The book is better than the movie by a long shot. Bond effectively gets borrowed by Scotland Yard and all the action is in England. The book features high stakes cards with Bond and M playing bridge against Hugo Drax and another player. Does Drax cheat? What is going on with Drax's Moonraker rocket?

A good James Bond novel.

Ian Fleming first published Moonraker in 1955 and it is the third book featuring his master spy, 007. Oddly set in England (Bond is almost always sent out of country due to jurisdictional procedures) this features an erstwhile British rocket project with some loyalty issues. Bond takes a lead from M and then in classic Bond fashion gets in to a lot more than he bargained for.

I will need to revisit the 1979 Lewis Gilbert film starring Roger Moore as Bond, but I think that elements of the book were used to create the 1995 Bond film Goldeneye starring Pierce Brosnan.

Fleming’s villain this time around, Sir Hugo Drax, was very similar to Auric Goldfinger in that both are wildly successful tycoons who have a different measuring stick for winning. Fleming used the proximity to World War II and the ongoing Cold War weapons race to fuel some of the anxiety and paranoia central to the plot.

The more of the Bond novels I read, the more disappointed I am with the movies. The novels are so good. If the movies were honest adaptations of the titles they were using, the quality of the films would have been a million times better. And I know complaining about how the movies are never as good as the books on a book site seems silly, but still. I'm 30, so I grew up knowing the movies better than the books. Most of us did. I'm just glad I'm doing the right thing and reading the Bond novels now.
'Moonraker' was great, because it was ahead of it's time. (And the only similarity this book had to the terrible movie was the title, and the villains name. Nothing else). In the mid fifties, rocket technology was still in it's infancy, and it's use as a long range nuclear delivery system was still being worked out. But Fleming did a very good job portraying a very realist (for the time) nightmare scenario. One that only James Bond can avert, of course.
As usual, I enjoyed it. I love the way Fleming writes. I love how defined and to the point everything is. Bond in the novels is far superior to the Bond on the big screen. And I'm sure I'll say the same thing for all the rest of the novels I have yet to get to. But rest assured, I'll get to them. They're too good not to.

THE‌ ‌GREAT‌ ‌COMPLETIST‌ ‌CHALLENGE:‌ ‌In‌ ‌which‌ ‌I‌ ‌revisit‌ ‌older‌ ‌authors‌ ‌and‌ ‌attempt‌ ‌to‌ ‌read‌ every‌ ‌book‌ ‌they‌ ‌ever‌ ‌wrote‌

Currently‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌challenge:‌ ‌Margaret‌ Atwood‌ |‌ ‌JG‌ ‌Ballard‌ |‌ Clive‌ ‌Barker‌ |‌ Christopher‌ Buckley‌ |‌ ‌Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | ‌Lee Child's Jack Reacher | ‌Philip‌ ‌K‌ ‌Dick‌ |‌ ‌Ian Fleming | CS Forester's Horatio Hornblower | William‌ ‌Gibson‌ |‌ ‌Michel‌ Houellebecq‌ |‌ John‌ ‌Irving‌ |‌ ‌Kazuo‌ ‌Ishiguro‌ |‌ Shirley‌ Jackson‌ | ‌John‌ ‌Le‌ ‌Carre‌ |‌ Bernard‌ ‌Malamud‌ |‌ Cormac McCarthy | China‌ ‌Mieville‌ |‌ Toni Morrison | ‌VS‌ Naipaul‌ |‌ Chuck‌ ‌Palahniuk‌ |‌ ‌Tim‌ ‌Powers‌ |‌ ‌Terry‌ ‌Pratchett's‌ ‌Discworld‌ |‌ Philip‌ ‌Roth‌ |‌ Neal‌ Stephenson‌ |‌ ‌Jim‌ ‌Thompson‌ |‌ John‌ ‌Updike‌ |‌ Kurt‌ ‌Vonnegut‌ |‌ Jeanette Winterson | PG‌ ‌Wodehouse‌ ‌

Finished: ‌Isaac‌ ‌Asimov's‌ ‌"Future History" (Robot/Empire/Foundation‌)

2023 reads, #67. It's summer, which means among other things that it's time again for another of Ian Fleming's 14 original James Bond novels, which I'm reading in chronological order by publishing date. Regular readers will remember that I added Fleming to my Great Completist Challenge in order to "reclaim" these stories from my 1970s-'80s Generation X childhood, when the only Bond I knew was the silly, hammy, over-the-top Roger Moore Bond of such terribly rotoscoped, cheap-feeling, laurels-skating nonsense as The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only. My Baby Boomer father and many other men of his generation loved these stories sincerely, and I thought it'd be a nice reading project to go back and discover why these Mid-Century Modernist males went so nuts for the franchise, before the whole thing became a self-parodying cultural cartoon all about cars and gadgets and Playboy Playmates and Playboy Playmate boobs (speaking of Baby Boomer legacies).

I've been so far really satisfied by the results of the first two novels, 1953's Casino Royale (my review) and the next year's Live and Let Die (my review), because they indeed show a leaner and meaner Bond who's actually supposed to exist in the real world, stripped of all the movie regalia and heavy mythos of things like the Q department and the million-dollar sci-fi toys (about the most exotic tool Bond uses in these first stories is simply scuba gear), as well as his suave, womanizing nature. (In the early books, Bond is actually supposed to be kind of a cruel sociopath who no one gets along with, with Fleming intimating that the reason a guy like Bond is made an 00 Secret Service field agent in the first place is because no one else at the agency really wants him around the central office, and that he's so unpleasant that no one would really miss him if he died.) And indeed, this third book of the series, written one year after the last one (an annual schedule Fleming would keep up until his death in 1964), keeps up with the movie mythos deconstructivist demolishing, revealing among other things that Bond's boss is known as M. not as a code word applied to all past and future holders of the office as well, but literally because his first name is "Miles;" and that as of 1955, only three 00 agents are actually still in active service, their numbers surprisingly being 007, 008 and 0011, implying that these numbers are permanently retired after an agent leaves the service.

Unlike the first two, though, here the actual story being told just falls flat on its face, in such a surprisingly clunky and terrible way that I'm kind of surprised the franchise even survived a title such as this one. Based on the limited research I've done into the subject at Wikipedia and Goodreads, it's my understanding that Fleming was already thinking about the movie version of Bond even here in the early 1950s, after receiving early interest from producer Alexander Korda; and that the plot of this book had actually started life as Fleming's own attempt at writing a James Bond film, but after realizing that in prose form it would only make up about two-thirds of a small novel, he had tacked on the current first third that infamously feels exactly like a separate story tacked on to the main one just to pad the page count. Namely, just like Casino Royale, Bond spends a hundred pages meeting and getting to know the main villain through a convoluted evening of high-class, high-stakes card gambling, and only about a third of the way in learns that said villain, one Hugo Drax, is actually planning something evil, kicking off the main "Bond-style" story of this book. (And indeed, Fleming basically admitted in later interviews that the entire reason he started writing novels was actually more an attempt to write about card games, with it occurring to him that it'd be randomly interesting to make a secret agent the card player in question; Fleming was obsessed with the subject himself, helpfully explaining in Moonraker's fictional first third that even in real life, gambling in the UK was illegal at the time, but could be gotten away with at the super-rich blue-blood gentlemen's clubs of London, because these clubs were made up of all the rich white dudes who created and enforced the gambling laws in the first place.)

That makes this a bizarre, disjointed mess of a story, with a prologue that's an entire third of the book, a proper first act that doesn't even begin until the 33% mark, and a climax that just flies by at the very end in the blink of an eye. This is then further marred by Fleming's strange decision that for this particular novel, he really wanted to play up and emphasize all the fine, wonderful things about England that make it in his opinion The Greatest Country On The Whole Damn Planet, and so decided to set the entire adventure this time within the small confines of just London and Dover, with the globetrotting and exotic locations already present from the first book now entirely gone, and with Fleming's attempts to highlight "the best of British culture" now being so inept and old-fashioned that they often now elicit unintentional laughter. (At a certain point, Bond and his companion order for dinner a Salisbury steak, bone marrow [delivered in actual overcooked bones with accompanying tiny spoon], and a pile of raw pineapple slices, and I was like, "Jesus Christ, Fleming, is this really your ultimate example of the brilliance of British cuisine?!") That I suppose is what makes it ironic that among his contemporary readers of these actual years, Drax was far and away seen by many as Bond's greatest villain, precisely because he seemed the most realistic to 1950s audiences; an amnesiac war orphan who stumbled out of the conflict with no identity and no money, he nonetheless spent the go-go postwar years becoming a rich and powerful innovator of rocket technology, eventually inventing what at the time was the science-fiction concept (but actually invented a few years later) of the intercontinental ballistic missile, the "Moonraker" of the book's title. (And this, by the way, is another huge drawback of this book; for it seems that Fleming rather thought of himself here as a fellow "hard science-fiction" author in the style of his '50s contemporaries like Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, and here files one of the most overwritten and tediously detailed explanations of how rockets work that I've ever seen, just pages upon pages of badly written pseudoscience babble that you can just entirely skip right over.)

This being a James Bond novel, Drax of course turns out to not be what he seems; but what he actually is and what he's actually attempting to do don't get revealed until way far along into the third act, already unusually short because of all the "bridge game for a million pounds? Don't mind if I do, sir!" nonsense of the book's start, which when combined with the blase settings (c'mon, bro, Dover?) leads to just a really lackluster reading experience, one that if I didn't know any better (for example, if I was a contemporary audience member who was reading these as they actually came out) would cause me to think, "Does this guy even know what he's doing?" It's telling, for example, that when the Albert Broccoli money-printing machine did finally start cranking out Bond movies beginning in the Kennedy '60s, they deliberately wrote an entirely new story for the film version of Moonraker, retaining the title and the villain's name but otherwise changing every single other detail, despite Fleming having meant for this to be his first sincere attempt at actually writing a screenplay himself. That kind of tells you how much this isn't working, and now makes me interested in seeing how he managed to save himself from a short and unremembered three-book career with the next novel after this, the hugely popular Diamonds Are Forever (aka the last of the Sean Connery films). I'll see you in Summer 2024 for that one!

Ian Fleming books being reviewed in this series: Casino Royale (1953) | Live and Let Die (1954) | Moonraker (1955) | Diamonds Are Forever (1956) | From Russia, With Love (1957) | Dr. No (1958) | Goldfinger (1959) | For Your Eyes Only (1960) | Thunderball (1961) | The Spy Who Loved Me (1962) | On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) | You Only Live Twice (1964) | The Man With the Golden Gun (1965) | Octopussy and the Living Daylights (1966)

Going to use this same review for all the James Bond books I read several years ago. Why did I keep reading them if I hated them so much? Because I kept hoping for ONE good book with ONE woman valued for more than just her body. And anyone out there can tell me it was a reflection of the times, but I throw that argument out. I've heard it used a lot for slavery, for example, but that fails too because there were always abolitionists, just like there have always been feminists, even if that word didn't necessarily exist back then.

Amazon was practically giving away these Ian Fleming books, so I'd bought them all. And ultimately, I hated myself for it. They are such sexist filth. Sure, I like the "good guys" winning as much as the next, but in every one of them, it felt like it was at the expense of some woman (the "Bond girl's") identity where she's reduced to nothing but an objectified and glorified sexual being whose sole purpose is to make James Bond look good. Ew. I would've known better (I hope) had the cover been one of the more semi-pornographic ones that seem to be more common, but the Kindle series I'd bought had very unrevealing cover art. UGH. And remarkably, I hadn't watched any of the older Bond movies - only started with Daniel Craig versions which I thought was just dumb sexist typical Hollywood. In retrospect, I should've known better!

An excellent Ian Fleming. I am rereading the entire series and, so far, I like this one the best. And make no mistake, reading Ian Fleming is much different than watching the movie version of James Bond.

Cute. I recommend brushing up on bridge before starting this one ha ha.

Moonraker by Ian Fleming is the third James Bond novel. Before reading this, anyone should take note that this was written in the 1950s with the sensibility of the day, where misogyny and strict gender roles were just beginning to change, as well as the increase of cold war era disdain for the Russians. If these concepts trigger you, then avoid reading Bond books. In some ways, there is an antiquated mindset pervasive throughout the books, but again if this is going to make you uncomfortable: avoid the book. There are some really magnificent touches in this novel. Agent 007 communicates that he is one of only three 00s currently active and double O eleven is one of his pals. After spending his morning on the gun range, he goes to the office to interact with the secretary of the 00s, review files, read and sign a file of new policies and procedures, and meet with M. The beginning is a view of pre-secret agenting that is so mundane that it provided a great deal of food for thought that I devoured. Then the major part of the story revolves on a wealthy British patriot looking to get a rocket into space and his suspicious ways. Hugo Drax is an intriguing and memorable character.

A mixed bag, this book. Fleming’s third Bond novel recycles a number of plot elements from CASINO ROYALE in more or less the same order. The McGuffin is different, of course, and that keeps certain scenes fresh. Fleming seems addicted to torture. There is scene after scene of Bond bleeding and dripping blood on the floor, but somehow, when the rest of us would be dead, he soldiers on. Couldn’t he duck under a desk and be OK just once? Not with Mr. Fleming as the author.

Critics of the series complain that Bond is a super hero, not a real man. This soldiering on when it would be impossible to do so contributes to this feeling, but I think the charge is partially misplaced. The antagonist is really a super villain and his plot quite impossible. Bond, I think, is tarnished by this more than his alleged super heroic traits, his near invulnerability aside. Those who make this charge often compare Bond to the more realistic spies of John le Carrie and Len Dighton. This is unfair, for Bond’s antecedents helped shaped him. Readers should understand Bond in light of John Buchan, Eric Ambler, and especially John Creasey’s Department Z novels. The Bond of MOONRAKER is very much a hero in their mold.

There is some dull writing, though the interminable Bridge game may fascinate those who play it, I wouldn’t know, and even the first half of the last chapter is a bore, but in my mind this is the book where Fleming proved he could write. The passages of terrible writing in CASINO ROYALE and LIVE AND LET DIE now have a style that is recognizably by the same man but after he improved as a stylist. There is pleasure to be had in meeting this emerging writer after suffering through two books that were a good deal worse.

Rating: 4* of five

Yes, again I'm rating the 1979 movie, not the 1954 book. Get over it.

The pre-credits sequence of this film is the absolute all-time best thrill ride in the Bondiverse. Seeing it again on the teensy netbook screen was just as thrilling and pulse-pounding as it was to see it in the theater 34 years ago. A parachuteless Bond flung from a plane, chasing a villain with a parachute, wresting the parachute from the villain, and death to baddie while Bond tiptoes lightly to earth.

It's WONDERFUL.

The plot's standard Bond piffle. Villain with all the money in the world manages to hide a space base in the jungles of Brazil, creates a supermegaultra whiter-than-white Master Race, blah blah you know the drill. What makes this fun to watch are the chase scenes in Venice...so beautiful, Venice!...Rio de Janeiro's cable cars, which had me whimpering in terror...and lastly, most campily, in outer space. That bit, the last half-hour or so, hasn't aged well.

I really love this film for its sheer, balls-to-the-wall speed of pace. Unlike many Bond films, the yip-yap seems to take less time than usual. This perception is helped along by the forgettableness of the yip-yap, I think.

Possibly the stupidest thing that happens in the film is the 7ft2in tall assassin, Jaws, who repeats from The Spy Who Loved Me, turns good because of the love of a (tiny, blonde) woman. Jeez. Possibly the best thing that happens, after the amazing opening sequence, is the launch of six space shuttles...filmed before even one had actually launched! It's quite impressive.

Shirley Bassey's back, singing "Moonraker", the last one she'd ever sing. Thank goodness. Apparently the producers asked her to do this after Kate Bush (!!) said no. The tune's just about what you'd accept in a 1959 film, not a 1979 film.

All there is to say con, I still give this one a pro rating.

Well more like 3.5 but yes, so like so many people I have also the task of trying to read this huge series in somewhat of an order so having read first three books, yes the consensus is right and Ian Fleming's writing definitely improved compared to the first two books. So the story is simple a war-hero has built a rocket and everybody in England is excited for it but he cheats at cards and James Bond steps in on behest of M and another card game ensues, Fleming did love cards it seems. And then through the course of his investigations finally the mystery is resolved and it is huge. There are not huge action set pieces here and Bond has yet to turn in to the action star of the movies.

So sit back homie, relax pick a book and Keep on Reading.

People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.

Another fast-paced thriller from Fleming, this book has a great villain and some exciting moments of suspense. As it’s set entirely in England, it lacks some of the glam vibes you would expect from a Bond novel but remains an enjoyable page-turner.