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    The Poison Belt
    The Poison Belt
    The Poison Belt
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    The Poison Belt

    By Arthur Conan Doyle

    3.5/5

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    What would you do if you had discovered that the planet was about to be engulfed in a belt of poisonous 'ether' from outer space? Professor Challenger invites a hand-picked crew of adventurers and scientists to his home outside London, which has been fortified with several hours' worth of oxygen. 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.'
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media
    Release dateAug 7, 2018
    ISBN9781974997213
    Author

    Arthur Conan Doyle

    Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer and physician. He is the creator of the Sherlock Holmes character, writing his debut appearance in A Study in Scarlet. Doyle wrote notable books in the fantasy and science fiction genres, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.

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    Reviews for The Poison Belt

    3.5/5

    116 ratings9 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I quite enjoyed this book although it was not what I was expecting at all from this author! It's short enough to read in one sitting and did hold my interest all the way through.
    • 3/5
      In The Poison Belt, the characters from The Lost World get an encore performance, which they mostly spend discussing heavy shit in Professor Challenger's living room.The basic idea is that Challenger realizes, with barely any time to spare, that the world is about to pass through a patch of poisonous ether. He summons his Lost World companions to his country estate, where they seal themselves inside a high-oxygen room, which slows the action of the poisonous ether on their systems. Thus, they get a chance to observe universal death and the end of the world.The scientific hook in The Poison Belt has been obsolete for nearly a century. Fortunately, once you strip all the science away, you're left with a book that is still plenty entertaining. Professor Challenger, quick to anger and unbelievably arrogant, is a comic figure in the middle of horrible events. His tirades supply plenty of laughs, which leave the reader open to the body blow of the disaster Conan Doyle is painting. Universal, inevitable death. This scope makes "Deep Impact" look like a movie about a guy stubbing his toe.Challenger's foresight, and the dismissal of his warnings by the public, make for some interesting parallels with current tensions between the scientific and broader communities. Says Challenger, "The flippancy of the half-educated is more obstructive to science than the obtuseness of the ignorant."Conan Doyle seems wholly on board with the British colonial project of his day, and The Poison Belt is at points shocking in its casual racism. You'll have to cut the author some slack on this point to enjoy the book. On the other hand, it's encouraging to read these sorts of things and see that society has, indeed, made some progress in the last hundred years.It's a short, quick read. Not very substantive, but fun nevertheless. Recommended for reading in train stations.
    • 5/5
      Professor Challenger in a Science fiction yarn from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Ok it is one of this author's lesser works,but saying that, Doyle's worst is many other author's best.Plus he can do no wrong for me.Thus 5 stars.Enjoyable on a light level.
    • 4/5
      All science fiction is stuck with the science of its time and this short novel is no exception. Continuing with his characters from The Lost World, Conan Doyle creates a global catastrophe in which Professor Challenger can once again prove his brilliance. The ending is "happy" and resolves none of the issues raised, but this was a short happy read.
    • 4/5
      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle using characters from Lost World to experience a mysterious belt of ether that the earth will pass through.By isolating themselves in a small room with a supply of oxygen they are able to survive a horrible fate.This book is a quick read but somethimes the heavy British language stalls the story.
    • 3/5
      There's something about ether.I don't know what it is, but early 20th century British writers were obsessed with it. Just as Huxley used it as a stupefying agent in "Brave New World" Doyle uses it as an agent to bring upon death to the world. Professor Challenger observes changes in the light spectrum through his telescope, and proclaims that the world is about to experience a change larger than the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs (excepting of course their lost world). Of course the world laughs at him again, and of course again he is right. The Earth was sent through a poisons belt of ether that is a "universal agent."-The best parts where the descriptions of how the people went coo-koo when exposed, like Professor Summerly barking like a dog and proving he could do all the barn yard animals. Some surprising parts are reminder of how closely we still live to a racist world when the smartest man in the universe refers to non-whites as "the lower races" and "the less evolved humans" and no one bats an eye. I would have given a higher rating overall, but the ending was predictable and unimaginative.
    • 4/5
      Professor Challenger has issued a warning. The ether of space has a poisonous belt and the earth is going to pass through it. He invites his friends from the “Lost World’ expedition to his country home and asks them to bring canisters of oxygen. As Malone, Lord Roxton, and Summerlee are traveling by train to Challenger’s mansion they start acting strangely; becoming overly emotional, saying and doing strange things. They are already being affected by the poisonous cloud. When the friends arrive at the estate Challenger explains that they will be riding out the poison in a sealed room using the oxygen canisters.I enjoyed this Challenger story more than “The Lost World.” It was like an armchair mystery. The good comrades sit and discuss the events as they unfold believing they are watching the end of the world. It reminded me of British post-apocalyptic novels. It’s a short book and a quick read. I suggest reading “The Lost World” before reading this novel because the first book introduces the main characters.
    • 3/5
      Indeholder "Den giftige zone", "Opløsningsmaskinen", "Da Verden skreg".Professor Challenger har en teori om at Jorden en gang imellem passerer igennem en giftig zone. Astronomerne har netop meddelt at de fraunhoferske linier er udviskede og uklare og som den eneste advarer Challenger om at det kan betyde civillisationens undergang og alles død. Lord Roxton, Challenger og Mrs Challenger, Professor Summerlee og Ted Malone gemmer sig i et forseglet værelse hos Professor Challenger og bruger ilt til at modvirke giften i æteren. Efterfølgende tror de først at alle er døde og går rundt i Londons gader, hvor ligene ligger overalt, men kort efter vågner alle til live igen og "kun" dem, der er ramt af ulykker og ildebrande, har faktisk mistet livet. Bevidstløshed og opvågnen sker så pludseligt at de fleste blot fortsætter med det, de nu var i gang med og først senere opdager at de har mistet timer af deres liv.En opfinder, Mr. Theodore Nemor, har opfundet en opløsningsmaskine. En demonstrationsmodel kan opløse en person og endda samle ham igen og endda lave modifikationer, fx kommer Challenger tilbage i en version uden hår og skæg "med et hageparti som en skinke". Nemor har solgt maskinen til en fremmed magt og morer sig med at fremmane muligheden af fx at slå alle ihjel i Themsdalen. Challenger snører Nemor til at tage plads i maskinen og trykker på knappen og væk er Nemor for stedse. Challenger kommenterer det med "Enhver lovlydig borges pligt er at forhindre mord" og går videre til vigtigere ærinder.Professor Challenger borer en 14 kilometer dyb skakt og når ned til Jordens hjerne. Det kan Jorden ikke lide og allehånde jordskælv og vulkanudbrud følger. "Alle mennesker har altid gerne villet have verden til at tale om sig. Men ene af alle opnåede Challenger at få hele verden til at skrige."Ganske muntre bagateller med genbrug af figurerne, Professor George Edward Challenger, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton og journalisten Edward Malone.
    • 4/5
      I had never thought of Arthur Conan Doyle as a science fiction writer but the Poison Belt (which has nothing to do with an item of clothing) is the real deal. The earth will pass through a poisonous belt of ether which will kill all life on the planet predicts the redoubtable Dr Challenger. Of course no one believes him except a select group of friends who gather at his house and with a few canisters of oxygen and in a temporary sealed room they plan to prolong their existence by a few hours. From an upstairs window they look out across the countryside and witness the deaths of workers and golfers and via telephone calls receive updates on a world wide annihilation. Their oxygen supply to their great surprise lasts long enough for them to survive the poisonous belt and they venture outside to search for other survivors. Everybody appears to be dead and major fires have erupted in some of the big cities and the six survivors contemplate a dead world and their place in it……………..This novella was published in 1914 and it coincides with two of my themed reads: early science fiction and books published in 1914 and is an excellent example of both. It has a good story line with lively characters especially the irascible Dr Challenger that moves quickly along and it explores a major science fiction trope of the end of the world. It attempts a little more with the characters engaging in lively conversations about their fate both from the viewpoint of believing they only have hours to live and then when they realise they are perhaps the only survivors. There is perhaps a bit too much of the British stiff upper lip from the Dr Challenger character, to make it a serious contemplation on the end of the world, but Conan Doyle was writing an adventure story that would appeal to the imaginative reader. I enjoyed it and so 3.5 stars.

    Book preview

    The Poison Belt - Arthur Conan Doyle

    CHAPTER I.

    THE BLURRING OF LINES

    It is imperative that now at once, while these stupendous events are still clear in my mind, I should set them down with that exactness of detail which time may blur. But even as I do so, I am overwhelmed by the wonder of the fact that it should be our little group of the Lost World—Professor Challenger, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and myself—who have passed through this amazing experience.

    When, some years ago, I chronicled in the Daily Gazette our epoch-making journey in South America, I little thought that it should ever fall to my lot to tell an even stranger personal experience, one which is unique in all human annals and must stand out in the records of history as a great peak among the humble foothills which surround it. The event itself will always be marvellous, but the circumstances that we four were together at the time of this extraordinary episode came about in a most natural and, indeed, inevitable fashion. I will explain the events which led up to it as shortly and as clearly as I can, though I am well aware that the fuller the detail upon such a subject the more welcome it will be to the reader, for the public curiosity has been and still is insatiable.

    It was upon Friday, the twenty-seventh of August—a date forever memorable in the history of the world—that I went down to the office of my paper and asked for three days' leave of absence from Mr. McArdle, who still presided over our news department. The good old Scotchman shook his head, scratched his dwindling fringe of ruddy fluff, and finally put his reluctance into words.

    I was thinking, Mr. Malone, that we could employ you to advantage these days. I was thinking there was a story that you are the only man that could handle as it should be handled.

    I am sorry for that, said I, trying to hide my disappointment. Of course if I am needed, there is an end of the matter. But the engagement was important and intimate. If I could be spared—

    Well, I don't see that you can.

    It was bitter, but I had to put the best face I could upon it. After all, it was my own fault, for I should have known by this time that a journalist has no right to make plans of his own.

    Then I'll think no more of it, said I with as much cheerfulness as I could assume at so short a notice. What was it that you wanted me to do?

    Well, it was just to interview that deevil of a man down at Rotherfield.

    You don't mean Professor Challenger? I cried.

    Aye, it's just him that I do mean. He ran young Alec Simpson of the Courier a mile down the high road last week by the collar of his coat and the slack of his breeches. You'll have read of it, likely, in the police report. Our boys would as soon interview a loose alligator in the zoo. But you could do it, I'm thinking—an old friend like you.

    Why, said I, greatly relieved, this makes it all easy. It so happens that it was to visit Professor Challenger at Rotherfield that I was asking for leave of absence. The fact is, that it is the anniversary of our main adventure on the plateau three years ago, and he has asked our whole party down to his house to see him and celebrate the occasion.

    Capital! cried McArdle, rubbing his hands and beaming through his glasses. Then you will be able to get his opeenions out of him. In any other man I would say it was all moonshine, but the fellow has made good once, and who knows but he may again!

    Get what out of him? I asked. What has he been doing?

    Haven't you seen his letter on 'Scientific Possibeelities' in to-day's Times?

    No.

    McArdle dived down and picked a copy from the floor.

    Read it aloud, said he, indicating a column with his finger. I'd be glad to hear it again, for I am not sure now that I have the man's meaning clear in my head.

    This was the letter which I read to the news editor of the Gazette:—

    SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITIES

    Sir,—I have read with amusement, not wholly unmixed with some less complimentary emotion, the complacent and wholly fatuous letter of James Wilson MacPhail which has lately appeared in your columns upon the subject of the blurring of Fraunhofer's lines in the spectra both of the planets and of the fixed stars. He dismisses the matter as of no significance. To a wider intelligence it may well seem of very great possible importance—so great as to involve the ultimate welfare of every man, woman, and child upon this planet. I can hardly hope, by the use of scientific language, to convey any sense of my meaning to those ineffectual people who gather their ideas from the columns of a daily newspaper. I will endeavour, therefore, to condescend to their limitation and to indicate the situation by the use of a homely analogy which will be within the limits of the intelligence of your readers.

    Man, he's a wonder—a living wonder! said McArdle, shaking his head reflectively. He'd put up the feathers of a sucking-dove and set up a riot in a Quakers' meeting. No wonder he has made London too hot for him. It's a peety, Mr. Malone, for it's a grand brain! We'll let's have the analogy.

    We will suppose, I read, "that a small bundle of connected corks was launched in a sluggish current upon a voyage across the Atlantic. The corks drift slowly on from day to day with the same conditions all round them. If the corks were sentient we could imagine that they would consider these conditions to be permanent and assured. But we, with our superior knowledge, know that many things might happen to surprise the corks. They might possibly float up against a ship, or a sleeping whale, or become entangled in seaweed. In any case, their voyage would probably end by their being thrown up on the rocky coast of Labrador. But what could they know of all this while they drifted so gently day by day in what they thought was a limitless and homogeneous ocean?

    Your readers will possibly comprehend that the Atlantic, in this parable, stands for the mighty ocean of ether through which we drift and that the bunch of corks represents the little and obscure planetary system to which we belong. A third-rate sun, with its rag tag and bobtail of insignificant satellites, we float under the same daily conditions towards some unknown end, some squalid catastrophe which will overwhelm us at the ultimate confines of space, where we are swept over an etheric Niagara or dashed upon some unthinkable Labrador. I see no room here for the shallow and ignorant optimism of your correspondent, Mr. James Wilson MacPhail, but many reasons why we should watch with a very close and interested attention every indication of change in those cosmic surroundings upon which our own ultimate fate may depend.

    Man, he'd have made a grand meenister, said McArdle. It just booms like an organ. Let's get doun to what it is that's troubling him.

    "The general blurring and shifting of Fraunhofer's lines of the spectrum point, in my opinion, to a widespread cosmic change of a subtle and singular character. Light from a planet is the reflected light of the sun. Light from a star is a self-produced light. But the spectra both from planets and stars have, in this instance, all undergone the same change. Is it, then, a change in those planets and stars? To me such an idea is inconceivable. What common change could simultaneously come upon them all? Is it a change in our own atmosphere? It is possible, but in the highest degree improbable, since we see no signs of it around us, and chemical analysis has failed to reveal it. What, then, is the third possibility? That it may be a change in the conducting medium, in that infinitely fine ether which extends from star to star and pervades the whole universe. Deep in that ocean we are floating upon a slow current. Might that current not drift us into belts of ether which are novel and have properties of which we have never conceived? There is a change somewhere. This cosmic disturbance of the spectrum proves it. It may be a good change. It may be an evil one. It may be a neutral one. We do not know. Shallow observers may treat the matter as one which can

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