Ian Fleming

Born in 1908, Ian Fleming was a British author who radically altered Spy Fiction when he started writing.

During World War Two, he served in an intelligence planning role with the Royal Navy, planning some very successful and some very odd covert operations (one, involving getting Rudolf Hess to come to Britain via an occultist, was cancelled when Hess defected to Britain anyway via his manic hallucinations). He planned an operation called Operation Goldeneye, the later name of his house and a movie in the franchise he created (the name was lifted from the book "Reflections in a Golden Eye", which he loved and which was later made in a film with Marlon Brando and Liz Taylor).

Fleming never went on active service undercover, and some have attributed his Bond stories to being the product of frustrated fantasy, Bond living the secret agent's life that Fleming had had stolen from him. (Fleming was not unfit for field work; the fact was he was too highly-placed and knew too many secrets to risk capture.)

Rather a notorious womaniser in his youth, he eventually settled down and married (although he would reportedly have the ocassional affair). In 1952, just before this, he wrote a novel that would change the world of fiction.

That novel was Casino Royale. James Bond's literary career began and Fleming made a lot of money. He sold the rights to everything bar Royale (the rights for which were already tied up) to Cubby Broccoli in 1961 and the rest is history.

Fleming wrote 12 James Bond novels and 9 short stories, one of the latter being the source of the title for Quantum of Solace. He also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a book about diamond smuggling and a travel guide called Thrilling Cities (which included one of the Bond short stories). The level of research is clear in his Bond novels. People mainly familiar with the films (which are defined by The Sixties) may be surprised at the level of The Fifties present in the books, the decade in which most of them were written, which covers things like technology level, social attitudes and a more straightforwardly hostile view of the Soviet Union - the films retconned most stories with Soviet villains, forming the Ur Example of the Renegade Russian trope or having them manipulated by Blofeld's SPECTRE.

He died in 1964 of a heart attack, the result of a 70-cigarette a day smoking habit (take that! you weenie salutists!!) and a love of liquor bordering on the full-blown alcoholic (he was known to down twelve vodka martini in an evening, each stronger that the one before). He died before fully completing the novel of The Man With The Golden Gun, depending on who you ask.

He also missed Goldfinger, the movie which fully launched the "Bondmania"; the first movie Dr. No only met a lukewarm response and the following From Russia With Love was just succesful enough to spawn a sequel.

Who precisely inspired Bond is a matter of debate, although Fleming almost certainly included idealized aspects of himself. Somewhat of a self-loathing insecure fellow, he also included serveal 'bad' aspects of himself in his memorable over-the-top Bond Villains, especially (it's inferred) the perceived sadism toward Bond Girls (which, aptly, are tyrannized by the 'bad' Fleming -the villain- and cruelly humiliated/abused, before being rescued by the 'good' Fleming, i.e. James Bond).