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One of the early pioneers of the genre was Graham
Greene, whose 1943 novel Ministry of Fear (brought to
the big screen by Fritz Lang in 1944) combines all the
ingredients of paranoia and conspiracy familiar to
aficionados of the 1970s thrillers, with additional
urgency and depth added by its wartime backdrop. Greene
himself credited Michael Innes as the inspiration for
his "entertainment".
The American novelist Richard Condon wrote a number
of conspiracy thrillers, including the seminal The
Manchurian Candidate (1959), and Winter Kills, which was
made into a film by William Richert in 1979.
Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges also wrote some
stories featuring conspiracies. In Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius (1961), a group of intellectuals invent a
fictional planet (Tlön), which is then revealed to
society at large as if it were a real place, with the
result that humanity becomes enamored with it and the
structure of reality is replaced by the fiction of Tlön.
Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) includes
a secretive conflict between cartels dating back to the
Middle Ages, such as the Phoebus cartel. Gravity's
Rainbow also draws heavily on conspiracy theory in
describing the development of ballistic missiles during
World War II.
Illuminatus! (1969–1971), a trilogy by Robert Shea
and Robert Anton Wilson, is regarded by many as the
definitive work of 20th-century conspiracy fiction. Set
in the late '60s, it is a psychedelic tale which fuses
mystery, science fiction, horror, and comedy in its
exhibition (and mourning, and mocking) of one of the
more paranoid periods of recent history.
Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo (1972), set in 1920s
America, takes its plot from the battle between The
"Wallflower Order," an international conspiracy
dedicated to monotheism and control, and the "Jes Grew"
virus, the embodiment of jazz, polytheism, and freedom.
Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum (1988) features a
story in which the staff of a publishing firm, intending
to create a series of popular occult books, invent their
own occult conspiracy, over which they lose control as
it begins to supplant the truth.
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