Editing Colonel Sun (section)

===Characters===
<!-- Bond -->
[[Raymond Benson]]—the author of continuation Bond novels—considers Amis's version of Bond to be close to that developed by Fleming. Benson describes this personality as a natural continuation of the Bond developed in the final three Fleming novels. In all three novels, the events take a toll on Bond: he loses his wife in ''[[On Her Majesty's Secret Service (novel)|On Her Majesty's Secret Service]]''; he loses his memory in Japan in ''[[You Only Live Twice (novel)|You Only Live Twice]]''; and he is [[Brainwashing|brainwashed]] in Russia, is [[deprogramming|de-programmed]] by MI6 and almost dies from [[Francisco Scaramanga]]'s poisoned bullet in ''The Man with the Golden Gun''.{{sfn|Benson|1988|pp=147–148}} Benson also sees a humourless side to the character, one which Fleming used in his earlier novels.{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=147}}

<!-- Sun -->
The main villain of the novel is Colonel Sun Liang-tan ({{lang-zh|c=孙良坦|p=Sūn Liángtǎn}}). Sun is a member of the Special Activities Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army as well as a sadist and skilled torturer. Benson calls him "very worthy of inclusion in the Bond saga".{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=148}} Sun desires power over an individual and the ability to hurt them solely for the sake of causing pain. After Bond has been captured, Sun explains to him his approach to torture:{{sfn|Palmer|1979|p=17}}

<blockquote>You must understand that I'm not the slightest bit interested in studying resistance to pain or any such pseudo-scientific claptrap. I just want to torture people. But—this is the point—not for any selfish reason, unless you call a saint or a martyr selfish. As [[de Sade]] explains in ''[[Philosophy in the Bedroom|The Philosopher in the Boudoir]]'', through cruelty one rises to heights of superhuman awareness, of sensitivity to new modes of being, that can’t be attained by any other method.{{sfn|Markham|1968|p=221}}</blockquote>

The cultural historian [[Jeremy Black (historian)|Jeremy Black]] sees similarities between Sun and Fleming's Chinese villain [[Julius No]] from the 1958 novel ''[[Dr. No (novel)|Dr. No]]''. In both books the characters are shown as having a disregard for human life.{{sfn|Black|2005|p=95}} The reviewer John Dugdale, in a 2018 retrospective review, called Sun "the most repellent racial caricature of all, a descendant of Fu Manchu and other fiendish orientals".{{sfn|Dugdale|2018}}

<!-- M -->
The role of M in the novel changed from that the character had played in Fleming's works. Instead of being the figure who instructs Bond on his mission, he becomes the cause of the mission. The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and [[Tony Bennett (sociologist)|Tony Bennett]] consider that as M does not give Bond's mission its necessary ideological perspective, Bond's "duel with Colonel Sun becomes little more than a personalised feud".{{sfn|Bennett|Woollacott|2009|p=107}} Amis did not like the character of M and, as one reviewer pointed out, had "spent a chapter running him down" in ''The James Bond Dossier''.{{sfn|Stanley|1968|p=10}} Benson considered that M's character evokes an emotional response from the reader because of the change from his usual, business-like manner to a semi-catatonic state upon being kidnapped.{{sfn|Benson|1988|p=148}}