Week 23: Professor Challenger

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Lost World and Other Stories. Wordsworth Classics, 1995.

This is an omnibus edition of Doyle’s three Professor Challenger novels (more like two novellas and a novelette) and two short stories.

The Lost World (1912) is the prototypical “lost world” novel, where explorers in some remote, uncharted area (the Amazon) discover an area which somehow has been isolated from the rest of the world (geological uplift causing unscalable cliffs) filled with prehistoric life. Quite an enjoyable read.
The Poison Belt (1913) is an early science fiction novel, where the earth enters a poisonous region of space and the consequences it has on the human race. Interesting read, the more so because I finally caught Doyle mading an error of fact (trains have deadman’s brakes, so if something happens to the driver they don’t go careering on at full speed into a crash).
When the World Screamed (1928) and The Disintegration Machine (1929) are two science fiction shorts, both good reads.

So that’s four good works in one volume.


The Land of Mist (1926) is otherwise. Doyle was for most of his later life a Spiritualist, and the novel spends far more pages proselytizing than it spends on story-telling. What little story it does tell consists of the conversion of the main characters from The Lost World and The Poison Belt to the cause of Spiritualism. Thoroughly disappointing.

I’m certain I’ve read The Poison Belt and When the World Screamed at some point in the (dim, dark, and distant) past, and may have read The Disintegration Machine, but it didn’t have quite the same level of déjà vu.

Stats to Date

Books Read: 17

Books by Male Authors: 13
Books by Female Authors: 4

Books by Australian Authors: 4

Fiction Books: 12
    Genre Books: 8
Verity Books: 5
    Literature Books: 3
    Science Books: 1
    History Books: 1