Midsummer Night's Doom

In the 1950s and 1960s, Ian Fleming, creator of the fictional secret agent, James Bond, wrote a number of short stories featuring his creation that appeared in the collections For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Since 1997, several more short stories featuring Bond or set within the official James Bond universe have been published by authors who continued chronicling the world of Fleming's creation. The majority of these stories have, as of 2008, never been collected in book form, unlike the Fleming works. There are five exceptions: "Blast from the Past", "Midsummer Night's Doom" & "Live at Five" by Raymond Benson, "Your Deal, Mr. Bond" by Phillip and Robert King, and "Bond Strikes Camp" by Cyril Connolly which are discussed below.

In the late 1990s, Raymond Benson, who at the time was the official novelist of the James Bond literary franchise, became the first author since Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, to write officially sanctioned short stories featuring the superspy.

Just before his sudden departure from writing Bond novels at the start of 2003, Benson had indicated his intention to write more short pieces and publish a short story collection along the lines of Fleming's For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy and The Living Daylights. This, however, has yet to occur as of 2008.

To date these three stories remain the only pieces of James Bond literature that have never officially been published in Great Britain. Additionally, between 2001 and 2002, Benson wrote a fourth short story he planned to title "The Heart of Erzulie", however, it was never published.

First publication: Playboy, January 1997 issue. In publication order, this follows COLD and precedes Zero Minus Ten. Benson has stated that Playboy cut a third of the story for space reasons.

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