Cover art for the 70th Anniversary James Bond UK paperbacks by Ian Fleming have been revealed on the official Ian Fleming Publications website. They're pretty nice! Click the image below to see them all.
When it comes to James Bond, there's no one whose opinion I respect more than John Cork. John has weighed in on the controversy over edits made to the upcoming 70th Anniversary Ian Fleming James Bond novels. This is well worth your time. Click the image below to read at 007 Magazine.
Ian Fleming Publications has issued a statement about the edits to their upcoming Anniversary re-issues of the original Ian Fleming James Bond novels. Click the image below to have a read at the official Ian Fleming Publications website.
A commonly used pejorative term used for Black people by Fleming, whose Bond books were published between 1951 and 1966, has been removed almost entirely and replaced with “Black person” or “Black man.” In other instances, references have been edited.For example, in “Live and Let Die” (1954), Bond’s opinion of Africans in the gold and diamond trades as “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought, except when they’ve drunk too much” has been altered to “pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought.”
Another scene in the book, set during a strip tease at a Harlem nightclub, was originally “Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.” This has been revised to “Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.” A segment in the book describing accented dialogue as “straight Harlem-Deep South with a lot of New York thrown in,” has been removed.
For some additional context, both U.S. editions of Live and Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever were edited for sensitivity back in Fleming's day, so this isn't entirely new. But these edits appear to be going further than those and I'm sure this news is going to draw a lot of comment from Bond fans.
For me personally, I want the original unedited texts. Full stop. I was very happy when the U.S. editions were finally updated with the UK texts in 2002. Fleming's words and thoughts should remain unchanged, even if offensive. History and art should not be altered. But a disclaimer is certainly appropriate and I think a good idea.
But I also understand IFPs dilemma. They are marketing these editions to a mass audience and they have to deal with the times we are in. For those who want the unedited texts, you can certainly still find those. And maybe some day the texts will be returned to the original. I'm not sure if these changes will make these 70th Anniversary editions more collectible or less so, but they better have some pretty spectacular cover art to overcome the taint that I think these will forever have for Fleming purists.
Cover art above is from a 1970 Pan edition of The Man With The Golden Gun. UK cover art for the 70th Anniversary editions have not been revealed.
UPDATE: IFP have issued a statement HERE.
Today new digital eBook versions of the fourteen Bond adventures, plus the two Fleming non-fiction titles Thrilling Cities and The Diamond Smugglers, have been released to retailers of digital books within the UK. The release of the eBooks marks 71 years to the day that Ian Fleming sat down at his typewriter in Goldeneye, Jamaica, and began writing Casino Royale.
These digital releases represent the first step in Ian Fleming Publications’ 70th Anniversary reissues of the original books. For now, the eBooks are being distributed with holding covers. IFP says the official new covers will remain "top secret a while longer."
Cover art for the UK paperback edition of Anthony Horowitz's With A Mind To Kill has appeared on Amazon. I'm excited to see they've gone with an original design instead of using the hardcover art.
Pre-order the With A Mind To Kill UK paperback at Amazon.co.uk. Release date is April 27, 2023.
Dynamite has announced a new series to tie-in with the 70th Anniversary this year. Cover and description below.
2023 marks the 70th Anniversary of Ian Fleming‘s internationally famous MI6 spy James Bond 007. And Dynamite vows to celebrate the milestone with a special 007 series: 007: For King and Country from writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Giorgio Spalletta.
This time around though, Bond is the hunted. Accused of a murder on British soil, M dispatches the other 00s to revoke Bond’s license permanently. Forced to go underground, he can only count on the presumed dead 003, Gwendolyn Gann, as his ally because — in reality — they are on a top secret mission to prevent a globe-shattering event. Will they be able to unravel a conspiracy before M’s best catch up with them and punch their tickets?
For King and Country will be released in April.
