MacLean, Alistair
Entry updated 17 January 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1922-1987) Scottish author whose novels are mostly – like The Guns of Navarone (1957) – well-crafted action adventures, usually set at least in part at sea. The Dark Crusader (1961; vt The Black Shrike 1961) and The Satan Bug (1962), both as by Ian Stuart, are Cold War thrillers which make use of sf McGuffins, though in the latter the eponymous manufactured virus threatens to instigate a universally fatal Pandemic. This novel was filmed as The Satan Bug (1965) directed by John Sturges.
The Golden Gate (1976) features the abduction of a US President. Goodbye California (1977) deals with a Yellow Peril menace: terrorists from Mindanao who Torture American physicists into building a stash of H-bombs, one of which is detonated under Los Angeles (see California) as a dreadful warning of things to come – a Disaster that would sink much of the eponymous state beneath the Pacific. [JC]
Alistair Stuart MacLean
born Glasgow, Scotland: 28 April 1922
died Munich, Germany: 2 February 1987
works
- The Dark Crusader (London: Collins, 1961) as by Ian Stuart [hb/]
- The Black Shrike (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961) [vt of the above: hb/Robert Galster]
- The Satan Bug (London: Collins, 1962) as by Ian Stuart [hb/John Heseltine]
- The Golden Gate (London: Collins, 1976) [hb/]
- Goodbye California (London: Collins, 1977) [hb/Roy Botterell]
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