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ALL ABOUT CLIVE CUSSLER

Full Name: Clive Eric Cussler
Date of Birth: 15 July 1931
Place of Birth: Aurora, Illinois, USA
Genres: Adventure

Bio:

Clive Cussler (born July 15, 1931 in Alhambra, California) is an American adventure novelist. His most famous creation is marine engineer, government agent, and adventurer Dirk Pitt.

Cussler is the father of Dirk Cussler, who co-wrote Black Wind (2004).

Writing
The first two Pitt novels, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, were relatively conventional maritime thrillers. The third, Raise the Titanic!, made Cussler’s reputation and established the pattern that subsequent Pitt novels would follow: A blend of high adventure and high technology, generally involving megalomaniacal villains, lost ships, and sunken treasure.

Cussler’s novels, like those of Michael Crichton are examples of techno-thrillers that do not use military plots and settings. Where Crichton strives for scrupulous realism, however, Cussler prefers fantastic spectacles and outlandish plot devices. The Pitt novels, in particular, have the anything-goes quality of the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, while also sometimes borrowing from Alistair MacLean’s novels. Pitt himself is a two-dimensional, larger-than-life hero reminiscent of Doc Savage and other characters from pulp magazines.

Life Imitating Art
As an underwater explorer, Cussler has discovered more than 60 shipwreck sites and has written non-fiction books about his findings. He is also the founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), a non-profit organization with the same name as the fictional government agency that employs Dirk Pitt. Cussler owns a large collection of classic cars, several of which (driven by Pitt) appear in his novels.

In what started as a joke in the novel Dragon, and that Cussler expected his editor to remove, he now often writes himself into his books, at first as simple cameos, but later as something of a deus ex machina, providing the novel’s protagonists with an essential bit of assistance.

Art Imitating Death
His 2001 novel Valhalla Rising featured a sci-fi Viking mythology set in Tarrytown and other locations of the Hudson River Valley of Westchester County, New York. Valhalla, New York is famous for its sea of graveyards near Kensico where many famous personalities are buried. The name of the community came from a 19th Century fan of Richard Wagner and her own interest in Norse mythology. In 1994, Mark Guglielmo drew attention to the connection between Vikings and Valhalla, when he murdered his wife in Florida and then disposed of her bisected corpse twenty miles apart in the Hudson River and at a location near Bedford, while attempting to imitate portions of a Viking funeral.

Cinematization
The first attempt to film one of Cussler’s novels ” Raise The Titanic! (1980) ” was a critical and commercial failure. Its failure was widely attributed to a weak script and the casting of Richard Jordan as Pitt.

Paramount Pictures released Sahara on April 8, 2005, starring Matthew McConaughey as Dirk Pitt, Steve Zahn as Al Giordino, William H. Macy as Admiral Sandecker, and Penelope Cruz as Eva Rojas. Cussler and the studio have filed lawsuits against each other in a disagreement over whether the film departs too severely from the novel.

Trivia:

Although Pacific Vortex was released in 1983, it is actually the first Dirk Pitt novel. The events of Pacific Vortex happen before those of The Mediterranean Caper.

In the novel Lost City, it is said that in the book The Island of Doctor Moreau, Moreau turned humans into beasts when actually he turned animals into near humans.

Cussler is the father of Dirk Cussler, who co-wrote Black Wind (2004) and the December 2006 release Treasure of Khan (2006)

The Doxa Dive watch company has an official Clive Cussler edition of their famous orange faced dive watch.

Series:

Dirk Pitt
Pacific Vortex! (1981)
The Mediterranean Caper (1973)
aka Mayday!
Iceberg (1975)
Raise the Titanic! (1976)
Vixen 03 (1976)
Night Probe! (1981)
Deep Six (1984)
Cyclops (1986)
Treasure (1988)
Dragon (1990)
Iceberg, Dragon, Deep Six (omnibus) (1991)
Sahara (1992)
Inca Gold (1991)
The Mediterranean Caper / Iceberg (omnibus) (1995)
Shock Wave (1995)
Clive Cussler Gift Set: Treasure, Dragon, and Sahara (omnibus) (1996)
Flood Tide (1997)
Dirk Pitt Revealed (1998) (with Craig Dirgo)
Atlantis Found (1999)
Flood Tide and Cyclops (omnibus) (2001)
Valhalla Rising (2001) (with Paul Kemprecos)
Trojan Odyssey (2003)
Black Wind (2004) (with Dirk Cussler)
The Treasure of Khan (2006) (with Dirk Cussler)

NUMA Files (with Paul Kemprecos)
Serpent (1999)
Blue Gold (2000)
Fire Ice (2002)
The Numa Files Collection (omnibus) (2002)
White Death (2003)
Lost City (2004)
Polar Shift (2005)
The Navigator (2007)

Oregon Chronicles
Golden Buddha (2003) (with Craig Dirgo)
Sacred Stone (2004) (with Craig Dirgo)
Dark Watch (2005) (with Jack Du Brul)
Golden Buddha / Sacred Stone (omnibus) (2006)
Skeleton Coast (2006) (with Jack Du Brul)

Novels:

The Adventures of Vin Fiz (2006)
The Chase (2007)

Non fiction:

The Sea Hunters: True Adventures With Famous Shipwrecks (1994) (with Craig Dirgo)
The Sea Hunters II: Diving the World’s Seas for Famous Shipwrecks (2002) (with Craig Dirgo)

Filmography:
Sahara (2005)
Source Material (from novel: “Sahara”)
Raise the Titanic (1980)
Novel as Source Material (”Raise the Titanic”)

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