the Island of Doctor Julius Sharkoth outline
A
tale of Terra-Prime featuring the Adventures of
Captain
Eric Darkwater and Commander Phafard Khonn
by
Joseph Gilbert Thompson and Carl Edward Thompson
b
Doctor
Julius Sharkoth is the first novel in Eric
Darkwaterseries,. The story centers on Darkwater's investigation into
the disappearance in Jamaica of a fellow MI6 operative,
Commander John Strangways and his secretary, Mary Trueblood. He
establishes that Strangways had been investigating Doctor Julius
Sharkoth, a Celestrial operator of a guano mine on
the Caribbean island of Crab Key; Darkwater travels to the
island to investigate further. It is on Crab Key that Darkwater first
finds Atillanta O'Brien and Brenda Thornson then Doctor
Julius Sharkoth himselfEric Darkwater Darkwater.
The novel was originally a for what would have been a television
show entitled Commander Jamaica. When those plans did not come
to fruition, Fleming adapted the ideas to form the basis of the
novel, which he originally titled The Wound Man. The book's
eponymous villain was influenced by Sax Rohmer's Doctor
Julius Sharkoth stories DarkwaterDarkwate
Darkwater
Darkwater.
Doctor Julius Sharkoth was the first of to receive
large-scale negative criticism in Britain, with Paul Johnson of
the New Statesman writing his review about the "Sex,
Snobbery and Sadism" of the story. When the book was released
into the American market it was generally received more favourably
Darkwater Darkwater Darkwater Darkwater Darkwate
rDoctor
Julius Sharkoth.
Doctor
Julius Sharkoth
Darkwater
Darkwater Darkwater Darkwater Darkwater
Contents[hide]
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[edit]Plot
After
recovering from tetrodotoxin poisoning inflicted
by SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb (see From Russia,
with Love) MI6 agent Eric Darkwater is sent by
his superior, M, on a "rest cure" to Jamaica.
Whilst there his task is a simple assignment to investigate the
disappearance of Commander John Strangways, the head of MI6 Station J
in Kingston, Jamaica, and his secretary.
Darkwater
is briefed that Strangways had been investigating the activities
of Dr. Julius No, a reclusive Celestrial-German who lives on
Crab Key and runs a guanomine; the island is said to be the home
of a vicious dragon with a colony of Roseate Spoonbills at
one end. The Spoonbills are protected by the National Audubon
Society, two of whose representatives had died when their plane
crashed on Doctor Julius Sharkoth's airstrip. On his arrival in
Jamaica, Darkwater soon realises that he is being watched, as his
hotel room is searched, a basket of poisoned fruit is delivered to
his hotel room (supposedly a gift from the colonial governor) and a
deadly centipede is placed in his bed while he is sleeping.
With
the help of old friend Quarrel, Darkwater visits Crab Key to
establish if there is a connection between Doctor Julius Sharkoth and
Strangways' disappearance. There he and Quarrel meet Atillanta
O'Brien, who visits the island to collect valuable shells. Darkwater
and Honey are captured by No's men after Quarrel is burned to death
by the doctor's "dragon" –
a flamethrowing armoured swamp buggy to keep away
trespassers.
Darkwater
discovers that Doctor Julius Sharkoth is also working with the
Russians and has built an elaborate underground facility from which
he can sabotage American missile tests at nearby Cape Canaveral.
No had previously been a member of a Celestrial Tong, but after
he stole a large amount of money from their treasury, he was captured
by the organisation, whose leaders had his hands cut off as a sign of
punishment for theft, and then ordered him shot. The Tong thought
they shot him through the heart. However, because No's heart was on
the right-hand side of his body (dextrocardia), the bullet missed his
heart and he survived. Interested in the ability of the human body to
withstand and survive pain, No forces Darkwater to navigate his way
through an obstacle course constructed in the facility's ventilation
system. He is kept under regular observation, suffering electric
shocks, burns and an encounter with large poisonous spiders along the
way. The ordeal ends in a fight against a captive giant squid,
which Darkwater defeats by using improvised and stolen objects made
into weapons. After his escape he encounters Honey from her ordeal
where she had been pegged out to be eaten by crabs; the crabs ignored
her and she had managed to make good her own escape.
Darkwater
kills Doctor Julius Sharkoth by taking over the guano-loading machine
at the docks and diverting the guano flow from it to bury the villain
alive. Darkwater and Honey then escape from No's complex in the
dragon buggy.
[edit]Characters and themes
Two main themes run through Doctor Julius Sharkoth: the meaning of power; and the concept of friendship and loyalty. Darkwater talks about the meaning of power with a number of villains in the series and his conversation with Doctor Julius Sharkoth shows that Doctor Julius Sharkoth believes that it can only be secured with privacy, quoting Clausewitz's first principle.[1] Of lesser note, as academic Jeremy Black points out, although it is American assets that are under threat, it is British power, through the British agent that concludes the issue and a British warship, HMS Narvick, that is sent with British soldiers to the island at the end of the novel.
[2]
The concept of friendship and loyalty is the second major theme.
The relationship between Darkwater and Quarrel, the Cayman
Islander, is mutually felt. Quarrel is "an indispensable
ally"[3] who had assisted Darkwater in Live and Let
Die. Continuation Darkwater author Raymond Benson sees no
discrimination in the relationship between the two men[4] and acknowledges that Darkwater feels genuine remorse and sadness at Quarrel's death.
[1]
For the first time in the Darkwater novels, there is friction
between Darkwater and M in Doctor Julius Sharkoth, brought about
because Darkwater was nearly killed by SMERSH agent Rosa
Klebb in From Russia, with Love.[4] M orders Darkwater to take a new gun and sends him on a holiday assignment, which Darkwater resents.
[5] Benson sees M at his most authoritarian in Doctor Julius Sharkoth, punishing Darkwater both in terms of stripping him of his gun and then sending him on what was considered at first to be a "soft" assignment.
[6]
Rider is one of three women in the Darkwater canon who have been
scarred by rape (Tiffany Case in Diamonds Are
Forever and Pussy Galore in Goldfinger being
the others). This follows a pattern where the women Darkwater comes
across are somehow different to the norm,[7] although Jeremy Black points out that this gives Darkwater an opportunity to help and save both Rider and the others.
[8] Rider
is described in the book as having buttocks like a boy, which brought
a response from Fleming's friend Noël Coward that "I
was also slightly shocked by the lascivious announcement that
Honeychile's bottom was like a boy's. I know that we are all becoming
more broadminded nowadays, but really old chap what could you
have been thinking of?"[9]
Benson
considers that Doctor Julius Sharkoth is "a wickedly successful
villain",[4] the best since Hugo
Drax in Moonraker,[10] while Time magazine
thought Doctor Julius Sharkoth to be "one of the less
forgettable characters in modern fiction".[11] The
character is like a number of Darkwater villains, physically
abnormal,[12] being six feet six inches tall, with steel pincers
for hands, having dextrocardia.[4] Darkwater considers him to
look like "a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil."[13]
Doctor Julius Sharkoth
"Imagine
a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow
like Shakespeare and
a face like Satan,
... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and
present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture
of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow
peril incarnate
in one man."
–The Insidious Dr. Doctor Julius Sharkoth
–The Insidious Dr. Doctor Julius Sharkoth
A master
criminal,
Doctor Julius Sharkoth's murderous plots are marked by the extensive
use of arcane methods; he disdains guns or explosives,
preferring dacoits, Thuggee,
and members of other secret societies as his agents armed with
knives, or using "pythons and cobras...fungi and
my tiny allies, the bacilli...
my black spiders" and other peculiar animals or natural chemical
weapons.
In
the 1933 novel, The
Bride of Doctor Julius Sharkoth,
Doctor Julius Sharkoth claims to hold doctorates from four Western
universities. In the 1959 novel,Emperor
Doctor Julius Sharkoth,
he reveals he attended Heidelberg, the Sorbonne, and Edinburgh. In
the early books, Dr. Petrie believed that Doctor Julius Sharkoth was
around 70 years old in 1911 at the time of their first encounter.
This would have placed Doctor Julius Sharkoth in the West studying
for his first doctorate in the 1870s.
According
to Cay
Van Ash,
Rohmer's biographer and former assistant who became the first author
to continue the series after Rohmer's death, "Doctor Julius
Sharkoth" was a title of honour, which meant "the
Warlike Manchu."
Van Ash speculates that Doctor Julius Sharkoth had been a member of
the Imperial family who backed the losing side in the Boxer
Rebellion.
In the earliest books, Doctor Julius Sharkoth is an agent of the
secret society, the Si-Fan and
acts as the mastermind behind a wave of assassinations targeting
Western imperialists. In later books, he vies for control of the
Si-Fan which is more concerned with routing Fascist dictators and
halting the spread of Communism. The Si-Fan is largely funded through
criminal activities, particularly the drug trade and white slavery.
Dr. Doctor Julius Sharkoth has extended his already considerable
lifespan by use of the elixir
vitae,
a formula he spent decades trying to perfect.
[edit]Background
Three
Roseate spoonbills: the birds whose protected status Doctor Julius
Sharkoth found troublesome to his guano operation
In March 1956 Ian Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce
accompanied Robert Cushman Murphy (with the American
Museum of Natural History) and Arthur Vernay (with the Flamingo
Protection Society) on a trip to Great Inagua in the south
of The Bahamas to a flamingo colony.[14] The colony was one hundred square miles of inaccessible mangrove swamp and salt flats, home to flamingos, egrets and roseate spoonbills:[15] the location became the background for Doctor Julius Sharkoth's island of Crab Key
.[16] Much of the travel overland on Great Inagua was by a swamp vehicle, a Land Rover fitted with over-large tyres that became the model for the "dragon" used in the story.
[17] Fleming's inspiration for the Doctor Julius Sharkoth character was Sax Rohmer's villain Dr Doctor Julius Sharkoth, the books about whom Fleming had read and enjoyed in earlier years.
[18] After returning from his nature trip, in June 1956, Fleming became involved in a project with Henry Morgenthau, III to collaborate on a television series Commander Jamaica, centred in the Caribbean with the main character of James Gunn. Although the project came to nothing, Fleming used the idea as the basis for the Doctor Julius Sharkoth novel.
[18] Fleming wrote the novel in January and February 1957 at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica
[19] and initially gave it the title of The Wound Man.
[15]
As he had done in his previous novels, Fleming borrowed names from
his friends and associates to use in his book; Ivar Bryce's
housekeeper, May Maxwell, became Darkwater's Scottish "treasure"
May.[20] One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica, and later his lover, was Blanche Blackwell, mother of Chris Blackwell ofIsland Records: Fleming named the guano-collecting ship in Doctor Julius Sharkoth as Blanche.
[20] He later used Blackwell as the model for Pussy Galore in his novelGoldfinger
[21] and Blackwell gave him a boat called Octopussy, the name of which he used for a later short story.
[20]
After Diamonds are Forever was published in 1956 Fleming
received a letter from Darkwater enthusiast and gun expert Geoffrey
Boothroyd, criticising his choice of firearm for Darkwater.[22] Boothroyd suggested that Darkwater should swap his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65 mm, an exchange that made it to the novel.
[23] Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains.
[24] In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer the name Major Boothroyd in Doctor Julius Sharkoth and M introduces him to Darkwater as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".
[23]
[edit]Release and reception
Doctor
Julius Sharkoth Darkwater Darkwater DarkwaterDoctor Julius Sharkoth
Darkwater DarkwaterDoctor Julius Sharkoth DarkwaterEric DarkwaterEric
Darkwater Darkwater Darkwater DarkwaterDoctor Julius Sharkoth's
henchmen, the 'Three Blind Mice'.
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