The best novels containing the origins of Spy-fi

One of the most prolific thriller writers of the early 20th century, Edgar Wallace wasn't alone in writing speculative fiction employing new technology that reflected concerns over the First World War. He wasn't alone in fearing biological weapons as in the Green Rust in which Germany planned to use to release germs that would wipe out much of earth's wheat, giving Germany domination after their surrender at the end of the Great War.

The biological weapon in the Green Rust wasn't Wallace's first use of a concept that would be employed countless times ever since; his 1913 The Fourth Plague had an Italian gang called the Red Hand blackmailing England with their own biological threat much in the spirit of what Blofeld and his Spectre would try out in the thrillers of Ian Fleming.

Later, Wallace’s Little Green Man and Other Stories also anticipated the technology of the future, including a computer-controlled hidden camera and infrared photography.

The most influential spy novelist of them all, John Buchan, had the Germans planning to disable the British army with anthrax germs. While an admittedly small part of all the various plots in the complex novel, Buchan’s Richard Hannay touched all the bases in the five books in which he starred. For another example, in 1924 The Three Hostages, international demigods stirred up trouble with brainwashing and hypnotism. This device was a popular weapon employed by the likes of Fu Manchu.

While not exactly a pioneer in spy-fi, still when I posed a query to a number of fellow sci-fi authors asking who they would nominate for a Top 5 list of spy-fi writers, Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat stories were listed more than any other series. The tongue-in-cheek intergalactic adventures showcased “Slippery Jim” Di Griz morphing from a successful criminal into a reluctant secret agent for the Intergalactic Special Corps reporting to its leader, Harold Inskipp. In a series of novels and short stories, DiGriz Moves from planet to planet, universe to universe, traveling in time, and sharing his world-saving action with his vicious wife, Angelina, and eventually their twin sons, Jim and Bolivar. Mostly they battle humanoid dictators, cruel right-wing governments, and power-hungry aliens using strange weaponry, incredible luck, and the wits and skills of a seasoned criminal. And all these yarns are told with a disdainful, ironic first-person point of view.

When I asked fellow sci-fi authors what books should be cited as Top 5 “Spy-fi” contenders, only the Stainless Steel Rat books and 1990s The Borne Identity got multiple votes. Well, if you like brainwashing and mind-control as a “spy-fi” trope, you gotta go back to the titles listed above, Richard Condon’s 1959 The Manchurian Candidate, and Len Deighton’s The Ipcress File. Of those, Ipcress most deserves a place on this list. Deighton’s first Harry Palmer spy thriller pits the British secret agent against the CIA, his own people, and the Soviets in their various schemes to interfere with neutron bomb tests. Suspected of being a Soviet agent, at one point, he thinks he’s in Hungary where he is drugged and subjected to psychological and physical torture, and nearly cracks before eventually managing to escape—only to discover that he is in fact in London. Eventually, he uncovers the baddies are using a process called "Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress" (IPCRESS) to brainwash victims into loyalty to the Soviet Union.

The Ipcress process became a dramatic feature of the Michael Caine 1965 film version of the story and again in 2022 when the book was adapted into a six-part British miniseries. How’s that for longevity?

William Le Queux’s Duckworth Drew was a secret agent working for British embassies around Europe reporting to the Marquis of Macclesfield, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Like many such agents to follow, he worked in diplomatic and aristocratic circles with finesse and had considerable luck with the ladies.

In short stories like “The Secret of the Submarine,” Drew starred in adventures that were precursors to later yarns focused on new technology as when he encountered an "electronic eye," an Italian device that detonated mines. Such playfulness with then cutting-edge tech reflected the author’s interest in merging adventure with weaponized science.