Captain-Blood
Found via the Del Rey Internet Newsletter: Michael Chabon’s “Dashing Dozen”: 12 favorite works of adventure fiction:

CAPTAIN BLOOD, Rafael Sabatini
The Kull Stories, Robert E. Howard
The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, Fritz Leiber
AGAINST THE DAY, Thomas Pynchon
The Brigadier Gerard stories, Arthur Conan Doyle
THE CHINESE BANDIT, Stephen Becker
THE ICE SCHOONER, Michael Moorcock
THE ENGLISH PATIENT, Michael Ondaatje
THE THREE MUSKETEERS, Alexandre Dumas
FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE, George MacDonald Fraser
The Jirel of Joiry stories, C.L. Moore
KING SOLOMON’S MINES, H. Rider Haggard


(Above, a still from the movie version of CAPTAIN BLOOD, starring Errol Flynn.)

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1 COMMENT

  1. No Edgar Rice Burroughs? The first Tarzan book still holds up remarkably well, as does A Princess of Mars.

  2. What,…No “THE CHINATOWN DEATH CLOUD PERIL” by Paul Malmont?
    What,…No “CARTER BEATS THE DEVIL” by Glen David Gold?
    What,…No “GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD” by Michael Chabon?
    Sheesh!!! Who is this guy?

  3. Huh. Interesting that he prefers Howard’s Kull stories over the Conan stories. They are rather more cerebral, I suppose, Kull being a philosopher-king to Conan’s barbarian-king, but the action is also rather pared down. But then, the Kull stories he read as a child were not as heavily oppressed by the hand of their editors as the Conan stories were…

    Also nice to see C.L. Moore get a nod.

  4. Of the Burroughs books, I’d say GODS OF MARS is a better read than the first book– fewer psuedo-Vernian lectures, anyway.

    I recently reread KING SOLOMON’S MINES but though it deserves to be a classic TREASURE ISLAND (from which KSM draws much inspiration) is the superior work. Haggard’s SHE deserves pride of place IMO.

    Never heard of the Pynchon work, but I’ll check it out. Can’t imagine what kind of “adventure” he’d write.