Raymond Benson is coming back for more thrilling secret agent /special operations adventures in 2008 with an adaptation of Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear began life on the NES back in 1987 from gaming mastermind Hideo Kojima, but it wasn’t until Metal Gear Solid in 1998 for the PlayStation that the series actually took off. A movie based on Metal Gear Solid is also in the works from Kojima, but that was stalled after David Hayter’s script was passed up by the movie execs at Sony. Hayter is not only a screenwriter (probably best known for scripting X-Men and X2), but also the voice of Solid Snake, the main protagonist.

Obviously to readers here Benson is best known for preceding Sebastian Faulks as the author of the adult James Bond novels from 1997 to 2002. Following Bond and between original books of his own, he also wrote the first two Splinter Cell novels (Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Operation Barracuda) featuring spy, Sam Fisher under the pseudonym David Michaels. Two other Splinter Cell novels have been released since under the name David Michaels (Checkmate and Fallout), but both were not written by Mr. Benson.

Metal Gear Solid, the Novel will be published by Del Rey (Random House) on May 27, 2008.

Amazon.com | Del Rey

Thanks to The Literary Dossier for the tip.

Amazon has published a list of their Best Books of 2007 and included in the Children’s section is Hurricane Gold. Sales for the book appear to be still going well, or so I’m led to believe since in overall sales it’s still in the top 100 (not just children’s). Okay, it ranks #97, but it’s beating Alan Greenspan ;)

This year saw the release of two Young Bond books, and in my opinion the better of the two was Double or Die, which didn’t get a mention by Amazon. On the other hand, in the Customer’s Top 100 Books of 2007, Double or Die came in at #81 (this list also includes audiobooks and multiple editions of the same book so Double or Die probably ranks higher once you get rid of the 25 other editions of the latest Harry Potter ;) ) On that list, no mention of Hurricane Gold.

So how do you do a Best Books of 2007 list when the year is still on-going? Well it’s a promotional deal to get you to buy these books for the holidays. And you should. Look at these savings! Double or Die is only £4.03 and Hurricane Gold is marked down to a mere £6.49 (good deal considering I paid £8.57 two months ago). :)

Finally. It’s been 2 years since the release of Samantha Weinberg’s first Moneypenny diary, Guardian Angel in the UK and now, thankfully, CommanderBond.net reports that the series finally found a publisher in the United States. The series will be published by St. Martin’s Press and the first book is due out on May 13, 2008. Unfortunately, you, the Bond literary collector and fan, will be broke that month. But hey! Success, right? ;)

Paperback art has been released for John Pearson’s lone James Bond book, James Bond: The Authorised Biography of 007, which was originally published in 1973. Recently a hardcover was re-released in the UK, and a US version, though listed on Amazon.com, dropped completely off the radar. On May 1, 2008 the book will be re-published again in the UK this time in paperback form by Arrow Books. It would appear that a US hardcover is also back on the table this time listed on Amazon with a release of November 27, 2007 …. and a paperback that has a listing of June 24, 2008.

Here’s some Amazon links:
US Hardcover
US Paperback
UK Paperback

Activision’s Bobby Kotick announced that a second James Bond game was in the works today. I suspected it back in June, but I couldn’t get anyone to confirm it to me.

Anyway, Kotick also took a shot at EA by saying that they neglected the franchise. I suppose that’s a nice way to put it. I’m not a fan of EA at all. Their tactic for how they do business always comes off as acquire and exploit. EA, in my opinion, is like a leech. In the case of Bond they saw the success of GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 so they threw their moneybags around and picked up the license to make the games. Released a lot of poor games. Even tried to come up with a way to rip off the success of GoldenEye 007 more with GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. Who were they fooling? Everything or Nothing was a good game. They deserve credit for that one, but then they turned around and released From Russia with Love, which I wasn’t a fan of. It was by no means a bad game, but it was rather boring and an unfortunate use of Sean Connery’s involvement (i.e., they could have put him to better use). Bond isn’t the only franchise they abused. Look at Harry Potter! What really frightens me about EA is that they just picked up BioWare (the developer). BioWare is an awesome developer, probably best known for developing the highly acclaimed (and awesome) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic among other great titles (Mass Effect is gonna own). I hope EA just lets them do their thing, but once again EA doesn’t have a good track record.

Okay, I’m done complaining about EA. I have high hopes for Activision, but… I don’t know… it’s firmly programmed in mine and most other gamer’s heads that movie-based games (adaptations), more often than not, don’t turn out so good – and there are good reasons for this. GoldenEye 007 along with The Chronicles of Riddick are probably the only notable exceptions.

A lot of good news was announced today about Ian Fleming’s upcoming Centenary. The bookseller reports that Penguin is expecting to sell 250,000 copies of Sebastian Faulks upcoming James Bond adventure, Devil May Care in the UK backed by an “unmissable marketing and publicity campaign.”

All fourteen of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels are being reprinted in hardcover form in the UK and will retail for £14.99 a piece. I don’t know what to expect here. I’m kind of hoping they’re rather nostalgic, maybe just reusing Chopping’s and Fleming’s designs. Why not? I love those designs. Then again, new is cool too, but I just hope the designs are.. you know.. good. See it scares me because Penguin’s Tom Weldon talked about the design of Devil May Care’s upcoming cover art and it’s said to have a single iconic image. Now I don’t know what this single iconic image is, but I think about the last couple of books released that had a single image and as you’re probably aware I felt let down about those. Double or Die, for instance. Terrible cover art. I’m hopefully optimistic though. And that’s just the UK. In the U.S. we may see different cover art since it’s a different publisher here.

About 200 days to go……

Well this didn’t take long at all, which is surprising. The cover art for the paperback edition of Hurricane Gold was shown off over at the Danger Society though the book isn’t due for release till May of next year. A lot of people seem to like it, however, I am not sold on it. I think it looks nice, but I think they’ve overdone the “gold” thing. The hardcover in gold, that was great. The gold party.. that was strange, but okay. Now it’s paperback time and I was kind of hoping they’d do away with the whole “gold theme” to tell you the truth. Just because it has gold in the title doesn’t mean you have to use an abundance of gold. SilverFin did quite alright not having any actual silver on the cover (though there is a slight silver-esque quality about the eels, but it’s more of a blue), same with Goldfinger and gold and that book had more to do with gold than Hurricane Gold.

It’s just cover art. Big whoop. I just happened to like the advertisement I saw awhile back better. It’s got sort of an Indiana Jones/archaeological vibe to it, which isn’t bad. The Avenue of Death in Hurricane Gold is actually a lot like the end sequence in The Last Crusade. You know the part where Indy Sr. – Sean Connery – is shot and the baddies force Indy to go through this cave to find the Holy Grail and Indy has to get past all these elaborate obstacles? It’s like that. Anyway here is the advertisement:

Of course, I acknowledge that going with this would have messed up the Young Bond paperback theme, but who really cares. It’s nice to get that similar look in a collection, but it’s not a huge deal. They already started to shift away from that with the Hurricane Gold hardcover anyway and lets not even begin to talk about the inconsistent cover art in America – though I very much enjoy the Kev Walker art for Blood Fever. But look at this advertisement. It’s far more fitting for the story if you ask me. The colors are great. The sandy browns, the murky greens and the croc is more terrifying if you ask me. In the paperback version it looks like a croc out of water with his mouth open. That can be scary, but all of us, if faced with the situation, would rather face off against a croc on land than in water. Right? That’s his domain. It’s like Jaws (that would be the shark). Seeing the shark out of water = you’re a little scared, maybe. Being in the water with the shark = well I bet you taste good. Regardless, there’s something interesting and eerie about how half their head sort of floats on the water.

Speaking of themes and cover art, lets hope they have something really artistic up their sleeves for Devil May Care. I’d love for them to go for a nostalgic Richard Chopping cover, but I have a feeling they’re going to try and cram “Ian Fleming” and “James Bond” on the cover given it’s Fleming’s Centenary. Maybe they’ll surprise us with something really cool. Or something really funky. Remember Colonel Sun‘s first edition? Hey, it’s all fair. Critique my fan artwork that I showed off on this site before. It’s Devil May Care in Chopping’s style, but with a lot ..lot lot lot lot.. etc… less artistic talent.

Ever wonder how Raymond Benson got published? Well he’ll tell you in the aptly titled book How I Got Published: Famous Authors Tell You in Their Own Words by Ray White and compiled by Duane Lindsay. Benson’s essay within the book is titled “Bondage Paraphernalia”. If you know your Benson, you’ll know his first novel was the James Bond adventure Zero Minus Ten. Prior to that Benson wrote The James Bond Bedside Companion in 1984 (updated in 1988) and two short stories in 1986, “The Plagiarist” and “Thumbs Down“, both of which you can purchase for a mere 49 cents (USD) on Amazon.com.

For me, one of the coolest aspects of the upcoming Young Indiana Jones Chronicles on DVD is the fact that so many Bond thespians were at one time involved. Daniel Craig being perhaps the most notable. Also Christopher Lee (Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun), Max Von Sydow (Blofeld in Never Say Never Again), and Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter in Casino Royale) off the top of my head. I haven’t seen these episodes in a really long time so I’m looking forward to seeing them again later this year.

Anyway, here’s a clip of one of the featurettes from the upcoming DVDs. This one particularly features clips of both Craig and Lee. So check it out.

Well, I don’t really know what to think of this. I’ve actually seen this before, but it just got a listing on Amazon or rather it just received artwork so I think I better mention it. Anyway, a new fictional book, involving Ian Fleming and James Bond is coming next year for Bond fans to roll eyes at read through this time by Philip Gardiner, who tends to write a lot of books on secret societies. This sounds oddly familiar, right? Well this isn’t that. This is different. You see for decades there have been these hidden codes beneath the many layers of the world’s greatest fictional spy that the ingenious Ian Fleming placed and now thanks to Gardiner or whomever his fictional character is, these hidden secrets are coming to light. Not interested in reading? That’s cool because it’s also going to be a film. The book and film, titled The Bond Code: The Dark World of Ian Fleming and James Bond, will be released on March 1, 2008 by New Page Books and Reality Films. It even has a website.

Like I said, I don’t know what to think of this. Be prepared for anything.