James Bond is back for another mission and this time, he is blasting off into space. A spaceship travelling through space is mysteriously hijacked and Bond must work quickly to find out who was behind it all. He starts with the rockets creators, Drax Industries and the man behind the organization, Hugo Drax. On his journey he ends up meeting Dr. Holly Goodhead and encounters the metal-toothed Jaws once again.

First and foremost, this is basically a rehash of The Spy Who Loved Me, which also borrowed elements from You Only Live Twice: from the villains motivation to destroy the world in order to form his own utopia to an important millitary vessel mysterously disappearing; even Jaws returns as the villain's henchman. The idea of a billionaire with access to the finances and resources to go to space for their own purposes was considered a rather silly concept for a Bond film, but with billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos competing to go to space, it's not all that silly anymore. Also, how is it that no one was able to notice something as big as the Moonraker space station?

The main villain, Hugo Drax, is exactly the same as Stromberg, only worse. Both being billionaires who wish to destroy the world in order to create a new world with them at the top. Except, Drax's plan is easily worse: Drax's plan to repopulate the world with his chosen ones would simply not work and is incredibly idiotic the minute you realize that there are simply not nearly enough of them to rebuild or sustain any kind of civilization. His numbers alone would put humanity into a population bottleneck far more severe than that proposed by the Toba catastrophe theory, in which it is estimated the total number of humans on the entire Earth, at 10,000, or less even. His entire harem would be roughly equivalent to the population of a small village. There's also the fact that his group at no point is shown to have the skills, numbers, and resilience to survive in a de-populated world much less a world that would be ravaged by massive pollution from abandoned nuclear, industrial, and chemical sites, among other threats and dangers. The end result would likely lead to the total extinction of the human race, not a rebirth. Drax's right hand man, Chang, lacks any kind of personality and is killed halfway...only to be replaced by Jaws soon thereafter.

Goodhead, while not nearly as hated or poorly written compared to other Bond Girls, is a boring character and is considered one of the dullest and least interesting Bond Girls in the entire series. Her dynamic is just less interesting than Bond's dynamic with Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me. This is made worse by the fact that her original counterpart, Gala Brand, is a much better character and she isn't even in this.

Ass Pull:
-The US military and Drax himself are able to launch fully-crewed and fully-fueled space shuttles into orbit in only a matter of hours. In reality, space shuttles from 1962 take an average six months of preparation before they could be launched.
-Drax is somehow able to deploy an entire space station, larger than anything to have existed in reality, without attracting the attention of anyone on Earth. Such a feat would have required perhaps dozens of launches in seeing all the components eventually assembled, and the station's radar jamming system would not help with this since it's so big that you should be able to see it with the naked eye.

The only reason why this came before For Your Eyes Only is very lazy and unneeded: to cash in on Star Wars, a huge success at the box office. Additionally, much like the other Bond films of this era, the film is incredibly campy and silly and syrupy: the film's premise was (and still is) pretty silly for a Bond movie, the scene where Bond gets away from hitmen in a "hover-gondola" (the overly peppy music and the loud grating motor doesn't help), and Bond fighting in zero-g with laserguns might be the most craziest thing (in a bad way and not in a good way) that's ever befallen the franchise. The pacing can be very slow at points thanks to the disappointing direction by Lewis Gilbert.

Despite the atrocious and abysmal execution, it's still amazing to see James Bond go to outer space. Though Bond does get tortured a bit throughout, we still get amazing action scenes and great acting, like always, though probably not the best. This film has impressive production and set design; the Moonraker space station in particular is astonishing. The special effects are very incredible for the time: the sky-diving scene in the opening had to be done 70 times to accomplish and it still looks great to this day; all the shots of the astronauts floating in zero-g is especially wicked given how many people are "floating". In fact, this film holds the record for the largest number of invisible hanging wires to be used in a single scene! And the acting, of course, is still decent from everyone.

To top it all off, this was too decisive for my tastes. This is a rather poor adaptation of Ian Fleming's original Moonraker...though, reading this was a headache. While it wasn't the best, it certainly wasn't the worst, either. It's like, go here, this happens, go there, that happens. And the ending doesn't make any sense. It ends in a way considered that they didn't know how to end it. This sequel was rather somewhat disappointing overall. Certainly nothing like The Spy Who Loved Me, which isn't what's expected in the first place.

In my opinion "Moonraker" by Ian Fleming is probably the best James Bond novel while "Moonraker" by Christopher Wood is probably the worst. I say this as somebody who very much enjoys the film "Moonraker" in spite of its problems and poor reputation. It at least doesn't take itself too seriously and is a pretty fun ride. Christopher Wood seems like he's trying to re-create the seriousness of the literary Bond using one of the campiest Bond films as its source material. It just doesn't work. The source material isn't really to fault though because I thought Wood's "The Spy Who Loved Me" novelization was pretty terrible as well. That was probably my least favorite Bond novel by Fleming (like "Moonraker" the film doesn't follow the novel at all, hence the novelization) but I'd gladly read it again before I'd dive back into Wood's adaptation of TSWLM. Both books are just terribly written in my opinion and manage to strip away all the fun/excitement of the films while failing to capture the magic of a Bond novel. I can't imagine why this book currently has a 3.61 average rating, I suspect that multiple people have mistaken this entry for that of Ian Fleming's novel.

James Bond Radio audiobook alert. The narrators were top notch, as always. Cheers to Dan Gale and Tom.

Not quite up to the standard of Woods 1977 effort this novel is still an enjoyable read.

Imagine the thinking that this script needed to be novelized, and me being that young to read it

Another attempt by Wood to novelise Roger Moore s Bond , this time stays true to the screenplay , no extra bits as per the previous effort ( spy who loved me )

Some of the other novelisations have simply been a condensed version of the film and have added very little extra if you have watched the movie. This benefits from taking out some of the sillier bits of the film with the character of Bond being in the Fleming mode rather than Roger Moore. Some of the minor characters are given back stories which feel a little irrelevant but overall this was an enjoyable version of the story.

This was by first audio book and I think this added to my enjoyment. Perhaps a book version would have got 3 stars.

A very regrettable incident has occurred. A US Moonraker space shuttle, on loan to the British, has disappeared - apparently into thin air. Who has the spacecraft? The Russians? Hugo Drax, multi-millionaire support of the NASA space programme, thinks so. But Commander James Bond knows better.

Aided by the beautiful - and efficient - Dr Holly Goodhead, 007 embars on his most dangerous mission yet. Obective: to prevent one of the most insane acts of human destruction ever contemplated. Destination: outer space. The stakes a high. Astronomical even. But only Bond could take the rough so smoothly. Even when he’s out of this world…


Not to be confused with the Fleming original, this is the novelisation of the screenplay (which Wood also wrote) - hence the title - and follows the film closely, though it does include some interesting tangents. The James Bond portrayed here is closer to the novels than Sir Roger Moore ever played him and even though this includes the same wit and one-liners as the film, there’s a more gritty atmosphere to it all. The gondola chase is shorter (and has a much more abrupt ending than the bit in St Marks Square and so misses the bloody double-taking pigeon), the boat chase in the Amazon is preceeded by the fact that Bond has endured three days on the boat and we don’t get the scene where Corinne is chased by the dogs (Holly tells Bond about it when they get together in Venice). In fact, the book was written before the filming was shifted to France, since Corinne Dufour (the helicopter pilot who helps Bond and then pays for it) is Trudi Parker here, a Californian Valley-girl (when the production shifted to France, it necessitated the casting of a French actress). Jaws is very differently portrayed, with little of the slapstick - he’s not on the plane at the beginning or the boat in the Amazon, though he’s wet when he pulls Bond from the pool - and a nice touch of melancholy at the end (when he’s finally joined by a girl in the part of the space station that drifts off). Hugo Drax is as good a character as the film would suggest, though he’s clearly not Michael Lonsdale - the novelisation Drax “is a large man with shoulders like an American football player”, a “red head, with plastic surgery scarring on his right temple”, his right ear is badly mangled and his face has a “lopsided look because one eye was larger than the other”. Bond assumes this is because he was injured in the war but it made me wonder why a multi-millionaire hadn’t paid for the plastic surgery to sort it out.

I liked the book (I like Wood’s writing, generally), it has a good pace and a nice sensibility about it, but I can see how that might be influenced by my liking the film. As it stands, I enjoyed it and for a fan of the film, I’d say it was very much recommended. Fleming purists, however, might well disagree.

A hard to find book. Printed in 1979 and it looks like it. Faded paper and small font.

But I enjoyed reading this adaptation. I then plugged in my Blu-ray of Moonraker and watched it again for the 50th time. love the James Bond movies.

Would love to read Christopher Wood's adaptation of "The Spy Who Loved Me". But the used paperback of that book is selling for $42+. I am not that crazy.

I can see where the movie cut a few corners from this book, but not too many.

Read this as a 10yo kid not knowing the whole 'book of the film' not the 'film of the book' thing. The plot was a space version of the previous movie the Spy Who Loved Me which only had the rights to use the name, so the plot was itself a submarine remake of Roald Dahl's original You Only Live Twice screenplay. Flemings Moonraker was a England based Police Procedural with Bond transferred to Special Branch to investigate a millionaire building a rocket weapon, this plot was finally used as Gustav Graves and the Icarus satellite in 2002s Die Another Day.

A book that somehow manages to use the narrative voice of Ian Fleming to make the incredible credible, and the ridiculous enjoyable. Wood’s adaptation of his own script for the film adheres much more closely to said script, unlike his superior adaptation of his script for The Spy Who Loved Me, and so his Moonraker suffers. However, it’s still an enjoyable read, and it moves along at a swift pace. Wood’s aping of Fleming’s prose style is very effective and at times it feels like the original author has returned from beyond the grave to try and bring the crazy Moonraker film back down to earth. It’s a noble attempt, and it definitely bears up to repeat reads.

I am not of the opinion that Moonraker is the worst of the Bond films...not by a long shot...but I will admit that I loathe the idiotic slapstick, lame/juvenile comedy, etc. I found an inexpensive copy of Christopher Wood's adaptation, and purchased it with only the lowest of expectations. Was I ever surprised! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It removed everything I hated about the movie, changed a few of the scenes from the film version, and what is left is a serious spy thriller, with humor in it, rather than low-brow attempts at comedy that miss the mark every time. I was so taken with the book that I intend to seek out Mr. Wood's other works, which will hopefully match the quality of this novel.