Dan Hanks
Dan Hanks is a British author of science fiction and fantasy whose work wears its pop cultural influences — particularly the adventure films of the 1980s — with cheerful pride, delivering genre entertainment that is knowingly nostalgic without being merely imitative. He is based in Manchester, England, and has worked in various creative fields before establishing himself as a fiction author. His work is published by Angry Robot Books, a publisher known for hosting genre fiction with a distinctively playful and inventive character.
Swashbucklers (2022), available on WritersReview, is his debut novel and is explicitly and affectionately in dialogue with the adventure films that defined a generation of genre fans — Indiana Jones, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, and similar touchstones. The novel follows a group of adults who reunite to face a supernatural threat that echoes their shared adventure as teenagers, and it combines the nostalgic warmth of that reference pool with a story about middle age, responsibility, and whether the heroism of youth can survive the compromises of grown-up life. The result is entertaining, funny, and more emotionally honest about the experience of ageing than its adventure-film premise might suggest.
Hanks’s writing is fast-paced, witty, and characterised by affection — for his characters, for his genre influences, and for the readers he is writing for. He occupies a niche in contemporary genre fiction that is somewhat underserved: adventure fiction for adult readers that acknowledges its pulpy roots while delivering genuine characters and emotional investment. The nostalgic register of his work is deployed with enough self-awareness to avoid mere pastiche, and his authentic engagement with what those childhood stories meant to a generation of readers gives the book a warmth that transcends mere homage.
His subsequent fiction continues to develop this combination of genre entertainment and emotional authenticity, and he represents a strand of British popular fiction that is comfortable claiming its pulp and pop cultural heritage as a legitimate and valuable artistic tradition. For readers who grew up on adventure films and want fiction that captures that feeling while treating them as adults, Hanks delivers with skill and obvious enthusiasm.
