovich Fabergé (russian: Карл Гу́ставович Фаберже́, ''Karl Gustavovich Faberzhe''; 30 May 1846 – 24 September 1920), was a Russian jewellery, jeweller best known for the fam ...
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 Maria for her services. Bond attends the auction, spots the man, and leaves to make arrangements for his expulsion from London as ''
persona non grata In diplomacy, a ' (Latin: "person not welcome", plural: ') is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and other types of prosecution. Diplomacy Under Article 9 of the ...
''.


"007 in New York"

A brief tale in which Bond muses about New York City and his favourite recipe for scrambled eggs, he is on a quick mission to the titular city to warn a female MI6 employee that her new boyfriend is a KGB agent. It is notable for including a rare humorous conclusion and for its mention of Solange, a young lady of Bond's intimate acquaintance who works in a shop, Abercrombie's, "appropriately employed in their Indoor Games Department".


Characters and themes

The author of the "continuation" Bond stories,
Raymond Benson Raymond Benson (born September 6, 1955) is an American author best known for being the author of the James Bond novels from 1997 to 2003. Benson was born in Midland, Texas and graduated from Permian High School in Odessa in 1973. In primary scho ...
, noted that in "The Living Daylights", Bond's thoughts on killing are examined once again, showing that although 007 did not like doing it, he considered that he must kill as part of his duty to complete an assignment. Once the mission is completed, with Bond deliberately not killing the assassin, an attitude of complacency arises, with Bond shrugging off his colleague's complaints about the incident. Academic Jeremy Black sees the colleague, the officious Captain Sender, as the antithesis of Bond and an echo of Colonel Schreiber, the head of security at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, who appeared in " From a View to a Kill". In the act of not killing the assassin, the theme of disobedience is raised in "The Living Daylights", with Bond calling what he has to do "murder" and subsequently dismissing his actions by saying "with any luck it will cost me my Double-0 number". Raymond Benson considered "Octopussy" to be a morality tale, with greed bringing repercussions years later to the main protagonist, Dexter Smythe.


Background

On the morning of 12 August 1964, Fleming died of a heart attack; eight months later, ''The Man with the Golden Gun'' was published. The rights to Fleming's works were held by
Glidrose Productions Ian Fleming Publications is the production company formerly known as both Glidrose Productions Limited and Glidrose Publications Limited, named after its founders John Gliddon and Norman Rose. In 1952, author Ian Fleming bought it after completi ...
(now Ian Fleming Publications) and the company decided that two short stories, "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", would be published in 1966. The story "Octopussy" was written in early 1962 at Fleming's Goldeneye estate in Jamaica. The story is told in the manner of "Quantum of Solace", with Bond as catalyst for story told in flashback, rather than as a main character for action. The topics chosen by Fleming were familiar ground for him to cover, with hidden gold, tropical fish, and the wartime exploits of commandos all coming from elements of his past. Also from the past, or from his acquaintance, were other references used in the story and Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau was a fictional version of Fleming's 30 AU unit. One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica, and later his lover, was Blanche Blackwell, mother of
Chris Blackwell Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell (born 22 June 1937) is an English businessman and former record producer, and the founder of Island Records, which has been called "one of Britain's great independent labels". According to the Rock and Roll ...
of
Island Records Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anoth ...
. Fleming had previously used Blackwell's name as the guano-collecting ship in ''Dr. No'', calling it ''Blanche''. Blackwell had given Fleming a coracle called ''Octopussy'', the name of which Fleming used for the story. ''Octopussy'' was posthumously serialised in the ''
Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'' newspaper, 4–8 October 1965. Fleming originally titled "The Living Daylights" as "Trigger Finger", although when it first appeared, in '' The Sunday Times'' colour supplement of 4 February 1962, it was 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. As background research to the story, Fleming corresponded with Captain E.K. Le Mesurier, secretary of the
National Rifle Association The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is a gun rights advocacy group based in the United States. Founded in 1871 to advance rifle marksmanship, the modern NRA has become a prominent Gun politics in the United States, gun rights ...
at Bisley for information and to correct some of the more specialist areas of knowledge required for
sniper A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision r ...
shooting. Part of the background to the plot, of using the noise of the orchestra to cover the crossing over no-man's land, was inspired by Pat Reid's escape from Colditz prisoner-of-war camp, with two escapers having to run 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 a number of occasions. The assassin, Trigger, was partly based on
Amaryllis Fleming Amaryllis Marie-Louise Fleming (10 December 1925 – 27 July 1999) was a British cello performer and teacher. Early life and education Fleming was born in 1925, reportedly in Switzerland.G. R. Seaman, 'Fleming, Amaryllis Marie-Louise (1925? ...
, Ian's half-sister, 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." "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 was published in November 1963 and later in '' Playboy''; 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. In 1959, Fleming was commissioned by ''The Sunday Times'' to write a series of articles based on world cities, material for which later was collected into a book entitled ''
Thrilling Cities ''Thrilling Cities'' is the title of a travelogue by the James Bond author and ''The Sunday Times'' journalist Ian Fleming. The book was first published in the UK in November 1963 by Jonathan Cape. The cities covered by Fleming were Hong Kong,M ...
''; while travelling through New York for material, Fleming wrote "007 in New York" from Bond's point of view. "007 in New York" was originally titled "Reflections in a Carey Cadillac" and it contains a recipe for scrambled eggs, which came from May Maxwell, the housekeeper to friend Ivar Bryce, who gave her name to Bond's own housekeeper, May. The story was first published in the ''
New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...
'' 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''.


Release and reception

''Octopussy and The Living Daylights'' was published in Britain on 23 June 1966 by
Jonathan Cape Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960. Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
and cost 10s.6d. The hardback edition of the book contained only the two stories mentioned in the title, although when the paperbacks editions were published, "The Property of a Lady" was also included. Once again, artist
Richard Chopping Richard Wasey Chopping (14 April 1917 – 17 April 2008) was a British illustrator and author best known for painting the dust jackets of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels starting with '' From Russia, with Love'' (1957). Early life Chopping was ...
provided the cover art, although his fee rose, to 350 guineas. The book was published in US by New American Library with illustrations from Paul Bacon. By 2002, "007 in New York" had been added to the book by Penguin Books.


Reviews

Philip Larkin wrote in '' The Spectator'', "I am not surprised that Fleming preferred to write novels. James Bond, unlike Sherlock Holmes, does not fit snugly into the short-story length: there is something grandiose and intercontinental about his adventures that require elbow room and such examples of the form as we have tend to be eccentric or muted. These are no exception." The critic for '' The Times Literary Supplement'' wrote that the book was "slight and predictable, and usual sex and violence yield to a plausible use of ballistics and marine biology". Writing in ''The Listener'', Anthony Burgess thought that "in their fascinated poring on ''things''...remind us that the stuff of the anti-novel needn't necessarily spring from a thought-out aesthetic", going on to note that "it is the mastery of the world that gives Fleming his peculiar literary niche". On a personal note, Burgess added "I admired all the Bond books and I'm sorry there'll be no more. A sad farewell to Fleming".


Adaptations

;Comic strip adaptation (1966–1967) Two of the short stories were adapted for publication in comic-strip format, which were published daily in the ''
Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...
'' newspaper and syndicated worldwide. ''The Living Daylights'' ran from 12 September to 12 November 1966, adapted by Jim Lawrence and illustrated by
Yaroslav Horak Yaroslav Horak (12 June 1927 – 24 November 2020) was an Australian illustrator and comics artist, of ethnic Czech-Russian origin, best known for his work on the newspaper comic strip ''James Bond (comic strip), James Bond''. Biography Horak ...
; the same pair also worked on ''Octopussy'', which ran from 14 November 1966 to 27 May 1967. The story lines for the strips were altered from the original Fleming version to ensure that they contained a glamorous reason for being Bond involved and to include Bond in action. The strips were reprinted by Titan Books in 1988 and then again in ''The James Bond Omnibus Vol. 2'', published in 2011. ;''Octopussy'' (1983) In 1983, Eon Productions loosely adapted elements of two of the stories, "Octopussy" and "The Property of a Lady" for the
13th In music or music theory, a thirteenth is the note thirteen scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the thirteenth. The interval can be also described as a compound sixth, spanning an octave pl ...
film in their Bond series, starring Roger Moore as Bond. "Octopussy" provided the title of the film and the background for the character
Octopussy ''Octopussy'' is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond. It was directed by John Glen and the screenplay was written by G ...
, the daughter of a character Bond had allowed to commit suicide, rather than face the shame of arrest and imprisonment. The film also used the plot device of auctioning of a Fabergé egg at Sotheby's from "The Property of a Lady", and as with the story, the auction item was described as being the same "property of a lady". ;''The Living Daylights'' (1987) In 1987, Eon used the plot of "The Living Daylights", almost unchanged, for a section of their 1987 film of the same name. The film starred Timothy Dalton in his first role as Bond, whilst the character of Trigger became that of cello player
Kara Milovy ''The Living Daylights'' is a 1987 spy film, the fifteenth entry in the ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions, and the first of two to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by John Glen, the film's ...
. ;''Casino Royale'' (2006) In 2006, Eon used the plot of Fleming's first novel, ''Casino Royale'', for its 21st film of the same name. However, a main character was named Solange, after the woman featured in "007 in New York". ;''Quantum of Solace'' (2008) In 2008, Eon used the basic premise from the short story "007 in New York" as part of the film ''Quantum of Solace'', specifically its epilogue, in which Bond warns a female intelligence employee that her boyfriend is an enemy agent. ;''Spectre'' (2015) In ''
Spectre Spectre, specter or the spectre may refer to: Religion and spirituality * Vision (spirituality) * Apparitional experience * Ghost Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Spectre'' (1977 film), a made-for-television film produced and writ ...
'', Hans Oberhauser, a background character in "Octopussy", is revealed to be the father of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and a former caretaker of Bond in his youth. The film strongly hinted that Blofeld killed Oberhauser because he felt that Oberhauser loved Bond more than he loved his own son.


See also

*
Outline of James Bond The following Outline (list), outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to James Bond: James Bond (literary character), James Bond is a fictional character created in 1953 by the journalist and writer Ian Fleming, who featured him i ...


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links

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Ian Fleming Bibliography
of James Bond 1st Editions {{DEFAULTSORT:Octopussy and The Living Daylights 1966 short story collections Books published posthumously James Bond books Jonathan Cape books Octopussy Short story collections by Ian Fleming The Living Daylights Thriller short story collections