An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. [1] Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme sports. Adventures are often undertaken to create psychological arousal or in order to achieve a greater goal, such as the pursuit of knowledge that can only be obtained by such activities.
Adventurous experiences create psychological arousal, [2] which can be interpreted as negative (e.g. fear) or positive (e.g. flow). For some people, adventure becomes a major pursuit in and of itself. According to adventurer André Malraux, in his Man's Fate (1933), "If a man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?"
Similarly, Helen Keller stated that "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." [3]
Outdoor adventurous activities are typically undertaken for the purposes of recreation or excitement: examples are adventure racing and adventure tourism. Adventurous activities can also lead to gains in knowledge, such as those undertaken by explorers and pioneers –the British adventurer Jason Lewis, for example, uses adventures to draw global sustainability lessons from living within finite environmental constraints on expeditions to share with schoolchildren. Adventure education intentionally uses challenging experiences for learning.
Author Jon Levy suggests that an experience should meet several criteria to be considered an adventure: [4]
Some of the oldest and most widespread stories in the world are stories of adventure, such as Homer's Odyssey . [5] [6] [7]
The knight errant was the form the "adventure seeker" character took in the Late Middle Ages.
Adventure fiction exhibits these "protagonist on adventurous journey" characteristics, as do many popular feature films, such as Star Wars [8] and Raiders of the Lost Ark . [9]
Adventure books may have the theme of the hero or main character going to face the wilderness or Mother Nature. Examples include books such as Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain . These books are less about "questing", such as in mythology or other adventure novels, but more about surviving on their own, living off the land, gaining new experiences, and becoming closer to the natural world.
Many adventures are based on the idea of a quest: the hero goes off in pursuit of a reward, whether it be a skill, prize, treasure, or perhaps the safety of a person. On the way, the hero must overcome various obstacles to obtain their reward.
In video game culture, an adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle solving. [10] The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of literary genres. Many adventure games (text and graphic) are designed for a single player, since this emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult. [11]
From ancient times, travelers and explorers have written about their adventures. [12] Journals which became best-sellers in their day were written, such as Marco Polo's journal The Travels of Marco Polo or Mark Twain's Roughing It . Others were personal journals, only later published, such as the journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark or Captain James Cook's journals. There are also books written by those not directly a part of the adventure in question, such as The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe or books written by those participating in the adventure but in a format other than that of a journal, such as Conquistadors of the Useless by Lionel Terray. Documentaries often use the theme of adventure as well.
There are many sports classified as adventure sports, due to their inherent danger and excitement. Some of these include mountain climbing, skydiving, or other extreme sports. [13]
Action sports, adventure sports or extreme sports are activities perceived as involving a high degree of risk of injury or death. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion and highly specialized gear. Extreme tourism overlaps with extreme sport. The two share the same main attraction, "adrenaline rush" caused by an element of risk, and differ mostly in the degree of engagement and professionalism.
Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure and are considered to be "fun".
Action fiction is a genre in literature that focuses on stories involving high-stakes, high-energy, and fast-paced events. This genre includes a wide range of subgenres, such as spy novels, adventure stories, tales of terror, intrigue, and mysteries. These kinds of stories utilize suspense, the tension that is built up when the reader wishes to know how the conflict between the protagonist and antagonist is going to be resolved or the solution to a mystery of a thriller. The intricacies of human relationships or the nuances of philosophy and psychology are rarely explored in action fiction, typically being fast-paced mysteries that merely seek to provide the reader with an exhilarating experience. Action fiction can also be a plot element of non-literary works.
Tracy Raye Hickman is an American fantasy author and designer of games and virtual reality (VR) experiences. He co-authored the original Dragonlance novels with Margaret Weis as well as numerous other books. He also designed and created role playing game material while working for TSR and has cowritten novels with his wife, Laura Hickman. He is the author or co-author of over 60 books.
A video game genre is an informal classification of a video game based on how it is played rather than visual or narrative elements. This is independent of setting, unlike works of fiction that are expressed through other media, such as films or books. For example, a shooter game is still a shooter game, regardless of where or when it takes place. A specific game's genre is open to subjective interpretation. An individual game may belong to several genres at once.
Adventure travel is a type of tourism, involving exploration or travel with a certain degree of risk, and which may require special skills and physical exertion. In the United States, adventure tourism has seen growth in late 20th and early 21st century as tourists seek out-of-the-ordinary or "roads less traveled" vacations, but lack of a clear operational definition has hampered measurement of market size and growth. According to the U.S.-based Adventure Travel Trade Association, adventure travel may be any tourist activity that includes physical activity, a cultural exchange, and connection with outdoor activities and nature.
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
Outdoor education is organized learning that takes place in the outdoors, such as during school camping trips. Outdoor education programs sometimes involve residential or journey wilderness-based experiences which engage participants in a variety of adventurous challenges and outdoor activities such as hiking, climbing, canoeing, ropes courses and group games. Outdoor education draws upon the philosophy, theory, and practices of experiential education and environmental education.
Benedict Colin Allen FRGS is an English writer, explorer, traveller and filmmaker known for his technique of immersion among indigenous peoples from whom he acquires survival skills for hazardous journeys through unfamiliar terrain. In 2010, Allen was elected a Trustee and Member of Council of the Royal Geographical Society.
Colin Angus is a Canadian author and adventurer who is the first person to make a self-propelled global circumnavigation. Due to varying definitions of the term "circumnavigation", debate has arisen as to whether or not the route travelled fulfilled the strictest criteria. As part of the circumnavigation, Angus and his then fiancé Julie Wafaei made the first rowboat crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from mainland Europe to mainland North America, and Wafaei became the first Canadian woman to row across any ocean. Colin and Julie have two sons: Leif, born September 2010, and Oliver, born June 2014.
National Geographic Adventure was a magazine started in 1999 by the National Geographic Society in the United States. The first issue was published in Spring 1999. Regular publication of the magazine ended in December 2009, and the name was reused for a biannual newsstand publication. The last issue was December 2009/January 2010.
Kira Salak is an American writer, adventurer, and journalist known for her travels in Mali and Papua New Guinea. She has written two books of nonfiction and a book of fiction based on her travels and is a contributing editor at National Geographic magazine.
Outdoor recreation or outdoor activity refers to recreation done outside, most commonly in natural settings. The activities that encompass outdoor recreation vary depending on the physical environment they are being carried out in. These activities can include fishing, hunting, backpacking, walking and horseback riding — and can be completed individually or collectively. Outdoor recreation is a broad concept that encompasses a varying range of activities and landscapes.
Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw was an Irish writer and traveller. Beginning in 1903, she worked as a travel writer for the Daily Graphic and The Times, leading her to move to the Territory of Papua, where she served as the informal publicist of Lieutenant Governor Hubert Murray. Prior to her travels, she was the editor of the Social Review, publishing many of her own works under a pen name, and she had worked as a sports journalist for the Irish Cyclist. Over the course of her life, she wrote several novels, travel books, and short stories.
Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland is a Japanese role-playing video game developed by Gust Co. Ltd. It was first released for PlayStation 3 on June 24, 2010 in Japan.
Klondike is a three-part miniseries about the Klondike Gold Rush that was broadcast by the Discovery Channel on January 20–22, 2014. Based on Charlotte Gray's novel Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike, it is the Discovery Channel's first scripted miniseries. Klondike was directed by Simon Cellan Jones and stars Richard Madden as Bill Haskell, a real-life adventurer who traveled to Yukon, Canada, in the late 1890s during the gold rush.
The term microadventure was made common by British adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys and is defined as an overnight outdoor adventure that is "small and achievable, for normal people with real lives". The New York Times described microadventures as "short, perspective-shifting bursts of travel closer to home, inspiring followers to pitch a tent in nearby woods, explore their city by moonlight, or hold a family slumber party in the backyard."
Heroes of the Frontier (ISBN 9780451493804) is a 2016 novel by American Author Dave Eggers. Alfred A. Knopf published the book on July 26, 2016. Set in the rugged wilderness of Alaska, the story follows Josie, a disillusioned single mother who goes on a road trip with her two children to escape her troubled past and societal expectations. The novel explores themes of parenthood, modern disillusionment, and the possibility of personal redemption.
Ash Dykes is a British adventurer, explorer and extreme athlete. He has achieved five official world records and four world first records, trekking solo & unsupported across Mongolia, hiking the length of Madagascar, he then achieved his third official record, becoming the first person to walk along the full 4,000-mile (6,400-kilometre) course of the Yangtze, the longest river in Asia. And in October of 2024, he became the first to kayak the length of the Coppename River from source to sea deep in the Amazon in Suriname, South America. He also led a team to become the fastest to summit the highest mountain in Suriname.
Lines on a Map: Unparalleled Adventures in Modern Exploration is a book by Canadian author and adventurer Frank Wolf. It is his first book, published in October 2018 by Rocky Mountain Books.
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