Nearly two years after the death of Ian Fleming in 1964, Jonathan Cape published the author's short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights. The first edition had only 94 pages and didn't par too well with critics, who called the two stories predictable and complained about the overuse of violence and sex. Subsequent editions included The Property of a Lady and 007 in New York.

Before the death of Ian Fleming in August 1964, he wrote one more full-length James Bond novel - The Man with the Golden Gun. Fleming wrote the 184-page tale at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica between January and March 1964. Usually, Fleming would write 2,000 words per day. But because of his declining health, he would only write for an hour per day. It wasn't Fleming's best work. He planned on rewriting it in the spring of 1965, but, unfortunately, he died of a heart attack on August 2, 1964. Jonathan Cape published the novel posthumously eight months after Fleming's death. Like the previous 007 novel You Only Live Twice, critics didn't care much about Bond's newest adventure.

You Only Live Twice (1967) might not be the best James Bond film, but it's one of my favorites for one reason - it stars Donald Pleasence as the first on-screen-portrayal of the villainous Ernst Stavro Blofeld. When I first saw the film in the late 1980s, I thought the character was the best 007 villain. Then Mike Myers spoofed Blofeld in his Austin Powers movies, and my opinion changed. The 1964 novel of the same name is the final James Bond story published a few months before Ian Fleming's death. Critics weren't too kind to the novel, with many calling it a complete failure. Playboy serialized the story in the April, May, and June 1964 issues.

I've watched the 10th James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, many times, thanks to TBS repeating the movie multiple times in the early 1990s. I thought I knew the story by heart, well, that is until I read Ian Fleming's 1962 novel of the same name. Besides the title and James Bond's appearance, the novel and movie have absolutely nothing in common.

Ian Fleming's ninth 007 book, Thunderball, got its first publication in 1961. The international crime organization SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) makes its appearance for the first time. If the name sounds familiar, it's because SPECTRE has appeared in numerous James Bonds films, lead by the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld. In the original 007 novels, SPECTRE is only in full world domination power in Thunderball. SPECTRE gets a brief mention in The Spy Who Loved Me and returns for You Only Live Twice. Later, SPECTRE did return for three novels penned by late novelist John Gardner.