Sunday, April 19, 2015
James Bond And The Fall Of The British Empire
James Bond And The Fall Of The British Empire: For Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, the spectacular collapse of the British Empire after the Second World War was like a bereavement. It even followed -- almost to the letter -- the classic sequence of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance.
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Interesting essay. Jo Walton in her book WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT?, about rereading her favorite science fiction, has a great passage about how so many British male writers were unable to come to terms with the massive changes in the world (and in England in particular) and during the fifties there were a spate of sf books where almost the entire population would be wiped out and it would be left to a band of plucky middle- and upper-class English people to rebuild civilization. I guess that was the denial period.
I read a lot of those books. I need to get Walton's book, although I've read most if not all those essays previously.
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