The Complete Professor Challenger Stories [Paperback]

Professor George Edward Challenger is the lesser known creation of Sherlock Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Unlike the cool and calculating Homes, Challenger is irascible, domineering and extremely outspoken. In short, he is a lot of fun to read. However, unlike Holmes, Professor Challenger never caught on and as such only five Challenger stories were ever written. This book combines all five of the Professor Challenger stories together in one book:

The Lost World - originally published in 1912 - 5 stars - This is the greatest, and the best known of the Professor Challenger stories. Professor Challenger has heard of a plateau in South America where dinosaurs still roam, and he loses no time in setting up an expedition to this strange place. However, when the expedition finds itself marooned on the plateau, the team faces many dangers and adventures.

The Poison Belt - 1913 - 5 stars - Professor Challenger has learned that the Earth is moving towards a poisonous section of space, and has figured out a way that he can save a few members of the human race - the last people left on Earth!

The Land of Mist - 1926 - 1 star - The worst of the Professor Challenger stories, this one is really just a polemic, written to convince the reader of the wonder (or whatever) of Spiritualism. This story might have been what killed the series.

The Disintegration Machine - 1927 - 5 stars - A Latvian scientist has created a machine that can disintegrate matter, and reintegrate it again...or not. This is something that Professor Challenger must see for himself if he is to fully understand its ramifications.

When The World Screamed - 1928 - 5 stars - Professor Challenger is digging a well or mine of some sort in southern England, but what is he up to? It seems that the eccentric professor has a new theory - that the Earth is really a living creature!

Although more than a little dated, scientifically, I found these stories to be well written and quite exciting. (Well, four of the five that is.) They reflects a world that is now gone, but is quite interesting to read about. If you like adventure stories, then you will like this one. Read this book, and learn about A.C. Doyle's other hero!

Sir Arthur's most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, is a character so realistic, so true to life, so three-dimensional that dozens of novels, hundreds of short stories, and thousands of articles have been written and tens of thousands of people have gathered themselves together in fan clubs under the premise that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. If it weren't for Sherlock Holmes, no one would ever have tried to make a similar leap over this two-dimensional piece of pure cardboard, Professor Challenger.

Part of the problem is that Sir Arthur pretty clearly had an agenda in mind, an idea he wanted to push, an argument he wanted to win behind each story. Now that isn't necessarily bad, science fiction has become rather known for a healthy tradition of didactic polemics, but the good ones never forget that the story MUST come first. Too often Sir Arthur forgot that, and it doesn't help that he invariably got the science wrong.

"The Lost World" (1912) is the first and the best, the one I can recommend without hesitation as a fine story, a classic Boy's Own Adventure that introduces the irascible Professor Challenger and his memorable companions: the boyish and naive journalist Ned Malone, the phlegmatic and imperturbable hunter Lord Roxton, and the if anything even more irascible Professor Summerlee who together live the ultimate adventure of finding a lost world, populated with extinct monsters and peoples. The plot is so familiar it barely needs describing: scientist claims to have discovered lost world; scientist leads expedition back to prove he's not lying; expedition finds lost world, is trapped in lost world, survives great dangers in lost world, and escapes from lost world; scientist sics pterodactyl on disbelievers. Sir Arthur's not so hidden agenda? Well, accusations of support for imperialism or racism seem a bit extreme, but he is clearly advocating Evolution here, which is somewhat ironic in light of current evolutionary theory on the extinction of the dinosaurs. Suffice it to say that the discovery of living dinosaurs today would have Creation scientists doing handstands and Evolution scientists racing back to the drawing board.

After this rollicking adventure "The Poison Belt" (1913) is quite a disappointment. In a more egregious bit of bad science, Professor Challenger correctly predicts that the Earth has moved into a belt of poisonous "ether", presumably inspired by the equally laughable fears resulting from Earth passing through the tail of Halley's Comet in 1910. Challenger's brilliant solution? He has the old crew bring oxygen tanks and gather at his house along with his wife to watch the world come to an end... and die a few hours after everybody else. Frankly this struck me as something less than a solution. It also results in a very talky, actionless novel as our heroes sit on their rears and discuss the Meaning of Life and Man's Existence, from which I conclude that the author didn't have that firm a grasp on it either. Finally oxygen running out, our heroes face the End like Englishmen should, but the End does not come -- the poison is gone. At this point the novel finally starts to move as our heroes explore and contemplate the dead world. As you might gather from the fact that three more Challenger stories follow, there is a surprise "never mind" ending.

"The Land of Mist" (1926) is the absolute nadir of the series as Sir Arthur conscripts his heroes to flack for the now mostly forgotten cult of Spiritualism. When Professor Challenger, who in this novel for once represents the Scientific Establishment, is finally defeated and becomes a convert, you just want to turn aside in embarrassment. A Challenger daughter Enid (who seems to have come out of nowhere) is introduced as a romantic interest for Malone and utterly wasted in this literary catastrophe. There would be no further Challenger novels.

"The Disintegration Machine" (1927) is the first Challenger short story and something of a departure because the creator of the title invention is not Professor Challenger but rather a truly slimy Latvian Mr. Nemor whose work Professor Challenger has been asked to check. Mr. Nemor has already sold but not yet turned over the secret of his weapon to some unnamed European power other than Britain but consents to demonstrate his device to Professor Challenger anyway. Once convinced that the device works as advertised Professor Challenger deals with it. The scientific error here is less in the obviously so far not yet invented disintegration machine than it is in failing to grasp the significance of what he's conceived here. Star Trek fans will quickly grasp that what Sir Arthur has imagined here is not a weapon but in fact a means of teleportation -- the Transporter.

"When the World Screamed" (1928) is the last and something of a return to form as Professor Challenger espouses yet another cockamamie theory, that the Earth (and for that matter other planets) are actually gigantic living beings, and proceeds to prove it in spectacular fashion. I REALLY shouldn't have to point out the scientific errors in this one, and feminists who make a point of citing this story as some sort of celebration of the "male" attitude towards science, literally raping Mother Earth, need to go lie down on a couch for a few years, and they'll probably feel a lot better. (I know that the rest of us will feel a lot better not having to listen to them in the interim.)

In the end Professor Challenger, that overly broad parody of a scientist, not content like most with humiliating you with his brain but also desiring to humiliate you with his fists, was just too unrealistic to attract much of a fan base then or now, and Sir Arthur's penchant for using him whenever he wanted to win an argument didn't help.

› Go to Amazon.com to see both reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars