Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction .
27-535: Clive Eric Cussler (July 15, 1931 – February 24, 2020) was an American adventure novelist and underwater explorer . His thriller novels, many featuring the character Dirk Pitt , have been listed on The New York Times fiction best-seller list more than 20 times. Cussler was the founder and chairman of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and numerous other notable underwater wrecks. He
54-649: A child readership. In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries, while Geoffrey Trease , Rosemary Sutcliff and Esther Forbes brought a new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Modern writers such as Mildred D. Taylor ( Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry ) and Philip Pullman (the Sally Lockhart novels) have continued
81-490: A common theme since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies , a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with the second set of adventures leading to a final reunion. Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid-19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became
108-807: A popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes over the years – from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionage. Examples of that period include Sir Walter Scott , Alexandre Dumas, père , Jules Verne , the Brontë Sisters , Rudyard Kipling , Sir H. Rider Haggard , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle , Edgar Rice Burroughs , Victor Hugo , Emilio Salgari , Karl May , Louis Henri Boussenard , Thomas Mayne Reid , Sax Rohmer , A. Merritt , Talbot Mundy , Edgar Wallace , and Robert Louis Stevenson . Adventure novels and short stories were popular subjects for American pulp magazines , which dominated American popular fiction between
135-607: A ship named the Oregon , which Cussler introduced in the Dirk Pitt Adventures novel Flood Tide (1997). While appearing to be a decrepit freighter, it is actually a high-tech advanced ship used by an unnamed and mysterious "Corporation" under the leadership of Juan Cabrillo . The ship is run like a business, with its crew being shareholders, taking jobs for the CIA and other agencies to help stop crime and terrorism. The crew
162-1199: Is a principal character of the background story in the Fargo Adventures novel The Gray Ghost . The series focuses on Sam and Remi Fargo, a married couple who are professional treasure hunters. (*) indicates books co-authored with Paul Kemprecos . (†) indicates books co-authored with Graham Brown . (††) indicates books authored by Graham Brown. (‡) indicates books co-authored with Craig Dirgo . (§) indicates books co-authored with Jack Du Brul . (§§) indicates books authored by Jack Du Brul . (‖) indicates books co-authored with Justin Scott . (^) indicates books co-authored with Grant Blackwood . (+) indicates books co-authored with Thomas Perry . (×) indicates books co-authored with Russell Blake . (≠) indicates books co-authored with Boyd Morrison . (**) indicates books co-authored with Robin Burcell. (***) indicates books authored by Robin Burcell. (╛) indicates books authored by Mike Maden. Adventure fiction In
189-496: Is a super-hero reminiscent of Doc Savage and other characters from pulp magazines . Cussler had seventeen consecutive titles listed on The New York Times fiction best seller list . In 2014, McFarland Publishing released The Clive Cussler Adventures: A Critical Review by Steven Philip Jones , the first critical review textbook of Cussler's novels. As an underwater explorer , Cussler discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and wrote non-fiction books about his findings. He
216-417: Is adept at disguises, combat, computer hacking and more to aid them in their missions. Kurt Austin, Joe Zavala, and Dirk Pitt all make cameo appearances in the fourth volume, Skeleton Coast (Cabrillo speaks to Pitt on the telephone; and Austin and Zavala appear at the end). These books are set mostly in the U.S. in the early part of the 20th century. They center around Isaac Bell, a brilliant investigator for
243-782: The Imperial German Army on the Western Front during World War I . Furthermore, one of Cussler's uncles served in the Imperial German Air Service and became a flying ace , shooting down 14 Allied aeroplanes . He was awarded the rank of Eagle Scout when he was 14 years old. He attended Pasadena City College for two years and then enlisted in the United States Air Force during the Korean War . During his service with
270-651: The Progressive Era and the 1950s. Several pulp magazines such as Adventure , Argosy , Blue Book , Top-Notch , and Short Stories specialized in this genre. Notable pulp adventure writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs , Talbot Mundy , Theodore Roscoe , Johnston McCulley , Arthur O. Friel , Harold Lamb , Carl Jacobi , George F. Worts , Georges Surdez , H. Bedford-Jones , and J. Allan Dunn . Adventure fiction often overlaps with other genres, notably war novels , crime novels , detective novels , sea stories , Robinsonades , spy stories (as in
297-631: The Air Force, he was promoted to sergeant and worked as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer for the Military Air Transport Service (MATS). After his discharge from the military, Cussler went to work for the advertising industry, first as a copywriter and later as a creative director for two of the nation's most successful advertising agencies. As part of his duties, Cussler produced radio and television commercials, many of which won international awards including an award at
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#1732791145401324-665: The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. After the publication in 1996 of Cussler's first nonfiction work, The Sea Hunters , he was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree in 1997 by the Board of Governors of the State University of New York Maritime College who accepted the work in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis. This was the first time in the college's 123-year history that such a degree had been awarded. In 2002, Cussler
351-625: The Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction , Critic Don D'Ammassa defines the genre as follows: .. An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting, and other elements of creative work. D'Ammassa argues that adventure stories make
378-527: The New Forest (1847), and Harriet Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince (1856). The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W. H. G. Kingston , R. M. Ballantyne , and G. A. Henty specializing in the production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audiences to essay such works, such as Robert Louis Stevenson writing Treasure Island for
405-583: The Pitt novels appear such as Sandecker, Al Giordino, Rudi Gunn, Hiram Yaeger and St. Julien Perlmutter. Pitt makes brief appearances in the books Serpent , White Death , Polar Shift , Devil's Gate , The Storm , Zero Hour , and Ghost Ship and is mentioned in Lost City . Juan Cabrillo, the captain of the ship Oregon , also made a brief appearance in The Pharaoh's Secret . This series of books features
432-463: The Titanic! , made Cussler's reputation and established the pattern that subsequent Pitt novels would follow: a blend of adventure and advanced technology, generally involving megalomaniacal villains, lost ships, beautiful women, and sunken treasure. Cussler's novels almost always begin with a chapter set in the past. These contain none of the novel's main characters and often seem disconnected from
459-585: The Van Dorn Detective Agency, which appears to be modeled after the real-life Pinkerton Agency. Like Pitt, Bell has an affinity for automobiles and is a crack shot. The first book reveals that Bell survives into 1950 with a wife and grown children. Though the setting is a century ago, the books still qualify as techno-thrillers, since they feature the advanced technology of that time such as private express trains, telegraphs, telephones, dreadnought battleships and early airplanes. Isaac Bell also
486-507: The book. Cussler's novels, like those of Michael Crichton , are examples of techno-thrillers that do not use military plots and settings. Where Crichton strove for scrupulous realism, however, Cussler prefers fantastic spectacles and outlandish plot devices. The Pitt novels, in particular, have the improbable quality of the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, while also sometimes borrowing from Alistair MacLean 's novels. Pitt himself
513-529: The children and putting them to bed, he had no one to talk to and nothing much to do, so he decided to start writing. His most famous character is marine engineer, government agent and adventurer Dirk Pitt . The Dirk Pitt novels frequently have an alternative history premise—such as "what if Atlantis were real?" or "what if Abraham Lincoln wasn't assassinated but was kidnapped?" The first two Pitt novels, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg , were relatively conventional maritime thrillers. The third, Raise
540-426: The element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens 's novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens's Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure." Adventure has been
567-458: The hero within the setting. With a few notable exceptions (such as Baroness Orczy , Leigh Brackett and Marion Zimmer Bradley ) adventure fiction as a genre has been largely dominated by male writers, though female writers are now becoming common. Adventure stories written specifically for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss 's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), Frederick Marryat's The Children of
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#1732791145401594-423: The plot until the main characters discover a mystery or secret relating the events of the first chapter to the rest of the story. This is almost always in the form of a long-lost artifact that is important to the villain's or hero's objectives. Often in the first chapter, a ship or airplane carrying a top-secret, important, or dangerous cargo is lost and never found, until it is recovered by a modern character later in
621-406: The works of John Buchan , Eric Ambler and Ian Fleming ), science fiction , fantasy , ( Robert E. Howard and J. R. R. Tolkien both combined the secondary world story with the adventure novel) and Westerns . Not all books within these genres are adventures. Adventure fiction takes the setting and premise of these other genres, but the fast-paced plot of an adventure focuses on the actions of
648-675: Was also the initiator of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs Dirk Pitt. Important finds by NUMA include: A visual and interactive depiction of Cussler's NUMA Foundation Expeditions has been made available as an extension of NUMA's original website that has since been deleted. Finds formerly believed to be important include: Clive Cussler married Barbara Knight in 1955, and they remained married for nearly 50 years until her death in 2003. Together they had three children—Teri, Dirk , and Dayna —four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. He
675-630: Was an avid car collector of classic automobiles that are on display at the Cussler Museum in Arvada, Colorado . Clive Cussler was a part-time resident of both Arizona and Colorado. Cussler died at his home in Paradise Valley, Arizona , on February 24, 2020, at age 88 of undisclosed causes. This series of books is based on the character Kurt Austin, Team Leader of NUMA's Special Assignments division and his adventures. Some characters from
702-831: Was awarded the Naval Heritage Award from the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation for his efforts concerning marine exploration. Cussler was a fellow of the Explorers Club of New York, the Royal Geographical Society in London, and the American Society of Oceanographers . Clive Cussler began writing in 1965 when his wife took a job working nights for the local police department where they lived in California. After making dinner for
729-621: Was the sole author or main author of more than 80 books. He often placed himself into his books as himself. His novels have inspired various other works of fiction. Clive Cussler was born in Aurora, Illinois , the son of Eric Edward Cussler and Amy Adeline (née Hunnewell), and grew up in Alhambra, California . His father was from Germany and his mother's ancestors were from England . In his memoir The Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks , Cussler revealed that his father served in
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