The Best Adventure series of posts will list my favorite 21 adventure novels from each of the 20th Century’s first eight (socio-cultural) decades. Plus, I kicked off the series with a list of the Top 32 adventures from the 19th Century; in total, then, I aim to list 200 of my all-time favorite adventures.
If you’d like to see obscure but amazing adventure novels rescued from copyright limbo, back Save the Adventure’s kickstarter campaign before November 9. Save the Adventure is brought to you by Singularity & Co., the folks behind the science fiction book club Save the Sci-Fi. HiLobrow’s Joshua Glenn — who edits the HiLoBooks series of reissued Radium Age science fiction classics — is the Save the Adventure Book Club’s founding editor.
MORE LIT LISTS FROM THIS AUTHOR: Index to All Adventure Lists | Best 19th Century Adventure (1805–1903) | Best Nineteen-Oughts Adventure (1904–13) | Best Nineteen-Teens Adventure (1914–23) | Best Twenties Adventure (1924–33) | Best Thirties Adventure (1934–43) | Best Forties Adventure (1944–53) | Best Fifties Adventure (1954–63) | Best Sixties Adventure (1964–73) | Best Seventies Adventure (1974–83). ALSO: Best YA Fiction of 1963 | Best Scottish Fabulists | Radium-Age Telepath Lit | Radium Age Superman Lit | Radium Age Robot Lit | Radium Age Apocalypse Lit | Radium Age Eco-Catastrophe Lit | Radium Age Cover Art (1) | SF’s Best Year Ever: 1912 | Cold War “X” Fic | Best YA Sci-Fi | Hooker Lit | No-Fault Eco-Catastrophe Lit | Scrabble Lit |
20 ADVENTURE THEMES AND MEMES: Index to All Adventure Lists | Introduction to Adventure Themes & Memes Series | Index to Entire Series | The Robinsonade (theme: DIY) | The Robinsonade (theme: Un-Alienated Work) | The Robinsonade (theme: Cozy Catastrophe) | The Argonautica (theme: All for One, One for All) | The Argonautica (theme: Crackerjacks) | The Argonautica (theme: Argonaut Folly) | The Argonautica (theme: Beautiful Losers) | The Treasure Hunt | The Frontier Epic | The Picaresque | The Avenger Drama (theme: Secret Identity) | The Avenger Drama (theme: Self-Liberation) | The Avenger Drama (theme: Reluctant Bad-Ass) | The Atavistic Epic | The Hide-And-Go-Seek Game (theme: Artful Dodger) | The Hide-And-Go-Seek Game (theme: Conspiracy Theory) | The Hide-And-Go-Seek Game (theme: Apophenia) | The Survival Epic | The Ruritanian Fantasy | The Escapade
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This is the seventh post in the series. Here you’ll find a list of my Top 21 Adventures from the Fifties (1954–63).
The Fifties was the era of James Bond. Fleming’s first Bond book, Casino Royale, appeared in the cusp year of 1953; before 1964, he’d publish Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds Are Forever, From Russia, with Love, Dr. No, Goldfinger, For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I enjoyed these books as an adolescent, but find them unreadable now. In contrast to Bond’s rococo thrills, Graham Greene, Richard Condon, and John Le Carré gave us morally ambiguous — yet suspenseful, exciting — espionage adventures. Jean Lartéguy’s insurgency-focused The Centurions is a favorite of General David Petraeus.
The Golden Age of adventure was in the rearview mirror, during the Fifties, but Alistair MacLean, Helen MacInnes, Geoffrey Household, and newcomers Lionel Davidson and Len Deighton, did some of their best work during these years. It was also a great era for caper adventures: Between 1954 and 1963, Richard Stark, Jim Thompson, Donald Hamilton, Lionel White, Ed McBain, Eric Ambler, Patricia Highsmith, Andrew Garve, and John D. MacDonald wrote some of the best crime novels of all time.
The apex of Cold War paranoia coincided with the apex of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction and Fantasy — by 1963, the New Wave era of these genres was visible on the horizon. Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint and The World Jones Made and The Man in the High Castle, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan and Cat’s Cradle, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World, and Michael Moorcock’s The Stealer of Souls already contain New Wave elements. Yet they’re not so self-conscious as New Wave science fiction and fantasy; the pleasure they offer to the reader is less rarified and self-conscious than what was to come.
I also want to mention that YA and children’s adventures of this era are incredible! Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, Hergé’s Tintin in Tibet and The Calculus Affair and The Red Sea Sharks, Goscinny and Uderzo’s Asterix the Gaul, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy and The Magician’s Nephew, Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Eagle of the Ninth and The Lantern Bearers, Edward Eager’s Knight’s Castle and Half Magic, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, Jerome Beatty’s Matthew Looney’s Voyage to the Earth, Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach, Jane Langton’s The Diamond in the Window, Sid Fleischman’s Mr. Mysterious & Company and By the Great Horn Spoon!, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Robert Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars, not to mention the first fruits of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic book collaboration: By the time I was growing up, in the 1970s, these were already recognized as timeless classics.
As in each post from this series, I’ve appended a list of 29 second-tier favorites — for a grand total of 50 Top Adventures of the Fifties. Plus a third-tier list that features, among other thing, many obscure adventures. These ought not to be thought of as “third-rate” (I wouldn’t mention them if they weren’t worth reading) but instead as Most Deserving of Rediscovery. Please leave suggestions and feedback.
If you’re interested in reading re-discovered science fiction adventures, check out the 10 titles from HiLoBooks — available online and in gorgeous paperback form. And please help us kickstart the SAVE THE ADVENTURE Book Club (I’m the Club’s editor).
THE TOP 21 ADVENTURE NOVELS OF THE FIFTIES (1954–63)
In chronological order:
1954. Poul Anderson’s fantasy adventure The Broken Sword. Michael Moorcock declared The Broken Sword superior to Tolkien, calling it “a fast-paced doom-drenched tragedy in which human heroism, love and ambition, manipulated by amoral gods, elves and trolls, led inevitably to tragic consequences.” PS: It was influenced by H. Rider Haggard’s 1891 Viking adventure The Saga of Eric Brighteyes.
1955. Crockett Johnson’s children’s dream adventure Harold and the Purple Crayon. A four-year-old with a purple crayon draws an adventure for himself. Along with Ruth Krauss, P.D. Eastman, Syd Hoff, Leo Lionni, Lilian Moore, and William Steig, Johnson (who was author, from 1942–52, of the great newspaper strip Barnaby) was a leftist who raised questions — in an ostensibly playful manner — about our taken-for-granted forms and norms.
1957. Alistair MacLean’s WWII commando adventure The Guns of Navarone. New Zealand mountaineer-turned-commando Keith Mallory, American demolitions expert Dusty Miller, and Greek resistance fighter Andrea are sent on a mission impossible: to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea. Adapted as the 1961 movie starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony Quinn.
1958–59. Hergé’s Tintin adventure Tintin in Tibet, the author’s own favorite of his books. A strange adventure without an antagonist (unless the Yeti counts?), without Calculus or the Thompsons. Just Tintin, Haddock, Snowy, and the sherpa Tharkey, trekking across the Himalayan mountains in search of the sole survivor of a plane crash. An emotional, mystical, funny, weird voyage of redemption. Published as a color album in 1960.
1958. Graham Greene’s espionage adventure Our Man in Havana, a sardonic inversion of the genre. In this black comedy, which Greene considered an “entertainment” rather than a “novel,” Greene mocks intelligence services, especially the British MI6 (for whom he’d worked during WWII), and their willingness to believe reports from local informants. Adapted as the 1959 movie starring Alec Guinness.
1959. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure Time Out of Joint. Ragle Gumm believes that he lives in the year 1959 in a quiet American suburb. His repeatedly wins the cash prize in a newspaper competition, “Where Will The Little Green Man Be Next?”. Confusion gradually mounts for Gumm. Adapted as (actually, baldly ripped off by) The Truman Show. Except Gumm’s occluded reality is much weirder than Truman’s.
1959. Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, a political thriller about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy. Condon’s over-the-top style is strong medicine; as much as I like the 1962 John Frankenheimer movie adaptation, the novel is much better. “Raymond stood as though someone might have just opened a beach umbrella in his bowels.”
1959–60. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s historical adventure Asterix the Gaul. The story was first published as a serial in Pilote magazine, a Franco-Belgian comics magazine founded by Goscinny and others. Published in album form in 1962. The English translation was first published in 1969.
1960. Donald Hamilton’s espionage adventure Death of a Citizen, the first in a long-running (27 titles) series featuring assassin Matt Helm. The title refers to the metaphorical death of peaceful citizen and family man Matt Helm and the rebirth of the WWII killer. NB: In the late 1960s, several comedy movies — sardonic inversions of the genre — starring Dean Martin were produced.
1960. Geoffrey Household’s hunted-man adventure Watcher in the Shadows, his second best novel (after Rogue Male). Zoologist Charles Dennim is sent a mail bomb — why? Turns out that during the war, he was a double agent working for the Allies as a Gestapo officer in a concentration camp. Now the husband of one of the Gestapo’s victims wants revenge.
1960. Jean Lartéguy’s military adventure The Centurions, which concerns paratroopers in Indochina and Algeria. Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy must transform a military unit accustomed to conventional warfare into one that can handle the complex, dynamic challenge of defeating an insurgency. The book, which includes the first use of the so-called “ticking time bomb” scenario, was adapted in 1966 as the movie Lost Command.
1962. Lionel Davidson’s adventure The Rose of Tibet. A Haggard-esque yarn in which an English man travels to Tibet searching for his missing brother. He is mistaken for a god; he falls in love with a high priestess; he is entrusted with a treasure; and he in the end, he must flee the invading Red Chinese army. Graham Greene: “I hadn’t realised how much I had missed the genuine adventure story until I read The Rose of Tibet.”
1962. Madeleine L’Engle’s YA science fiction adventure A Wrinkle in Time. Fourteen-year-old Meg Murry is shy, awkward, and too good at math to be considered cool. When their scientist father disappears, Meg and her genius baby brother travel through space and time to rescue him — with the assistance of two weird neighbors (Mrs. Whatsit and Mrs. Who), and a basketball-playing jock.
1962. Eric Ambler’s crime adventure The Light of Day. A petty crook in Athens, Arthur Abdel Simpson, preys on an international jewel thief — who blackmails him into driving a suspicious car across the Turkish border. Caught by the Turkish police, Simpson is coerced into spying on his erstwhile colleagues. Adapted by Jules Dassin as the light-hearted caper movie Topkapi.
1962. Len Deighton’s espionage adventure The IPCRESS File is a sardonic inversion of the genre… but still an exciting thriller. The plot involves mind control, the titular acronym standing (absurdly) for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex under strESS.” The novel’s protagonist if nameless; he works for an intelligence agency with the unexplained acronym WOOC(P). Adapted in 1965 as the popular Michael Caine movie.
1962. Richard Stark’s (Donald E. Westlake) crime adventure The Hunter. Parker, a brutal thief, is shot and left for dead by his partner and wife. He recovers, then embarks on a relentless quest to retrieve his money and get revenge. Westlake would write 23 other Parker novels over the next half-century; he is credited with having made it OK for readers to root for the bad guy. Adapted in 1967 as John Boorman’s excellent movie Point Blank.
1963. Thomas Pynchon’s apophenic adventure V.. Nineteen sixty-three was a cusp year: a strange new era would begin in 1964. I am fascinated by fiction from ’63 — including YA lit — in so much of which we find a volatile admixture of seriousness (not earnestness) and irony. In Pynchon’s début novel, which details the picaresque exploits of schlemiel Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew, in and underneath New York, characters in search of a plot (in the paranoid sense of the term), jazzman McClintic Sphere articulates Pynchon’s cynical-yet-innocent worldview: “Keep cool but care.”
1963. Helen MacInnes’s espionage adventure The Venetian Affair. Though she got famous writing WWII anti-Nazi espionage adventures, some consider her Cold War anti-Communist books to be her best. In this one, set in picturesque Venice, a resourceful, intelligent amateur gets into a situation where a skilled agent would fear to tread. Adapted into a film in 1967 starring Robert Vaughn and Elke Sommer.
1963. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Grifters. A lollapalooza, in which a young con artist’s half-hearted efforts to go straight are stymied by his youthful con artist mother — who strongly resembles his girlfriend. Crime, sex, murder, crime, sex, impersonation, incestuous desire, murder. “There is no ease on Uneasy Street. The longer one’s tenancy, the more untenable it becomes.”
1963. John Le Carré’s espionage adventure The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in which the head of the West Berlin office of the British Secret Intelligence Service, is recalled in disgrace… but then asked to stay “in the cold” for one last mission. A sardonic inversion of the genre, one which de-glamorizes the spy and spy-craft — and at the same time a suspenseful, elegantly plotted, morally ambiguous thriller. Publishers Weekly named it the “best spy novel of all-time.” Adapted as an excellent 1965 movie.
1963. Maurice Sendak’s children’s fantasy adventure Where the Wild Things Are. Forget the self-consciously sad live-action 2009 Spike Jonze/Dave Eggers feature-film adaptation — please! Dressed in a wolf costume, Max goes wild — and is sent to his room, which transforms into a jungle. Max sails to an island inhabited by magnificently grotesque Wild Things, whom he (the most feral thing on the island) subjugates. A Wild Rumpus ensues.
If you’d like to see obscure but amazing adventure novels rescued from copyright limbo, back Save the Adventure’s kickstarter campaign before November 9. Save the Adventure is brought to you by Singularity & Co., the folks behind the science fiction book club Save the Sci-Fi. HiLobrow’s Joshua Glenn — who edits the HiLoBooks series of reissued Radium Age science fiction classics — is the Save the Adventure Book Club’s founding editor.
TWENTY-NINE OTHERS
1954. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a sardonic inversion of the Robinsonade. A group of civilized boys is stranded on a desert island, and (SPOILER ALERT) they revert to savagery.
1954. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia fantasy adventure The Horse and His Boy.
1954. Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA Eagle of the Ninth historical adventure The Eagle of the Ninth.
1954. Jack Finney’s science fiction adventure The Body Snatchers.
1954–56. Hergé’s Tintin adventure The Calculus Affair. Published as a color album in 1956.
1955. Patricia Highsmith’s crime adventure The Talented Mr. Ripley.
1955. Geoffrey Household’s adventure Fellow Passenger (aka Hang the Moon High).
1955. Graham Greene’s adventure The Quiet American.
1955. Lionel White’s crime adventure The Big Caper. Gave the “caper” genre its moniker.
1956. Edward Eager’s YA fantasy adventure Knight’s Castle.
1956. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure The World Jones Made.
1956. Henry Treece’s pre-historical adventure The Golden Strangers. Primitive flint-using Britons encounter warlike Indo-European invaders armies with metal weapons, in this excellent story from an author best known for his YA historical adventures about later (Viking and Roman) invaders.
1956. Hammond Innes’s sea-going adventure The Wreck of the Mary Deare.
1956. Alfred Bester’s science fiction adventure The Stars My Destination, also known as Tiger! Tiger! A free-wheeling interplanetary adventure.
1956–58. Hergé’s Tintin adventure The Red Sea Sharks. Published as a color album in 1958.
1957. Alistair MacLean’s adventure South by Java Head. As Singapore falls to the invading Japanese Army, a mixed collection of soldiers, nurses, fleeing civilians, a small boy, and at least one spy attempt to escape.
1957. John Wyndham’s science fiction adventure The Midwich Cuckoos. Adapted as the 1960 movie Village of the Damned.
1959. Kurt Vonnegut’s science fiction adventure The Sirens of Titan.
1959. Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA Eagle of the Ninth/Arthurian historical adventure The Lantern Bearers.
1960. Poul Anderson’s historical/science fiction adventure The High Crusade.
1960. Lionel Davidson’s crime adventure The Night of Wenceslas. His first book.
1960. Helen MacInnes’s adventure Decision at Delphi.
1960–61. René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s historical Asterix adventure Asterix and the Golden Sickle.
1961. Norton Juster’s YA fantasy adventure The Phantom Tollbooth.
1962. Anthony Burgess’s science fiction adventure A Clockwork Orange.
1962. J.G. Ballard’s science fiction adventure The Drowned World.
1963. Robert A. Heinlein’s fantasy adventure Glory Road.
1963. Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes.
1963. Michael Moorcock’s Elric fantasy adventure The Stealer of Souls.
EVEN MORE
1954. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure Roughneck.
1954. Edward Eager’s YA fantasy adventure Half Magic.
1954. Hammond Innes’s adventure The Strange Land (also published in the U.S. as The Naked Land).
1954. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Golden Gizmo (aka The Golden Sinner).
1954. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Live and Let Die.
1954. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure A Swell-Looking Babe.
1954. Edgar Pangborn’s science fiction adventure A Mirror for Observers.
1954. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure A Hell of a Woman.
1954. J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man is a kind of sardonic inversion of the adventure genre.
1954. Frank Herbert’s science fiction adventure The Dragon in the Sea.
1954. Agatha Christie’s espionage/mystery adventure Destination Unknown.
1954. Richard Matheson’s science fiction adventure I Am Legend.
1954. Anne Desclos (under the pen name Pauline Réage)’s erotic adventure Story of O.
1954. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Nothing Man.
1955. Margaret Millar’s crime adventure Beast in View.
1955. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure After Dark, My Sweet.
1955. Helen MacInnes’s adventure Pray for a Brave Heart.
1955. Robert Heinlein’s YA science fiction adventure Tunnel in the Sky. A Robinsonade.
1955. Isaac Asimov’s science fiction adventure The End of Eternity.
1955. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia fantasy adventure The Magician’s Nephew.
1955. Leigh Brackett’s science fiction adventure The Long Tomorrow.
1955. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Moonraker.
1955. J.J. Marric’s crime adventure Gideon’s Day.
1955. William Golding’s atavistic adventure The Inheritors: Neanderthals vs. Homo sapiens. It was Golding’s personal favorite of his novels.
1955. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure Solar Lottery.
1955. Alistair MacLean’s sea-going adventure HMS Ulysses.
1955. Michael Innes’s Cold War suspense-pursuit adventure The Man from the Sea (Death by Moonlight). In the mold of Buchan.
1955. Robert E. Howard’s Conan fantasy adventure stories Tales of Conan, written much earlier but collected by Gnome Press as part of a series. Note that the stories in this particular volume were extensively rewritten by L. Sprague de Camp.
1956. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia fantasy adventure The Last Battle.
1956. Henry Treece’s historical fantasy adventure The Great Captains, about Artos the Bear (King Arthur).
1956. Ed McBain’s crime adventure Cop Hater.
1956. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Diamonds Are Forever.
1956. John Christopher’s post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure The Death of Grass.
1956. Arthur C. Clarke’s science fiction adventure The City and the Stars.
1956. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure The Man Who Japed.
1956. Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA Eagle of the Ninth historical adventure The Shield Ring.
1956. William Golding’s survivalist adventure Pincher Martin: The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin. The protagonist is stranded on an unmapped rock in the middle of the Atlantic after his ship is torpedoed. Much of his DIY survival here is psychological, devising daily routines to keep himself sane on the rock. SPOILER: Is he really on the island?
1956. Eric Ambler’s adventure The Night-Comers, also published as State of Siege.
1956. Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams’s YA adventure Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint.
1957. Francis Clifford’s survival adventure Overdue. Survival in the Arizona desert.
1957. Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s science fiction adventure Wolfbane, in which Earth is moved out of its orbit by a runaway planet whose inhabitants are Pyramids.
1957. John D. MacDonald’s adventure The Executioners. A dark psychological thriller. Adapted as a movie in 1962 and 1991 as Cape Fear. Attorney Sam Bowden must kill the brutal rapist/murderer who threatens his family.
1957. Edward Eager’s YA fantasy adventure Magic By the Lake.
1957. Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction adventure The Door into Summer.
1957. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure The Cosmic Puppets.
1957. Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams’s YA adventure Danny Dunn on a Desert Island.
1957. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Kill-Off.
1957. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure Eye in the Sky.
1957. Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA Eagle of the Ninth historical adventure The Silver Branch.
1957. Ian Fleming’s espionage adventure From Russia, With Love.
1957. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure Wild Town.
1958. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Dr. No.
1958. Helen MacInnes’s adventure North from Rome. When a witty young American playwright follows a former girlfriend to Rome, he saves a mysterious Italian girl from assassins — and the action never slows down from there. A narcotics ring, Communists, a battle in a Renaissance villa. Not everyone’s favorite MacInnes, but I think it’s a ripping yarn.
1958. Brian Aldiss’s science fiction adventure Non-Stop.
1958. James Blish’s science fiction adventure A Case of Conscience.
1958. Robert Heinlein’s YA science fiction adventure Have Space Suit — Will Travel.
1958. Hammond Innes’s adventure The Land God Gave to Cain.
1958. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Getaway.
1958. John Christopher’s spelunking adventure The Caves of Night.
1958. Richard Condon’s The Oldest Confession. A museum heist gone wrong. Sardonic inversion, or ironic homage to the heist genre? The first of many for Condon.
1958. Maxwell Kenton (pseudonym of Terry Southern) in collaboration with Mason Hoffenberg’s Candy. A satirical sexual picaresque. Owes elements of its plotline to Voltaire’s Candide.
1958. Mary Renault’s historical adventure The King Must Die traces the early life and adventures of the Greek mythological hero Theseus.
1958. William Haggard’s Colonel Charles Russell espionage adventure Slow Burner. The Sunday Express called Haggard “the adults’ Ian Fleming.”
1958. Muriel Spark’s Robinson is a sardonic inversion of the Robinsonade.
1958–on. DC’s comic book series The Legion of Super Heroes.
1958. T.H. White’s YA fantasy adventure The Candle in the Wind.
1958–62ish. Jack Kirby’s science fiction adventures for Marvel’s Strange Worlds, Amazing Adventures, Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, and Tales to Astonish.
1959. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Goldfinger.
1959. Jack Finney’s crime adventure Assault on a Queen. By the author of The Body Snatchers. Adapted into a Frank Sinatra movie.
1959. Eric Ambler’s adventure Passage of Arms.
1959. Michael Innes’s espionage adventure Hare Sitting Up. A top bacterial-warfare scientist goes missing, possibly with a vial of some unspecified super-virulent disease toxin. Sardonic inversion of the genre.
1959. Alistair MacLean’s adventure The Last Frontier (US: The Secret Ways). MacLean’s first foray into the espionage thriller genre. Inspired by the events surrounding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
1959. Pat Frank’s post-apocalyptic science fiction adventure Alas, Babylon.
1959. Alistair MacLean’s survival adventure Night Without End. Unforgiving Arctic environment.
1960. Francis Clifford’s WWII adventure A Battle is Fought to be Won concerns a reluctant soldier who must fight the Japanese in the jungle almost single-handedly.
1960. Mary Stewart’s crime adventure My Brother Michael.
1960. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure Vulcan’s Hammer.
1960. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure For Your Eyes Only.
1960. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure Dr. Futurity.
1960. Walter M. Millers’s science fiction novel A Canticle for Leibowitz. Amazing book — but not really an adventure.
1960. Algis Budrys’s science fiction adventure Rogue Moon.
1960. Theodore Sturgeon’s science fiction adventure Venus Plus X.
1960. Hammond Innes’s adventure The Doomed Oasis.
1961. John Le Carré’s espionage adventure Call for the Dead. The author’s first, introducing George Smiley. Smiley has fallen from grace and is working in a relatively menial intelligence job.
1961. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure Thunderball.
1961. Jerome Beatty’s children’s science fiction adventure Matthew Looney’s Voyage to the Earth. Illustrations by Gahan Wilson.
1961. Jim Thompson’s crime adventure The Transgressors.
1961. Alistair MacLean’s adventure Fear is the Key.
1961. Alistair MacLean’s adventure The Dark Crusader (US: The Black Shrike). Bentall, a physicist specializing in rocket fuels, must allow himself to be kidnapped.
1961. Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA Eagle of the Ninth historical adventure Dawn Wind.
1961–on. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic Fantastic Four.
1961. Roald Dahl’s children’s adventure James and the Giant Peach. There is a castaway/island aspect to it — i.e., the giant peach. The travelers must use ingenuity and tools they happen to have handy in order to survive; one thinks of the spiderwebs and the seagulls.
1961. Hergé’s Tintin adventure The Castafiore Emerald. Published as a color album in 1963.
1962. John Le Carré’s espionage adventure A Murder of Quality.
1962. Jane Langton’s YA fantasy adventure The Diamond in the Window.
1962–on. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic The Incredible Hulk.
1962. Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey’s political thriller Seven Days in May.
1962. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure The Spy Who Loved Me.
1962. Sid Fleischman’s YA historical adventure Mr. Mysterious & Company.
1962. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure The Man in the High Castle.
1962. Alistair MacLean’s adventure The Satan Bug.
1962. Brian W. Aldiss’s science fiction adventure Hothouse.
1962. J.G. Ballard’s science fiction adventure The Drowned World.
1962. Alistair MacLean’s adventure The Golden Rendezvous.
1962. James Clavell’s WWII prison adventure King Rat.
1962. Robert Sheckley’s satirical science fiction adventure Journey Beyond Tomorrow.
1962. Aldous Huxley’s island adventure Island. A utopian counterpart to Brave New World.
1962. Hammond Innes’s adventure Atlantic Fury.
1962. Mary Stewart’s crime adventure The Moon-Spinners.
1962. Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s apocalyptic adventure Fail-Safe. Adapted into a 1964 film of the same name directed by Sidney Lumet.
1962. James Jones’s WWII adventure The Thin Red Line.
1963. Andrew Garve’s crime adventure The Sea Monks. Trigger-happy hoods descend upon a lighthouse off the Cornwall coast and take hostages.
1963. Len Deighton’s espionage adventure Horse Under Water. The second of Len Deighton’s spy novels featuring an anonymous British agent protagonist.
1963. Sid Fleischman’s YA historical adventure By the Great Horn Spoon!.
1963. Ross Macdonald’s crime adventure The Chill.
1963. Joan Aiken’s YA historical adventure The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. First in Aiken’s 12-part Wolves Chronicles series.
1963. Alistair MacLean’s adventure Ice Station Zebra.
1963. John Fowles’s crime adventure The Collector.
1963. Philip K. Dick’s science fiction adventure The Game-Players of Titan.
1963. Ian Fleming’s James Bond espionage adventure On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
1963. Clifford D. Simak’s science fiction adventure Way Station.
1963. Clifford B. Hicks’s YA adventure Alvin’s Secret Code.
1963. Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of the Ninth/Arthurian historical adventure Sword at Sunset.
1963. Robert Heinlein’s YA science fiction adventure Podkayne of Mars.
1963. Geoffrey Household’s adventure Thing to Love.
1963–on. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic Iron Man.
1963. Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical science fiction adventure Cat’s Cradle.
1963–on. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic The Avengers.
1963. Jack London’s The Assassination Bureau, Ltd. Begun by London and finished after his death by Robert L. Fish. The plot follows Ivan Dragomiloff, who, in a twist of fate, finds himself pitted against the secret assassination agency he founded.
1963. Walter Tevis’s science fiction adventure The Man who Fell to Earth.
1963–on. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s comic The X-Men.
ALSO TKTK