Whatever Happened to the Literary Adventure…and Can We Bring It Back?

In the run-up to the publication of our adventure novel, The Antiquity Affair, we were charged with a customary task: listing comp titles. No problem, right? Surely there were shelves upon shelves of similar books—it’s a familiar genre, after all. 

(5 Thrilling Adventure Terms Every Writer Should Know.)

We were shocked. While we found ample examples of mysteries, thrillers, and romances that included elements of the adventure story, few recent releases could be classified as true adventure novels. Don’t believe us? See for yourself: Look up “modern adventure novels” on Google and you might be pointed to novelists like Dan Brown and Ken Follett, but you’re just as likely to be hit with The Call of the Wild and The Count of Monte Cristo. 

Wildly popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, most adventure stories are these days made for the screen. So why is this subgenre so prevalent in the movies but not in modern literature?

Though there’s some debate, the strongest contender for the prize of “first novel” is Daniel Defoe’s 1719 work, Robinson Crusoe, the tale of a man stranded on a remote island. Coming on the heels of the successful publication of nonfiction accounts written by real-life explorers, Defoe’s book was a sensation at the time, and the novel as a popular form exploded. 

Along with domestic novels and comedies, the adventure quickly became one of publishing’s most lucrative genres. Works as varied as Ivanhoe, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, and Treasure Island all fit under the header of adventure stories. But what does “adventure” really mean?

Ronald B. Tobias, in his craft book 20 Master Plots, details the “adventure” plot as a story focused on “the journey itself,” a story “of the body,” concerning “a foray into the world, to new and strange places and events,” which may include treasure and whiffs of romance, but which doesn’t necessarily involve change in the hero “in any meaningful way.” For those 18th and 19th century avid novel readers, that was perhaps its key appeal. 

Adventure novels offered thrilling escapism to the middle class, a chance to vicariously see the world, safely face danger, and overcome visceral adversity through the lens of a paragon, someone who upheld the virtues of faith, strength, and perseverance, thus serving as a moral example to the public.

Aha, you might say. There’s the problem. The idea of a morally unassailable hero isn’t exactly congruous with the modern mindset. There’s also the fact that the modern world has already been discovered–that we no longer need a vicarious way to see the world in our internet age where the globe is interconnected. But these answers feel both incomplete and unsatisfying, given that we still flock to theaters to watch globe-trotting adventures on the screen. 

(What Is a MacGuffin in Writing?)

Franchises like Indiana Jones, The Mummy, and Tomb Raider, for example, provide viewers with the chance to escape into another world, face challenges, and experience death-defying feats before capturing the MacGuffin in question—and in these stories, the heroes remain reassuringly morally and psychologically unchanged. The Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Lost Ark is essentially the same man, give or take a few decades, that appears in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull—and if he’s altered significantly in the upcoming Dial of Destiny, audiences and critics will be wildly disgruntled.

Interestingly, our modern film tastes seem to differ from our television preferences—these days, we largely prefer narrative dramas with emotionally evolving characters to sitcoms where the character returns to its prototype week after week. Television, though, like reading, is more time-intensive than watching a movie. With that much time invested in these longer narratives, perhaps we expect more from our protagonists than stolid stagnancy. 

This leads us to wonder whether the fault doesn’t lie with adventure literature itself but with its evolution, or lack thereof. We’d posit that readers still very much crave the kind of escapism that adventure novels provide. Perhaps readers just want different types of adventure novels, and more from the characters who inhabit them.

Check out The Antiquity Affair, by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne, here:

Bookshop | Amazon

(WD uses affiliate links.)

Adventure as a literary genre, in short, is due for reimagining. Why not include multiple heroes, each of whom challenges the other? Isn’t it more modern—and interesting—to use the genre to examine and critique the idea of what a traditional hero is? 

In our novel, The Antiquity Affair, we present two young, underestimated women who are forced to alter their views of themselves, of each other, and of the world around them in order to succeed in their quest. It’s a far cry from the individualistic masculinity of a character like Robinson Crusoe–but our story still speaks to the original core of adventure stories, offering readers a means to escape, to immerse, but also, perhaps, to discover some interesting moral insights. For example, what is the cost of the pursuit of “fortune and glory,” as Indiana Jones would say? 

Adventure novels themselves are rooted deeply in imperialism, particularly the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard, among many others, stories of a westerner fighting their way through a “savage” land. Perhaps the way to move past those origins is to examine them more closely, as we strive to do in The Antiquity Affair. 

Questions of morality have grown more sophisticated over the past few centuries. If the adventure novel can better reflect the questions of the 21st century, it’ll stand a much stronger chance of thriving for years to come.