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The Lost World and The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle
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The Lost World and The Poison Belt

By Arthur Conan Doyle
Introduction by Conor Reid
Afterword by Joshua Glenn

By Arthur Conan Doyle
Introduction by Conor Reid
Afterword by Joshua Glenn

By Arthur Conan Doyle
Introduction by Conor Reid
Afterword by Joshua Glenn

By Arthur Conan Doyle
Introduction by Conor Reid
Afterword by Joshua Glenn

Best Seller

Part of MIT Press / Radium Age

Part of MIT Press / Radium Age

Category: Science Fiction

Category: Science Fiction

Paperback $19.95

Feb 21, 2023 | ISBN 9780262545259

Ebook $15.99

Feb 21, 2023 | ISBN 9780262373777

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    The Lost World and The Poison Belt by Arthur Conan Doyle
    Paperback $19.95
    Feb 21, 2023 | ISBN 9780262545259

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      Feb 21, 2023 | ISBN 9780262545259

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    About The Lost World and The Poison Belt

    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.

    About The Lost World and The Poison Belt

    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.

    Product Details

    Category: Science Fiction

    Paperback | $19.95
    Published by The MIT Press
    Feb 21, 2023 | 424 Pages | 5-1/4 x 8 | ISBN 9780262545259

    Category: Science Fiction

    Ebook | $15.99
    Published by The MIT Press
    Feb 21, 2023 | 424 Pages | ISBN 9780262373777

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    Praise

    “Doyle’s Professor Challenger series made the planet and its processes strange again. . . . The strength of Doyle’s science fiction lies in its facilitation of an encounter between the reader and the biosphere they inhabit. . . . [and The Lost World] presents a playful meta-reflection on the genre that gives it its name. . . . Anticipates the windswept tableaux vivants of Jeff VanderMeer’s and Chen Qiufan’s contemporary climate fiction.”
    —The Los Angeles Review of Books

    In Praise of the Radium Age Series:

    “Joshua Glenn’s admirable Radium Age series [is] devoted to early- 20th-century science fiction and fantasy.” 
    —The Washington Post

    “Long live the Radium Age.”
    —The Los Angeles Times

    “It’s an attractive crusade. […] Glenn’s project is well suited to providing an organizing principle for an SF reprint line, to the point where I’m a little surprised that I can’t think of other similarly high-profile examples of reprint-as-critical-advocacy. ”
    —The Los Angeles Review of Books

    “Neglected classics of early 20th-century sci-fi in spiffily designed paperback editions.”
    —The Financial Times

    “New editions of a host of under-discussed classics of the genre.”
    —Tor.com

    “Shows that ‘proto-sf’ was being published much more widely, alongside other kinds of fiction, in a world before it emerged as a genre and became ghettoised.”
    —BSFA Review

    “A huge effort to help define a new era of science fiction.”
    —Transfer Orbit

    “An excellent start at showcasing the strange wonders offered by the Radium Age.”
    —Maximum Shelfs

    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

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