What would you do if you alone had discovered that the entire planet was
about to be engulfed in a belt of poisonous ether from outer space --
and that all humanity would die?
Arthur Conan Doyle's intrepid Professor Challenger invites a hand-picked
crew of adventurers and scientists -- the very same comrades with whom
he had romped through a South American jungle crawling with prehistoric
monsters and beast-men in The Lost World, science fiction's first
popular dinoasaurs-still-live tale. This adventure, however, takes place
entirely in Challenger's home (in his wife's boudoir, in fact) outside
London, which has been fortified with several hours' worth of oxygen.
Challenger tells his friends: "We are assisting at a tremendous and
awful function."
Like astronauts strapping themselves into a rocket, Challenger & Co.
assemble in front of a picture window to witness the end of all life on
the planet. As birds plummet from the sky, trains crash, and men and
women topple over before their horrified gaze, they debate everything
from the possibilities of the universe to the "abysses that lie upon
either side of our material existence," to the "ideal scientific mind.
If the point of other apocalyptic tales is to model proper action in the
face of certain disaster, Doyle's offbeat adventure models a proper
attitude: scholarly sprezzatura, nerves of steel, stoic calm.
Professor Challenger himself is a larger than life character -- strong
as a bull, the smartest man alive, and an enormous egotist who
nevertheless is good company whether he's hunting dinosaurs or waiting
for the end of the world.
