James Bond and the End of the World

This article explores Ian Fleming’s fluctuating views on technology and his disillusionment with scientific work following the Second World War. Focusing on the James Bond novels, in which Fleming nursed his fears of a post-Cold War, dystopian future, it configures Bond himself as a cypher for human agency in negotiating the technological changes of the twentieth century – a triumphant symbol of Fleming’s belief in the ingenuity of the individual. This article also reads the Cold War context of mutually assured technological destruction (in which Fleming set most of his novels) against the contemporary context of the Covid-19 pandemic, a biological threat of global proportions which is interpreted, here, within a Bondian framework.