{"code":"adventure","header_2":"The valiant, the venturesome and the victorious.","header_1":"The Best Adventure Short Stories of History","description":"The best adventure short stories of history. Read or download. The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells, The Unexpected by Jack London, The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell. ","stories":[{"story":"the-country-of-the-blind","description":"The *Country of the Blind* starts off as a regular adventure, following a man who falls off a mountainside into a mysterious town of people that have lived isolated from the rest of the world for generations, and have become blind. But over the course of the story, Wells delves deeper into the philosophical consequences of a man bringing the concept of sight back into a society that has learned to live without one. The newcomer struggles to fit in with the locals, who are all very suspicious of the two sensitive objects stuck in the middle of his face, and at various points chase him around and threaten to pull them out of his head. "},{"story":"the-unexpected","description":"While most of Jack London’s adventures focus on the threats posed by nature, *The Unexpected* adds the dangers of our fellow man. It starts as a typical tale of struggle against the wild, but takes a sharp turn halfway through and quickly starts putting forward difficult questions on what is justice and what is mercy, questions asked from behind the barrel of a loaded shotgun."},{"story":"the-most-dangerous-game","description":"*The Dangerous Game* is a classic adventure with a crashed ship, a strange island, a murderer, knives, and booby traps. It is the inspiration of the trope of the man who hunts men, spawning , movies and T.V. shows since, such as *A Game of Death (1945)*, *Surviving the Game (1994)*, and *The Hunt (2020)*."},{"story":"the-invisible-city","description":"While most fictional explorers of deserts discover a lost tribe, or a booby-trapped catacomb, Clark Ashton Smith’s unfortunate protagonists discover blood-sucking, mind-controlling aliens in an invisible city. Wordy, but imaginative as Smith’s works all are, *The Invisible City* earns its place by being an out-there, unpredictable adventure."},{"story":"the-empire-of-the-ants","description":"A zany ship captain and a much more reserved engineer venture off to deal with a so-called ‘Army of Ants’ ravaging Brazil. They come across more than they bargained for, with the ants outmanoeuvring them at every turn. *The Empire of the Ants* earns its place by being the funniest."},{"story":"the-horror-of-the-heights","description":"Flight was the most exciting venture in the earliest twentieth century, with much to learn and much more to see in the realm of sky now accessible to humanity. Arthur Conan Doyle plays on this curiosity, adding a horror element to the mix. Pilot Joyce-Armstrong suspects there to be undiscovered ‘jungles’ in the air like there were in Africa and South America, and despite his ever-present fear, he feels he must be the first to discover them. *The Horror of the Heights* earns its place by building great tension throughout the story, and satisfying it at the end."},{"story":"the-open-boat","description":"Stephen Crane gives us not a spirited adventure of exploration, but one of survival. Four men try to reach safe land in a small dinghy, but cannot break the waves. The story is heavily tied to Crane’s own experience in the exact same situation, and was adapted from a purely non-fiction account of his experience. *The Open Boat* earns it’s place by being the most human and introspective."}],"title":"Best of Adventure","subroute":"adventure","authors":["jacklondon","arthurconandoyle","robertehoward","clarkashtonsmith"],"has_text":true,"quote":{"quote":"“Only the devil himself could follow that complicated trail through the jungle after dark. But perhaps the general was a devil...” * The Most Dangerous Game","code":"the-most-dangerous-game"},"image_code":"the-most-dangerous-game","image_alt":"A drawing of a man in safari gear smoking a cigarrete under a tree in which a man hides.","collection_type":"genre"}