The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

A very tight vote this month which resulted in a tie between the Lost World and A Voyage to Arcturus. I have created two separate threads to stop spoilers for anybody who plans to read both books.

My library has an audiobook of The Lost World. Amazon and Project Gutenberg have free ebooks

I hadn't read any Arthur Conan Doyle before and was pleasantly surprised. The Lost World was pretty good. I think I enjoyed it as much as anything we've read together yet. I had expected a tale of running from and doing battle with Godzilla-like monsters, but it turned out to be a reasonable portrayal of what I expect was the science of the time. There certainly was nothing laughable about the paleontology come to life, though I did wonder at our intrepid adventurers' repeated reaction to the pterodactyls as being 'loathsome'. The story isn't overwhelmed with dinosaurs, as I had expected it to be. There was quite a bit of racial classifying, in the name of scientific knowledge, which I guess reflects the times.

One thing that puzzled me: On the outset, our explorers expected that they may need to scale 1000-foot-high cliffs and yet they brought with them only 100 feet of cord, no climbing ropes or mountaineering equipment; and so it was their own poor planning, rather than treachery and misadventure, that trapped them on the hidden plateau.

There was one line that I particularly liked, near the beginning of the book. After his tumultuous meeting with the pugnacious Dr. Challenger, our narrator Malone, says this of Challenger's spouse: "She barred her husband's way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog."

I suspected then that I would like this book, and so I did.

I've finished this one and it's difficult to comment on as it's really not my type of book. In general I don't really like adventure/exploration books and even though well written it's not changed my mind. It's slightly dated but I liked the way it was not too sensationalist so you could believe in their adventure. Not a bad book and I did wonder if it partly inspired Planet of The Apes.

I read this a few years ago, and it was one of the first books that I read in this genre of lost worlds. I thought it was a lot of fun.

When I was a teen I read this several times. Not sure why as I didn't love others by Doyle, or other old adventures like Verne or Burroughs. I think it was the sheer audacity & verve of the adventure and of the writer's voice/ style. Someday I'll reread it.