You Only Live Twice (film) manned spacecraft disappear mysteriously in orbit. With each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War, Bond travels secretly to a remote Japanese island to find the perpetrators and comes face to face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. The film reveals the appearance of Blofeld, who was previously a partially unseen character. SPECTRE is working for the government of an unnamed Asian power, implied to be the People's Republic of China, to provoke war between the superpowers. During the filming in Japan, it was announced that Sean Connery would retire from the role of Bond, but after
James Bond uncollected and other miscellaneous short stories space reasons. The first Bond story published by Benson, "Blast from the Past" is a direct sequel to Fleming's "You Only Live Twice" and appears to exist outside the timeline of either Benson's or John Gardner's other Bond stories. Bond receives a message, apparently from his son James Suzuki (Suzuki's mother is Kissy Suzuki from "You Only Live Twice", now dead from ovarian cancer) asking him to come to New York City on an urgent matter. When Bond arrives, he finds his son murdered. With the aid of an SIS agent, he learns that James was killed in revenge by