The Lost World and The Poison Belt

by Doyle, Arthur Conan; Reid, Conor; Glenn, Joshua

• ISBN13: 9780262545259
• ISBN10: 026254525X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-02-21
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

A heart-stopping adventure tale featuring a brilliant scientist—one as insufferably pompous as Doyle’s most famous character—and his unlikely trio, and its apocalyptic sequel.

In 1912, the creator of Sherlock Holmes introduced his readers to yet another genius adventurer, Professor Challenger, who in his very first outing would journey to South America in search of . . . an isolated plateau crawling with iguanodons and ape-men! A smash hit, Doyle’s proto-science fiction thriller would be adapted twice by Hollywood filmmakers, and it would go on to influence everything from Jurassic Park to the TV show Land of the Lost. Its 1913 sequel, The Poison Belt, finds Challenger and his dino-hunting comrades trapped in an oxygenated chamber as the entire planet passes through a lethal ether cloud.

Joshua Glenn is a consulting semiotician and editor of the websites HiLobrow and Semiovox. The first to describe 1900–1935 as science fiction’s “Radium Age,” he is editor of the MIT Press’s series of reissued proto-sf stories from that period. He is coauthor and coeditor of various books including the family activities guide Unbored (2012), The Adventurer’s Glossary (2021), and Lost Objects (2022). In the 1990s, he published the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut.

Conor Reid is a podcaster and writer from Ireland. He has published widely on popular fiction and science, including The Science and Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs (2018). He is the Head of Podcasts at HeadStuff Media as well as the host and producer of his own critically acclaimed literature podcast, Words to That Effect. The podcast, which has been performed live in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, tells stories of the fiction that shapes popular culture.

Author Biography

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and author who in 1887 introduced Sherlock Holmes, arguably the best-known fictional detective. He also wrote poetry, historical novels, influential gothic short stories, and more. Doyle’s proto-sf series of Professor Challenger adventures include the novels The Lost World (1912), The Poison Belt (1913), and The Land of Mist (1926), and the short stories “When the World Screamed” (1928) and “The Disintegration Machine” (1929).

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Introduction xiii
Conor Reid

The Lost World 1
Foreword 3

I There Are Heroisms All Round Us 5
II Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger 13
III He is a Perfectly Impossible Person 23
IV It's Just the Very Biggest Thing in the World 33
V Question! 55
VI I Was the Flail of the Lord 73
VII To-morrow We Disappear into the Unknown 85
VIII The Outlying Pickets of the New World 99
IX Who Could Have Foreseen It? 117
X The Most Wonderful Things Have Happened 147
XI For Once I Was the Hero 165
XII It was Dreadful in the Forest 187
XIII A Sight I Shall Never Forget 207
XIV Those Were the Real Conquests 227
XV Our Eyes Have Seen Great Wonders 247
XVI A Procession! A Procession! 269

The Poison Belt 293

I The Blurring of Lines 295
II The Tide of Death 317
III Submerged 339
IV A Diary of the Dying 359
V The Dead World 375
VI The Great Awakening 395

Afterword: Challengers of the Known 409
Joshua Glenn