WI: Ian Fleming dies in WWII

Theres a lot of these "world without" threads, but they are interesting, so i was wondering how would the world of literature (as well as the spy genre of fiction in general) be affected if Ian Fleming dies in WWII, before he even starts writing the James Bond series.
 
That would go into world without James Bond. That would make you wonder what happens to the movie careers of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig?
 
There would likely be no Spy-film Genre as we know it since that pretty much started with Doctor No.

I am not too sure about that. I am thinking that maybe Robert Ludlum could fill that gap. He did write the Bourne books, even though the movies were not like the books. He wrote some great spy thrillers.
 
Some candidates:


  • John Le Carre/Smiley: Too literary, too cynical for the mass market IMO.
  • Alistair Maclean: certainly mass market enough and could write a cracking thriller. The problem is he didn't write a series with the same hero.
  • Graham Greene: his lighter weight 'entertainment' novels show he could write a Flemingish adventure. So he's a possibility, but like Maclean he didn't write a continuing hero.
  • Len Deighton/Harry Palmer possible, but he actually started writing a long time after Fleming. Again his cynical anti-heroes are perhaps not mass market enough.
  • Helen Macinnes: another one who wrote good espionage thrillers, but again didn't feature a continuing hero.
  • Donald Hamilton/Matt Helm: very Bondish, but like Len Deighton, not a contemporary of Fleming. Hard to tell how much he was influenced by Fleming.
IMO, Alistair Maclean or Donald Hamilton/Matt Helm are probably your best bets.

There's a possibility that the 'secret agent' genre might just not be as big as it is in OTL.
 
I am not too sure about that. I am thinking that maybe Robert Ludlum could fill that gap. He did write the Bourne books, even though the movies were not like the books. He wrote some great spy thrillers.

Fleming was published in the early fifties, Ludlum not till the seventies.
 
fun possibilities
1. far fewer people would drink a martini on purpose
2. Ashton Martin sales would be way down
3. hopefully more Matt Helm and Derek Flint movies
4. sadly fewer Playboy layouts from washed up movie starlets

just to name a few
 
Some candidates:


  • John Le Carre/Smiley: Too literary, too cynical for the mass market IMO.
  • Alistair Maclean: certainly mass market enough and could write a cracking thriller. The problem is he didn't write a series with the same hero.
  • Graham Greene: his lighter weight 'entertainment' novels show he could write a Flemingish adventure. So he's a possibility, but like Maclean he didn't write a continuing hero.
  • Len Deighton/Harry Palmer possible, but he actually started writing a long time after Fleming. Again his cynical anti-heroes are perhaps not mass market enough.
  • Helen Macinnes: another one who wrote good espionage thrillers, but again didn't feature a continuing hero.
  • Donald Hamilton/Matt Helm: very Bondish, but like Len Deighton, not a contemporary of Fleming. Hard to tell how much he was influenced by Fleming.
IMO, Alistair Maclean or Donald Hamilton/Matt Helm are probably your best bets.

There's a possibility that the 'secret agent' genre might just not be as big as it is in OTL.

When it comes to Deighton and Le Carre, don't forget how cynical and dark Bond is in the books. Palmer could certainly be transmogrified by Hollywood in the same way dear 007 was.
 
When it comes to Deighton and Le Carre, don't forget how cynical and dark Bond is in the books. Palmer could certainly be transmogrified by Hollywood in the same way dear 007 was.

Bond is dark, even brutal at times in the books, but IMO he is not particularly cynical. In the early books he retains Bulldog Drummond's unthinking assumption that Britain is always in the right and he believes his actions are morally justified as "rough justice". The only time he shows any lack of righteous conviction is in Casino Royale while recuperating from his beating by Le Chifre. He is talked out of his half-hearted doubts in a couple of pages by Rene Mathis.

In the later books, SPECTRE is unambiguously evil and purely criminal with not even SMERSH's partial excuses of ideology and national security.

In contrast, Le Carre shows both sides in the Cold War to be morally equal. Both sides do evil things for questionable reasons and the only real aim is survival. His heroes tend to be betrayed by their own masters, something that Fleming would never have written IMO.

Similarly, Len Deighton's heroes often seem to be more involved in turf wars with the USA or other departments than in fighting the Russians. Deighton's heroes display a level of insubordination that Bond never comes anywhere near in his relationship with M, who he treats more like a father than anything else.

Of course both Le Carre and Deighton to some extent wrote in reaction to Fleming. Le Carre explicitely and Deighton more because of society's changing attitudes and a need to distinguish his writing from the Fleming stereotype.

IMO it's entirely possible that Hollywood could create a "Bond" from Len Deighton's hero, look what they did with Matt Helm (actually, don't).
 
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