The Lost World (Modern Library Classics)
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sir Arthur Conan DoyleIntroduction: Michael Crichton
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-01-14
ISBN: 0812967259
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Modern Library
Book Reviews of The Lost World (Modern Library Classics)
Book Review: Masterful adventure in a prehistoric paradise
Summary: 5 Stars
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shows us in The Lost World that he is capable of far more than short detective stories. In this book we are taken on a journey into the heart of the Amazon in South America, to an isolated place where the prehistoric has survived to the present. Four men together face the wonderous awe and danger inherent in such a place, which quickly shifts from paradise to hell and back again as new dangers and wonders present themselves.
The four men who undertake this expedition are: (1) Professor Challenger, an immensely conceited (and brilliant) scientist who has perhaps the worst temper I have ever read about coupled with a very dominating personality, (2) Professor Summerlee, a scientist with a very acidic personality who is rather less courageous than the rest of the party and whose chief role is largely to constantly argue with Professor Challenger, (3) Lord John Roxton, a rather level-headed explorer/big-game hunter who is somewhat a mentor to the main character/narrator who is, (4) Ed Malone, a young reporter who goes on the expedition to impress a girl he likes. He is rather rash and undisciplined at times, though he is far more level-headed than the rest of the party, excepting Lord Roxton.
Doyle achieves not only a truly exciting adventure story, but also a very humerous/insightful study on the relationship between four very different people with conflicting personalities. I always found it most amusing to read about the two professors bickering over what species the creatures which were immediately threatening their lives were, while the other two tried to find a solution to the danger.
Dinosaurs actually play a surprisingly small role in this book, which largely centers upon the journey to the plateau to verify Professor Challanger's claims that he discovered prehistoric life living upon it, and the subsequent danger which they face at the top. This danger largely takes the form of ape-men (compared to the "missing link") who have sub-humanoid intelligence and fully human cruelty. This book is also a rather blatant proponent of Darwinian naturalism, and Doyle's mentioning of the ease of faking a dinosaur bone is thought by many to be evidence that Doyle himself was (at least partly) responsible for the famous Piltdown Man hoax.
In short, this book is an excellent adventure story, though vastly different than the usual adventure, which could be described as "magical." This story defies the term "magical," as it is really very steeped in the scientific mindset which precludes the magical element in most adventure stories of the period. The difference between something like H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and Doyle's The Lost World is staggering. The very essence of the former is magical and significantly shaped by a sense of something beyond nature lurking in the background, while the latter has a more nature-based sense of wonder. In Haggard if the main character senses something watching him the reader's mind assumes that it must be the old witch, who we assume must have supernatural power because of the atmosphere of the book. In Doyle, however, when Malone feels something watching him our minds automatically assume that it is some prehistoric creature. In this sense (the naturalistic wonder as opposed to the fantastic wonder of most adventure stories) Doyle is very similar to his contemporary H.G. Wells. To be quite honest, if I read this book without seeing the author's name, I would have immediately assumed that Wells wrote it, as this book has the same "feel" as one of his books. There is just something in the very nature of the works of the early staunch naturalist writers (and Doyle reflects this, even though he was a spiritist) that has never been replicated since, and it is very present in this book.
Overall grade: A
Summary of The Lost World (Modern Library Classics)
In The Lost World, the first in a series of books to feature the bold Professor Challenger?a character many critics consider one of the most finely drawn in science fiction?Challenger and his party embark on an expedition to a remote Amazonian plateau where, as the good professor puts it, ?the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended? and numerous prehistoric creatures and ape-men have survived. ?Just as Sherlock Holmes set the standard?and in some sense established the formula?for the detective story . . . , so too has The Lost World set the standard and the formula for fantasy-adventure stories . . . ,? Michael Crichton writes in his Introduction. ?The tone and techniques that Conan Doyle first refined in The Lost World have become standard narrative procedures in popular entertainment of the present day.?Forget the Michael Crichton book (and Spielberg movie) that copied the title. This is the original: the terror-adventure tale of The Lost World. Writing not long after dinosaurs first invaded the popular imagination, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle spins a yarn about an expedition of two scientists, a big-game hunter, and a journalist (the narrator) to a volcanic plateau high over the vast Amazon rain forest. The bickering of the professors (a type Doyle knew well from his medical training) serves as witty contrast to the wonders of flora and fauna they encounter, building toward a dramatic moonlit chase scene with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. And the character of Professor George E. Challenger is second only to Sherlock Holmes in the outrageous force of his personality: he's a big man with an even bigger ego, and if you can grit your teeth through his racist behavior toward Native Americans, he's a lot of fun.
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