The Lost World and the Poison Belt

The Lost World and the Poison Belt Synopsis

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. Series Overview: Under the direction of Joshua Glenn, the MIT Press's Radium Age is reissuing notable proto-science fiction stories from the underappreciated era between 1900 and 1935. In these forgotten classics, science fiction readers will discover the origins of enduring tropes like robots (berserk or benevolent), tyrannical supermen, dystopian wastelands, sinister telepaths, and eco-catastrophes. With new contributions by historians, science journalists, and science fiction authors, the Radium Age book series will recontextualize the breakthroughs and biases of these proto-science fiction classics, and chart the emergence of a burgeoning genre.

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