Moonraker
Encyclopedia
Moonraker is the third novel
by British author Ian Fleming
featuring the fictional British Secret Service agent Commander James Bond
. The book was first published by Jonathan Cape
on 5 April 1955, bearing a cover based on Fleming's own concept. Set completely in England, the story has two halves: the first concerns a battle over a game of bridge
in London's clubland between Bond and industrialist Sir Hugo Drax
, while the second follows Bond's mission to stop Drax from destroying London with a nuclear weapon. The book played on a number of fears of the 1950s, including the V-2 rocket, the re-emergence of Nazism
, the menace of Soviet communism
and the 'threat from within'.
There have been a number of adaptations of Moonraker, including a broadcast on South Africa
n radio in 1956 starring Bob Holness and a comic strip that appeared in the Daily Express
in 1958. The novel's name was also used in 1979 for the eleventh official film
in the Eon Productions
Bond franchise and the fourth to star Roger Moore
as James Bond. However, the story for the film was significantly changed from the novel so as to include excursions into space.
, to join him for the evening at M's club, Blades
, where one of the members, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax
, is winning a lot of money playing bridge
, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax of cheating, but although claiming indifference, he is concerned why a multi-millionaire and national hero, such as Sir Hugo, would cheat at a card game. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to "cheat the cheater"—aided by a cocktail of powdered Benzedrine
mixed with non-vintage champagne and a deck of stacked cards—winning £15,000 and infuriating the out-smarted Drax.
Drax is the product of a mysterious background, unknown even to himself (allegedly). As a supposed British soldier in World War II
, he was badly injured and stricken with amnesia in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at a British field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, however, he eventually returned home to become a major aerospace industrialist.
After building his fortune and establishing himself in business and society, Drax started building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend the United Kingdom
against its Cold War
enemies (c.f. the real Blue Streak missile
). The Moonraker rocket was to be an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen
and fluorine
as propellants
; to withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures of its engine, it used columbite
, in which Drax had a monopoly. Because the rocket's engine could withstand higher heat, the Moonraker was able to use more powerful fuels, greatly expanding its effective range.
After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him and also to investigate what has been going on at the missile-building base, located between Dover and Deal on the south coast of England
. All of the rocket scientists working on the project were German. At his post on the complex, Bond meets Gala Brand
, a beautiful Special Branch
agent working undercover as Personal Assistant to Drax. He also uncovers clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the former Security Chief may have been killed for witnessing a submarine off the coast.
Drax's henchman Krebs is caught by Bond snooping through his room. Later, an attempted assassination nearly kills Bond and Gala under a landslide, as they swim beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Gala to London where she discovers the truth about the Moonraker (by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket), but she is caught. She soon finds herself captive at a secret radio station (intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system) in the heart of London. While attempting to rescue her in a car chase, Bond is also captured.
Drax tells Bond that he was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia. In fact, he was a German commander of a Skorzeny
commando unit and the saboteur (in British uniform) Graf Hugo von der Drache, whose unit had placed the car bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured himself in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital, in order to avoid allied retribution, although it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax, however, remained a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Fatherland and his prior history of social slights suffered as a youth growing up in an English boarding school before the war. He now means to destroy London with the very missile he has constructed for Britain, by means of a Soviet
-supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the Moonraker. He also plans to play the stock market the day before to make a huge profit from the imminent disaster.
Brand and Bond are imprisoned under the Moonraker's booster engines so as to leave no trace of them once the Moonraker is launched. Before this first (supposedly un-armed) test firing, Bond and Gala escape. Gala gives Bond the proper coordinates to redirect the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchman attempt to escape by Russian submarine—only to be killed as the vessel flees through the very waters onto which the Moonraker has been re-targeted. After their de-briefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Gala, expecting her company—but they part ways after Gala reveals that she is engaged to be married to a fellow Special Branch officer.
As with Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, Moonraker involved the "traitor within" idea, as it had done with Le Chiffre and Mr. Big. Drax, real name Graf Hugo von der Drache, was a "megalomaniac German Nazi who masquerades as an English gentleman"; his assistant, Krebbs, bears the same name as Hitler's last Chief of Staff. In using a German as the main enemy of the novel, "Fleming...exploits another British cultural antipathy of the 1950s. Germans, in the wake of World War II, made another easy and obvious target for bad press." Moonraker uses two of the foes feared by Fleming, the Nazis and the Soviets, with Drax being German and working for the Soviets; in Moonraker the Soviets were hostile and provided not just the atomic bomb, but support and logistics to Drax.
Moonraker played on fears of the audiences of the 1950s of rocket attacks from overseas, fears grounded in the use of the V-2 rocket by the Nazis during World War II
. The story takes the threat one stage further, with a rocket based on English soil, aimed at London and "the end of British invulnerability".
According to biographer Andrew Lycett
, Fleming, writing in early 1954 at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, "wanted to make Moonraker his most ambitious and personal novel yet." Because of the subject matter, the author undertook significant homework on the novel, asking fellow Times
correspondent Anthony Terry for information on V-2 rockets and the German Werewolves
. Fleming also visited the Wimpole Street psychiatrist Dr E.B. Strauss to discuss the traits of megalomaniacs, and came away with information on diastema
for the character of Drax.
The early chapters of the novel centre on Bond's private life, with Fleming using his own life as a basis for Bond's. Fleming used further aspects of his private life in the shape of his friends, as he had done in his previous novels: Hugo Drax was named after his acquaintance Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, while his friend Duff Sutherland (described as "a scruffy looking chap") was one of the bridge players at Blades. Other elements of the plot came from Fleming's knowledge of wartime operations carried out by T-Force
, a secret British Army unit formed to continue the work of 30 Assault Unit, itself created by Fleming.
Moonraker is the only Bond novel that takes place solely in Britain, giving Fleming the chance to write about the England he cherished such as the Kent countryside, including the White Cliffs of Dover
, and London clubland. Even though Fleming owned a cottage in St Margaret-at-Cliffe
, he went to great lengths to get details right, lending his car to his stepson, Raymond O'Neill, to time the journey from London to Deal
. Fleming used his experiences of London clubs for the background of the Blades scenes. As a clubman, he enjoyed membership of Boodle's
, White's
and the Portland Club. A combination of Boodles and the Portland Club is thought to be the model for Blades; author Michael Dibdin
found the scene in the club to be "surely one of the finest things that Ian Fleming ever did."
Fleming considered a number of titles for the story, including The Moonraker, The Moonraker Secret, The Moonraker Plot, The Inhuman Element, Wide of the Mark, The Infernal Machine, Hell Is Here and Out of the Clear Sky, before settling on Moonraker.
: the edition had been re-written to Americanise the British idioms used and Fleming provided a number of explanatory footnotes, such as the value of English currency against the dollar.
, writing in The Times Literary Supplement
found Moonraker "a disappointment", going on to say that "Fleming's tendency...to parody the form of the thriller, has taken charge in the second half of this story." Maurice Richardson, in his review for The Observer
was forthright: "do not miss this", he urged, saying that "Mr. Fleming continues to be irresistibly readable, however incredible". Hilary Corke, writing in The Listener, thought that "Fleming is one of the most accomplished of thriller-writers", going on to say that Moonraker "is as mercilessly readable as all the rest". On the down side, however, Corke warned Fleming away from being over-dramatic, declaring that "Mr Fleming is evidently far too accomplished to need to lean upon these blood-and-thunder devices: he could keep our hair on end for three hundred pages without spilling more blood than was allowed to Shylock
."
John Metcalf for The Spectator
thought that "It is utterly disgraceful - and highly enjoyable...without (Moonraker) no forthcoming railway journey should be undertaken", although he also considered that it was "not one of Mr. Fleming's best". Anthony Boucher
, writing in The New York Times
, was mixed in his review, saying "I don't know anyone who writes about gambling more vividly than Fleming and I only wish the other parts of his books lived up to their gambling sequences". Richard Lister in the New Statesman
thought that "Mr. Fleming is splendid; he stops at nothing." Writing for The Washington Post
, Al Manola believed that the "British tradition of rich mystery writing, copious description and sturdy heroism all blend nicely" in Moonraker, providing what he considered was "probably the best action novel of the month".
The first adaption of Moonraker was on South Africa
n radio in 1956, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent
, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".
Comic strip (1959)
Moonraker was adapted as a daily comic strip that was published in the Daily Express
newspaper and syndicated worldwide. The adaptation was written by Henry Gammidge
and illustrated by John McLusky
, and ran from 30 March to 8 August 1959. Titan Books
reprinted the strip in 2005 along with Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, as a part of the Casino Royale anthology.
Moonraker (1979)
"Moonraker" was used as the title for the eleventh James Bond film
, produced by Eon Productions
and released in 1979. Directed by Lewis Gilbert
and produced by Albert R. Broccoli
, the film featured Roger Moore
in his fourth appearance as Bond. The Nazi-inspired element of Drax's motivation in the novel was indirectly preserved with the "master race" theme of the film's plot. Since the screenplay was original, Eon Productions and Glidrose Publications authorised the film's writer, Christopher Wood
, to produce his second novelization based upon a film; it was titled James Bond and Moonraker.
Elements used (2002)
Elements of Moonraker were also used in the 2002 film Die Another Day
, with Blades being the club in the film. Additionally, actress Rosamund Pike
commented that her character, Miranda Frost, was originally to have been named Gala Brand.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by British author Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
featuring the fictional British Secret Service agent Commander James Bond
James Bond (character)
Royal Navy Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is a fictional character created by journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the main protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games...
. The book was first published by Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...
on 5 April 1955, bearing a cover based on Fleming's own concept. Set completely in England, the story has two halves: the first concerns a battle over a game of bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
in London's clubland between Bond and industrialist Sir Hugo Drax
Hugo Drax
Sir Hugo Drax is a fictional character created by author Ian Fleming for the James Bond novel Moonraker. Fleming named him after his friend, Sir Reginald Drax. For the later film and its novelization, Drax was largely transformed by screenwriter Christopher Wood. In the film, Drax is portrayed by...
, while the second follows Bond's mission to stop Drax from destroying London with a nuclear weapon. The book played on a number of fears of the 1950s, including the V-2 rocket, the re-emergence of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
, the menace of Soviet communism
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and the 'threat from within'.
There have been a number of adaptations of Moonraker, including a broadcast on South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n radio in 1956 starring Bob Holness and a comic strip that appeared in the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
in 1958. The novel's name was also used in 1979 for the eleventh official film
Moonraker (film)
Moonraker is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Clery, and Richard Kiel...
in the Eon Productions
EON Productions
Eon Productions is a film production company known for producing the James Bond film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom...
Bond franchise and the fourth to star Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
as James Bond. However, the story for the film was significantly changed from the novel so as to include excursions into space.
Plot
British Secret Service agent James Bond is asked by his superior, MM (James Bond)
M is a fictional character in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, as well as the films in the Bond franchise. The head of MI6 and Bond's superior, M has been portrayed by three actors in the official Bond film series: Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and since 1995 by Judi Dench. Background =Ian Fleming...
, to join him for the evening at M's club, Blades
Blades Club
Blades is a fictional, private club located in Park Street, Mayfair in central London in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. Described as the most exclusive club in all of London, it allows gambling, mainly high-stakes card games, but is more celebrated for its gourmet catering...
, where one of the members, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax
Hugo Drax
Sir Hugo Drax is a fictional character created by author Ian Fleming for the James Bond novel Moonraker. Fleming named him after his friend, Sir Reginald Drax. For the later film and its novelization, Drax was largely transformed by screenwriter Christopher Wood. In the film, Drax is portrayed by...
, is winning a lot of money playing bridge
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...
, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax of cheating, but although claiming indifference, he is concerned why a multi-millionaire and national hero, such as Sir Hugo, would cheat at a card game. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to "cheat the cheater"—aided by a cocktail of powdered Benzedrine
Benzedrine
Benzedrine is the trade name of the racemic mixture of amphetamine . It was marketed under this brandname in the USA by Smith, Kline & French in the form of inhalers, starting in 1928...
mixed with non-vintage champagne and a deck of stacked cards—winning £15,000 and infuriating the out-smarted Drax.
Drax is the product of a mysterious background, unknown even to himself (allegedly). As a supposed British soldier in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was badly injured and stricken with amnesia in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at a British field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, however, he eventually returned home to become a major aerospace industrialist.
After building his fortune and establishing himself in business and society, Drax started building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
against its Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
enemies (c.f. the real Blue Streak missile
Blue Streak missile
The Blue Streak missile was a British medium range ballistic missile . The Operational Requirement for the missile was issued in 1955 and the design was complete by 1957...
). The Moonraker rocket was to be an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen
Liquid hydrogen
Liquid hydrogen is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. Hydrogen is found naturally in the molecular H2 form.To exist as a liquid, H2 must be pressurized above and cooled below hydrogen's Critical point. However, for hydrogen to be in a full liquid state without boiling off, it needs to be...
and fluorine
Fluorine
Fluorine is the chemical element with atomic number 9, represented by the symbol F. It is the lightest element of the halogen column of the periodic table and has a single stable isotope, fluorine-19. At standard pressure and temperature, fluorine is a pale yellow gas composed of diatomic...
as propellants
Rocket propellant
Rocket propellant is mass that is stored in some form of propellant tank, prior to being used as the propulsive mass that is ejected from a rocket engine in the form of a fluid jet to produce thrust. A fuel propellant is often burned with an oxidizer propellant to produce large volumes of very hot...
; to withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures of its engine, it used columbite
Columbite
Columbite, also called niobite, niobite-tantalite and columbate [2O6], is a black mineral group that is an ore of niobium and tantalum. It has a submetallic luster and a high density and is a niobate of iron and manganese, containing tantalate of iron. This mineral group was first found in Haddam,...
, in which Drax had a monopoly. Because the rocket's engine could withstand higher heat, the Moonraker was able to use more powerful fuels, greatly expanding its effective range.
After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him and also to investigate what has been going on at the missile-building base, located between Dover and Deal on the south coast of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. All of the rocket scientists working on the project were German. At his post on the complex, Bond meets Gala Brand
Gala Brand
Gala Brand is a fictional character in the James Bond novel Moonraker. She does not appear in the movie version of the novel, however, as the film is an almost total rewrite of the novel. The only other Bond girl of the Ian Fleming novels to share this fate is Vivienne Michel of the novel The Spy...
, a beautiful Special Branch
Special Branch
Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security in British and Commonwealth police forces, as well as in the Royal Thai Police...
agent working undercover as Personal Assistant to Drax. He also uncovers clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the former Security Chief may have been killed for witnessing a submarine off the coast.
Drax's henchman Krebs is caught by Bond snooping through his room. Later, an attempted assassination nearly kills Bond and Gala under a landslide, as they swim beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Gala to London where she discovers the truth about the Moonraker (by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket), but she is caught. She soon finds herself captive at a secret radio station (intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system) in the heart of London. While attempting to rescue her in a car chase, Bond is also captured.
Drax tells Bond that he was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia. In fact, he was a German commander of a Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny
Otto Skorzeny was an SS-Obersturmbannführer in the German Waffen-SS during World War II. After fighting on the Eastern Front, he was chosen as the field commander to carry out the rescue mission that freed the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from captivity...
commando unit and the saboteur (in British uniform) Graf Hugo von der Drache, whose unit had placed the car bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured himself in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital, in order to avoid allied retribution, although it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax, however, remained a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Fatherland and his prior history of social slights suffered as a youth growing up in an English boarding school before the war. He now means to destroy London with the very missile he has constructed for Britain, by means of a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
-supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the Moonraker. He also plans to play the stock market the day before to make a huge profit from the imminent disaster.
Brand and Bond are imprisoned under the Moonraker's booster engines so as to leave no trace of them once the Moonraker is launched. Before this first (supposedly un-armed) test firing, Bond and Gala escape. Gala gives Bond the proper coordinates to redirect the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchman attempt to escape by Russian submarine—only to be killed as the vessel flees through the very waters onto which the Moonraker has been re-targeted. After their de-briefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Gala, expecting her company—but they part ways after Gala reveals that she is engaged to be married to a fellow Special Branch officer.
Characters and themes
According to Continuation Bond author Raymond Benson Moonraker is a deeper and more introspective book, which allows Fleming to develop the characters futher and so Bond "becomes something more than a cardboard figure" than he had been in previous two novels. The start of the book concentrates on Bond at home and his daily routines, which were largely modelled on Fleming's own.As with Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, Moonraker involved the "traitor within" idea, as it had done with Le Chiffre and Mr. Big. Drax, real name Graf Hugo von der Drache, was a "megalomaniac German Nazi who masquerades as an English gentleman"; his assistant, Krebbs, bears the same name as Hitler's last Chief of Staff. In using a German as the main enemy of the novel, "Fleming...exploits another British cultural antipathy of the 1950s. Germans, in the wake of World War II, made another easy and obvious target for bad press." Moonraker uses two of the foes feared by Fleming, the Nazis and the Soviets, with Drax being German and working for the Soviets; in Moonraker the Soviets were hostile and provided not just the atomic bomb, but support and logistics to Drax.
Moonraker played on fears of the audiences of the 1950s of rocket attacks from overseas, fears grounded in the use of the V-2 rocket by the Nazis during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The story takes the threat one stage further, with a rocket based on English soil, aimed at London and "the end of British invulnerability".
Background
Andrew Lycett
Andrew Lycett is an English biographer and journalist.He was educated at Charterhouse School and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford University. He then worked for a while for The Times as a correspondent in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia...
, Fleming, writing in early 1954 at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, "wanted to make Moonraker his most ambitious and personal novel yet." Because of the subject matter, the author undertook significant homework on the novel, asking fellow Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
correspondent Anthony Terry for information on V-2 rockets and the German Werewolves
Werwolf
Werwolf was the name given to a Nazi plan, which began development in 1944, to create a commando force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany itself. Werwolf remained entirely ineffectual as a combat force, however, and in practical terms, its value as...
. Fleming also visited the Wimpole Street psychiatrist Dr E.B. Strauss to discuss the traits of megalomaniacs, and came away with information on diastema
Diastema (dentistry)
Diastema is a space or gap between two teeth. Many species of mammals have diastemata as a normal feature, most commonly between the incisors and molars.-In humans:...
for the character of Drax.
The early chapters of the novel centre on Bond's private life, with Fleming using his own life as a basis for Bond's. Fleming used further aspects of his private life in the shape of his friends, as he had done in his previous novels: Hugo Drax was named after his acquaintance Admiral Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, while his friend Duff Sutherland (described as "a scruffy looking chap") was one of the bridge players at Blades. Other elements of the plot came from Fleming's knowledge of wartime operations carried out by T-Force
T-Force
T-Force was an elite British Army force which operated during the final stages of World War II. Originally used to secure and exploit targets that could provide valuable intelligence of scientific and military value, they were later tasked with seizing Nazi German scientists and businessmen in the...
, a secret British Army unit formed to continue the work of 30 Assault Unit, itself created by Fleming.
Moonraker is the only Bond novel that takes place solely in Britain, giving Fleming the chance to write about the England he cherished such as the Kent countryside, including the White Cliffs of Dover
White cliffs of Dover
The White Cliffs of Dover are cliffs which form part of the British coastline facing the Strait of Dover and France. The cliffs are part of the North Downs formation. The cliff face, which reaches up to , owes its striking façade to its composition of chalk accentuated by streaks of black flint...
, and London clubland. Even though Fleming owned a cottage in St Margaret-at-Cliffe
St Margaret-at-Cliffe
St Margaret-at-Cliffe is a three part village situated just off the coast road between Deal and Dover in Kent, England. The heart of the village is about two miles from the sea with the residential area of Nelson Park further inland and St Margaret's Bay situated along and below the cliffs north...
, he went to great lengths to get details right, lending his car to his stepson, Raymond O'Neill, to time the journey from London to Deal
Deal, Kent
Deal is a town in Kent England. It lies on the English Channel eight miles north-east of Dover and eight miles south of Ramsgate. It is a former fishing, mining and garrison town...
. Fleming used his experiences of London clubs for the background of the Blades scenes. As a clubman, he enjoyed membership of Boodle's
Boodle's
Boodle's is a London gentlemen's club, founded in 1762, at 49-51 Pall Mall, London by Lord Shelburne the future Marquess of Lansdowne and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the club came to be known after the name of its head waiter Edward Boodle....
, White's
White's
White's is a London gentlemen's club, established at 4 Chesterfield Street in 1693 by Italian immigrant Francesco Bianco . Originally it was established to sell hot chocolate, a rare and expensive commodity at the time...
and the Portland Club. A combination of Boodles and the Portland Club is thought to be the model for Blades; author Michael Dibdin
Michael Dibdin
Michael Dibdin , was a British crime writer.-Life:Dibdin was born in Wolverhampton, the son of a physicist, and was brought up from the age of seven in Lisburn, Northern Ireland where he attended Friends' School...
found the scene in the club to be "surely one of the finest things that Ian Fleming ever did."
Fleming considered a number of titles for the story, including The Moonraker, The Moonraker Secret, The Moonraker Plot, The Inhuman Element, Wide of the Mark, The Infernal Machine, Hell Is Here and Out of the Clear Sky, before settling on Moonraker.
Release and reception
Moonraker was published in the UK in hardback format on 5 April 1955 with a cover designed by Kenneth Lewis, following the suggestions of Fleming and in the US on 20 September that year. In December 1956 the novel was published in paperback in the US under the title Too Hot to Handle by PermabooksPermabooks
Permabooks was a paperback division of Doubleday, established by Doubleday in 1948. Although published by Doubleday's Garden City Publishing Company in Garden City, Long Island, the Permabooks editorial office was located at 14 West 49th Street in Manhattan....
: the edition had been re-written to Americanise the British idioms used and Fleming provided a number of explanatory footnotes, such as the value of English currency against the dollar.
Reviews
Julian SymonsJulian Symons
Julian Gustave Symons 1912 - 1994) was a British crime writer and poet. He also wrote social and military history, biography and studies of literature.-Life and work:...
, writing in The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
found Moonraker "a disappointment", going on to say that "Fleming's tendency...to parody the form of the thriller, has taken charge in the second half of this story." Maurice Richardson, in his review for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
was forthright: "do not miss this", he urged, saying that "Mr. Fleming continues to be irresistibly readable, however incredible". Hilary Corke, writing in The Listener, thought that "Fleming is one of the most accomplished of thriller-writers", going on to say that Moonraker "is as mercilessly readable as all the rest". On the down side, however, Corke warned Fleming away from being over-dramatic, declaring that "Mr Fleming is evidently far too accomplished to need to lean upon these blood-and-thunder devices: he could keep our hair on end for three hundred pages without spilling more blood than was allowed to Shylock
Shylock
Shylock is a fictional character in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.-In the play:In The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a Jewish moneylender who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio's flesh...
."
John Metcalf for The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
thought that "It is utterly disgraceful - and highly enjoyable...without (Moonraker) no forthcoming railway journey should be undertaken", although he also considered that it was "not one of Mr. Fleming's best". Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher
Anthony Boucher was an American science fiction editor and author of mystery novels and short stories. He was particularly influential as an editor. Between 1942 and 1947 he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle...
, writing in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, was mixed in his review, saying "I don't know anyone who writes about gambling more vividly than Fleming and I only wish the other parts of his books lived up to their gambling sequences". Richard Lister in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
thought that "Mr. Fleming is splendid; he stops at nothing." Writing for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Al Manola believed that the "British tradition of rich mystery writing, copious description and sturdy heroism all blend nicely" in Moonraker, providing what he considered was "probably the best action novel of the month".
Adaptations
Radio adaption (1956)The first adaption of Moonraker was on South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n radio in 1956, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".
Comic strip (1959)
Moonraker was adapted as a daily comic strip that was published in the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
newspaper and syndicated worldwide. The adaptation was written by Henry Gammidge
Henry Gammidge
Henry Gammidge was a writer of the James Bond comic strip that appeared in Daily Express newspaper and syndicated worldwide. Gammidge adapted Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, which were then drawn by illustrator John McLusky. Gammidge worked on eleven stories, which were published from 15 December...
and illustrated by John McLusky
John McLusky
John McLusky is a former comics artist best known as the original artist of the comic strip featuring Ian Fleming's James Bond.-Biography:...
, and ran from 30 March to 8 August 1959. Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
reprinted the strip in 2005 along with Casino Royale and Live and Let Die, as a part of the Casino Royale anthology.
Moonraker (1979)
"Moonraker" was used as the title for the eleventh James Bond film
Moonraker (film)
Moonraker is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Clery, and Richard Kiel...
, produced by Eon Productions
EON Productions
Eon Productions is a film production company known for producing the James Bond film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom...
and released in 1979. Directed by Lewis Gilbert
Lewis Gilbert
Lewis Gilbert CBE is an English film director, producer and screenwriter.-Early life:He was the son of music hall performers, and spent his early years travelling with his parents, and watching the shows from the side of the stage. He first performed on-stage at the age of 5, when asked to drive a...
and produced by Albert R. Broccoli
Albert R. Broccoli
Albert Romolo Broccoli, CBE , nicknamed "Cubby", was an American film producer, who made more than 40 motion pictures throughout his career, most of them in the United Kingdom, and often filmed at Pinewood Studios. Co-founder of Danjaq, LLC and EON Productions, Broccoli is most notable as the...
, the film featured Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
in his fourth appearance as Bond. The Nazi-inspired element of Drax's motivation in the novel was indirectly preserved with the "master race" theme of the film's plot. Since the screenplay was original, Eon Productions and Glidrose Publications authorised the film's writer, Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood (writer)
Christopher Wood is an English screenwriter and novelist best known under the pseudonym 'Timothy Lea' for the Confessions series of novels and films. Under his own name, he adapted two James Bond novels for the screen: The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker .Wood has written many novels...
, to produce his second novelization based upon a film; it was titled James Bond and Moonraker.
Elements used (2002)
Elements of Moonraker were also used in the 2002 film Die Another Day
Die Another Day
Die Another Day is the 20th spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth and last film to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond; it is also the last Bond film of the original timeline with the series being rebooted with Casino Royale...
, with Blades being the club in the film. Additionally, actress Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Pike
Rosamund Mary Elizabeth Pike is a British actress. Her film roles include villainous Bond girl Miranda Frost in Die Another Day, Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Helen in An Education, Lisa in Made in Dagenham, Miriam Grant-Panofsky in Barney's Version and Kate Sumner in Johnny English...
commented that her character, Miranda Frost, was originally to have been named Gala Brand.
External links
See also
- James Bond novels