The character of realistic contemporary adventure stories has also changed
dramatically since the Second World War, for when total war came to involve women and
children at home as well as men at the front, children were quite likely to become
involved in dangerous events. Ian Serraillier’s The Silver Sword (1956) about the journey
of a group of Polish children through war-torn Europe was an early example, and other
writers such as Jill Paton Walsh and Robert Westall (1929–1993) have also produced
successful stories with Second World War settings.
As society has changed since the war, and adult fiction begun to deal with sex and
violence more explicitly, so, too, have children’s books, narrowing the gap between
‘teenage’ and adult novels particularly. Authors such as Bernard Ashley and Farrukh
Dhondy have dealt with racism in their stories, and children’s writers have also begun to
deal with issues involving the Third World and problems such as terrorism. Gillian
Cross has used the traditional framework of an explorer’s search for a lost Aztec city in
Bolivia to discuss the values of so-called ‘primitive’ people in her Born of the Sun (1983),
for example, while in AK (1990) Peter Dickinson takes us inside the mind of a child
guerrilla struggling to live in a country, once part of the British Empire, but now torn
apart by civil war.
The flying stories of the 1930s, which replaced the sea stories of the previous century
have now been replaced by tales of space travel set in the future. Although the use of the
folk-tale formula, with a fearless young hero and the successful fulfilment of a
hazardous quest has almost disappeared from other adventure stories, being replaced
by increasing social realism and psychological doubt, this pattern can still be found in
much science fiction. Douglas Hill’s Planet of the Warlord (1981), for instance, describes
the hero’s journey, with a female companion, in a spaceship across the galaxy, to find
and destroy the warlord who annihilated his own planet.
While apparently dealing with civilisations of the future, however, many science fiction
stories, such as John Christopher’s The White Mountains (1967) or Robert Westall’s Future
Track 5 (1983) actually offer a critique of trends in contemporary society, and explore
such issues as the advantages and disadvantages of new technology, or the needs of the
individual as against the welfare of a whole community. Monica Hughes writes about the
dangers her young Canadian heroine faces in Ring-Rise Ring-Set (1982) as her
technological society struggles to deal with the problems of a new Ice Age, and in the
process reflects her concern for a better relationship between science and nature. Louise
Lawrence’s Moonwind (1986), another story about space travel, in which two teenagers
win a month’s stay at the American moon base, is even more radical in its conclusion,
showing Gareth preferring to die and join the world of spirit in company with Bethkahn,
a female from another planet, rather than return to the materialism and violence of
Earth.
Changes in British society in the closing years of the twentieth century are reflected in
the growing importance of women writers and of girls as protagonists or equal partners
within recent adventure stories. Along with the introduction of such themes as racism,
the environment, and debates about the meaning of political freedom, they show how
much the modern adventure story has changed from the self-confident, imperialistic,
and male-dominated tales of the Victorian age. Although opportunities for deeds of
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