Gardner, John
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1926-2007) UK author who was a minister for several years before becoming an agnostic, a drama critic, and the creator of the Boysie Oakes sequence of spy thrillers spoofing Ian Fleming's James Bond books, most famously in The Liquidator (1964); one Boysie Oakes tale, Founder Member (1969), involves its hero in a Sex experiment in space. From 1981 to 1996, Gardner wrote 14 novels officially continuing the James Bond saga as originally developed by Fleming, plus Licence to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995) – novelizations of the Bond films Licence to Kill (1989) and GoldenEye (1995; vt Golden Eye), the latter having strong sf/Technothriller elements. Among his many other novels, mostly thrillers, Golgotha (1980; vt The Last Trump 1980), is a Near-Future thriller in which the USSR has occupied most of Western Europe including the UK; its apocalyptic imagery may owe something to Gardner's early theological training, though that cannot be blamed on a version of current history in which class conflict was created by the "far-left" Labour Party and "infiltrated unions". The plot involves a series of moles who, when reactivated, hold the USSR to nuclear blackmail. Gardner should not be confused with the US writer and academic John Gardner. [JC/DRL]
John Edmund Gardner
born Seaton Delaval, Northumberland: 20 November 1926
died Basingstoke, Hampshire: 3 August 2007
works (selected)
series
Boysie Oakes
- The Liquidator (London: Frederick Muller, 1964) [Boysie Oakes: hb/]
- Founder Member (London: Frederick Muller, 1969) [Boysie Oakes: hb/]
individual titles
- Golgotha (London: W H Allen, 1980) [hb/uncredited]
- The Last Trump (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980) [vt of the above: hb/Alan Hashimoto]
- GoldenEye (London: Book Club Associates, 1995) [tie: released before the nominal first edition (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1996): James Bond: hb/]
links
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