The Lost World (Doyle novel)
The
Lost World is a science
fiction novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle,
published in 1912, concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of
South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally
published serially in the Strand
Magazine and illustrated by New-Zealand-born
artist Harry Rountree
during the months of April–November 1912. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war
between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures.
Plot summary
Edward
Malone, a young reporter for the Daily Gazette, asks his editor for a
dangerous assignment to impress the woman he loves, Gladys, who wishes for a
great man capable of brave deeds and actions. His task is to approach the
notorious Professor Challenger, who dislikes the popular press intensely and physically
assaults intrusive journalists. The subject is to be his recent South American
expedition which, surrounded by controversy, guarantees a hostile reaction. As
a direct approach would be instantly rebuffed, Malone instead masquerades as an
earnest student. On meeting the professor he is startled by his intimidating
physique, but believes his ruse is succeeding. Seeing through the masquerade,
then confirming Malone's scientific knowledge is non-existent, Challenger
erupts in anger and forcibly throws him out. Malone earns his respect by
refusing to press charges with a policeman who saw his violent ejection into
the street. Challenger ushers him back inside and, extracting promises of
confidentiality, eventually reveals he has discovered living dinosaurs in South
America, following up an expedition by a now-deceased previous American
explorer named Maple White. At a tumultuous public meeting in which Challenger
experiences further ridicule (most notably from a professional rival, Professor
Summerlee), Malone volunteers for an expedition to verify the discoveries. His
companions are to be Professor Summerlee, and Lord John Roxton, an adventurer
who helped end slavery on the Amazon; the notches on his rifle showing how many
slavers he killed doing so.
Running
the gauntlet of hostile tribes, the expedition finally reaches the lost world
with the aid of Indian guides, who are superstitiously scared of the area.
Summerlee retains his scepticism – although being delighted at making other
scientific discoveries in the field of botany and entomology: even a glimpse of
a pterodactyl at a distance fails to convince him, believing it is some species
of stork (the sharper-eyed Roxton is inclined to agree it is not a stork but
has no clue what it really is), until a night-time encounter when it flies down
and is seen by all at close range, as it steals the companions' dinner. After
this, Summerlee apologises to Challenger. The cliffs to the plateau itself
prove to be apparently unscalable, but an adjacent pinnacle turns out to be
climbable, and moreover, has a tall tree which can be cut down and used as a
bridge, which allows the four explorers to cross to the plateau. However, they
are almost immediately trapped on it, thanks to the treachery of one of their
luggage-porters, Gomez: who, as it turns out, is a former slaver whose brother
had previously been killed by Roxton during his anti-slavery activities. Gomez
takes his revenge by dropping the tree off the cliff, stranding the explorers
on the plateau. Gomez himself is subsequently killed by another porter, a negro
ex-slave named Zambo, who remains loyal to the party: but the latter is unable
to do much more to help, other than send some of the company's supplies over by
rope.
Whilst
investigating the wonders of the lost world, discovering many plants and
creatures thought to be extinct, they narrowly escape an attack from
pterodactyls. Although barely escaping with their lives, Roxton takes great
interest in nearby blue clay deposits. At night a ferocious dinosaur is about
to break through the thorn bushes surrounding their camp; Roxton averts
disaster by bravely dashing at it, thrusting a blazing torch at its face to
scare it away. Later, all except Malone are captured by a race of ape-men.
Whilst in captivity they discover that a tribe of natives, with whom the
ape-men are at war, inhabit the other side of the plateau. Roxton escapes and
together with Malone mounts a rescue, preventing many unpleasant deaths,
including a young native who is a prince of his tribe. The rescued natives take
the party to their village, then with the help of their firepower return to
defeat the ape-men. After witnessing the power of their guns, the tribe wish to
keep them on the plateau but, helped by the young prince they saved, they eventually
discover a tunnel leading back to the outside world. During their time with the
tribe, Roxton plans how to capture a pterodactyl chick, and succeeds in doing
so.
Upon
return to England, despite full reports from Malone many detractors continue to
dismiss the expedition's account, much as they had Challenger's original story
– although Summerlee, having been on the expedition, has now switched sides and
is supporting Challenger. Anticipating this, at a public meeting Challenger
produces the young pterodactyl as proof, transfixing the audience and leaving
them in no doubt of the truth. The explorers are instantly feted as heroes, and
on a wave of adulation find themselves carried shoulder-high from the hall by
cheering crowds. The pterodactyl, in the confusion, makes its escape and is
witnessed several times at different locations around London, causing
consternation wherever it goes, but is last seen heading off to the southwest
in the probable direction of its home.
At
a private celebratory dinner, Roxton reveals to the others that the blue clay
contained diamonds – he had been tipped off to the possibility, by the
recollection of a similar feature in South Africa – and that he managed to
extract about £200,000 worth, which is to be split between them, Challenger
plans to open a private museum with his share, Summerlee plans to retire and
categorise fossils. Malone returns to his love, Gladys, hoping she will
recognise his achievements. Instead, he finds she has now selfishly changed her
mind and married a very ordinary man instead, an insignificant clerk.
Astonished at this turn of events, and with nothing to keep him in London, he
decides to accompany Roxton back to the lost world.
Characters
- Professor George Edward Challenger, a zoologist
- Edward D. Malone, a reporter
- McArdle, Edward's editor
- Professor Summerlee, a scientist
- Lord John Roxton, an adventurer
- Gomez, brother to a slavemaster Roxton killed
- Manuel, Gomez's friend
- Zambo, South American black guide
- Gladys Hungerton, Edward Malone's selfish love interest
- Jessie Challenger, Challenger's wife
- Maple White, a deceased explorer who discovered the lost world
- The Accala Indians, the natives of the lost world
- Ape-men, vicious ape-like creatures who live on the lost world
Animals featured
Non-avian dinosaurs
Other extinct reptiles
Other prehistoric animals included
Mammals
Birds
Other creatures on the Plateau
- Ixodes maloni, a species of blood-sucking tick; named after Malone, the first to be bitten by one
- Moths; some large specimens were seen flying around the expedition's campfire.
- A 50-foot-long black snake was seen by the expedition.
Creatures outside the Plateau
The
idea of prehistoric animals surviving into the present day was not new, but had
already been introduced by Jules
Verne in Journey to the
Center of the Earth. In that
book, published in 1864, the creatures live under the earth in and around a
subterranean sea. In 1915, the Russian scientist Vladimir
Obruchev produced his own version of the
"lost world" theme in the novel Plutonia,
which places the dinosaurs and other Jurassic species in a fictional space
inside the hollow Earth
connected to the surface via an opening in the Russian Far North.
In
1916, Edgar Rice Burroughs published The Land That Time
Forgot, his version of The Lost World
where lost submariners from a German U-Boat discovered their own lost world of
dinosaurs and ape-men in Antarctica. Two other books in the series followed.
A
1994 release for the Forgotten
Futures role-playing game was based on and
includes the full text of the Professor Challenger novels and stories.
Conan
Doyle's title was reused by Michael
Crichton in his 1995 novel The Lost World, a sequel to Jurassic Park. (Its film adaptation, The Lost World:
Jurassic Park, followed suit.) Both the book and
its movie adaptation share a somewhat similar setting with the Conan Doyle
story, involving a journey to an isolated area filled with living dinosaurs. At
least two similarly named TV shows, Land of the Lost and Lost,
nod to this source material, although the latter draws more from Doyle's short
story "The Lost Special".
At least two of the characters in Michael
Crichton's novel The Lost World mention a palaeontologist called John Roxton. However,
Crichton's Roxton, who is never seen, is something of an idiot, wrongly
identifying one dinosaur and publishing a report stating that the braincase of Tyrannosaurus
rex is the same as that of a frog and
thus possesses a visual system attuned strictly to movement.
In
the Valiant Comics series, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Turok meets Professor
Darwin Challenger, a descendant of Professor George Edward Challenger, who
accompanies him during the several adventures. Darwin bears strong resemblance
to his ancestor in both character and appearance. He is seen to be in
possession of a Dimorphodon specimen shot by his grandfather and
mentions that Maple White Land had since been destroyed in a cataclysmic event
prior to the 1990s.
One
of the Neopets plots, "Journey to The Lost Isle" is based on
this book, with Roxton A. Colchester III, Hugo & Lillian Fairweather, and
Werther as the adventurers, with Captain Rourke and Scrap as the guides.
The
book was adapted in Czech comics by Vlastislav Toman/Jiří Veškrna (1970, 24 pages),
followed by a sequel The Second Expedition (Vlastislav Toman/František
Koblík, 26 pages) (reprinted together in Velká kniha Komiksů, ISBN 80-7257-658-5).
The
2002 animated adventure Dinosaur Island is an attempt to blend the
original story with the popular reality series format, and was written by John Loy, writer of similar productions such as The Land Before Time.
Rafael
Chandler's 2016 supplement "The World of the Lost" for the OSR
Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Role-Playing game
system references the Doyle book not only in its title, but also in its
contents and setting themes, including prehistoric creatures on a plateau and a
savage war forming the setting's background.
References to actual history, geography and current science
The
characters of Ed Malone and Lord John Roxton were modelled, respectively, on
the journalist E. D. Morel
and the diplomat Roger Casement,
leaders of the Congo Free State
reform campaign (the Congo Reform Association), which Conan Doyle supported.[1]
The
setting for The Lost World is believed to have been inspired by reports
of Doyle's good friend Percy Harrison Fawcett's expedition to Huanchaca Plateau in Noel Kempff Mercado
National Park, Bolivia. Fawcett organised several
expeditions to delimit the border between Bolivia and Brazil – an area of
potential conflict between both countries. Doyle took part in the lecture of
Fawcett in Royal Geographical Society on 13 February 1911[2] and was impressed by the tale about the remote
"province of Caupolican" (present day Huanchaca Plateau) in Bolivia –
a dangerous area with impenetrable forests, where Fawcett saw "monstrous
tracks of unknown origin".[3]
Fawcett
wrote in his posthumously published memoirs: "monsters from the dawn of
man's existence might still roam these heights unchallenged, imprisoned and
protected by unscalable cliffs. So thought Conan Doyle when later in London I
spoke of these hills and showed photographs of them. He mentioned an idea for a
novel on Central South America and asked for information, which I told him I
should be glad to supply. The fruit of it was his Lost world in 1912,
appearing as a serial in the Strand Magazine [sic], and subsequently in
the form of a book that achieved widespread popularity."[4] Additionally, a 1996 Science Fiction Studies review of an annotated edition of the novel suggested that
another inspiration for the story may have been the 1890s contested political
history of the Pacaraima Mountains
plateaus, and Mount Roraima
in particular.[5]
The
dinosaur that attacks the camp during the night is vividly described (‘In
the deep shadow of the tree...a crouching form full of savage vigour and
menace... not higher than a horse, but the dim outline suggested vast bulk and
strength). Identified as an Allosaurus, in real life it would have been
more fearsome still, though the book also allowed the possibility of it being Megalosaurus or a juvenile Allosaurus, which would be closer to
the description.
The
novel also details a brief encounter with a giant snake, estimated by
Challenger to have been over 50 feet long. Though not based on any known snake
at the time, its inclusion likely came from reports by Fawcett. In 1907,
Fawcett claimed to have witnessed and killed a giant anaconda of a similar
size, though his report was unverified. However, the recent discovery of Titanoboa, which could easily fit the description given in the novel,
indicates snakes of gargantuan size did indeed exist in prehistoric eras.
Following
the stereotypes of the time in which the book was written, the dinosaurs are
described often as extremely stupid; For example, at some point an Iguanodon
pulls down the tree in which it is feeding, being injured and frightened in the
process. This idea is generally omitted in the modern film versions.
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