The Lost World

Arthur Conan Doyle

Traditional adventure stories only seem to appear on the screen these days, and mostly as adaptations of the original novels written back in the early twentieth century. The Lost World is a perfect example of that once very popular genre, most famously defined by authors like H. Rider Haggard and popularised by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The Lost World is told from the perspective of a journalist, a volunteer on an expedition to the Amazon to confirm or disprove the claims of Professor Challenger to have discovered a plateau containing prehistoric life. A place where evolution has taken a different track and left an area the size of Essex frozen in time. The novel opens with the journalist's first encounter with the belligerant Challenger, and soon moves across the ocean and into the jungle where their expedition starts on the banks of the Amazon river.

The more skeptical members of their party are soon convinced when they arrive at the plateau and complete a difficult ascent to the top. What they find there will be familiar to anyone who has read or seen any of the various lost world stories that we have been bombarded with over the years. The wonder and surprise that might have met these discoveries when the novel was first written are somewhat diminished when filtered through all these other works. All dangers are represented: from pterodactyls, giant lizards, and strange dinosaurs to ape men that represent the missing link.

Taken by itself it is an enjoyable novel, though not as satisfying or inventive as Doyle's excellent Sherlock Holmes stories. They are also paced quite slowly compared to other adventure novels, especially Burroughs' Pellucidar novels, so don't manage to quite build the sense of tension that you's expect. They were clearly aimed at children or young teenagers, yet would likely be quite inaccessible to the children of today due to the language and pacing. Still, as an interesting short curio for adults interested in the early period of this genre, it is worth picking up as a quick read.