The Lost World
From Conservapedia
| The Lost World | |
|---|---|
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Year Published | 1912 |
| Language | English |
The Lost World is a 1912 science fiction novel by English author Arthur Conan Doyle.
Contents |
Plot
The novel, which amusing falls into the "lost world" genre (created by H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885)), follows the pressman Edward Malone, the overbearing Professor Challenger, and their companions as they seek to explore a hidden plateau deep in South America. There, they discover dinosaurs still living, seemingly extinct species of animals, and a race of ape-men. Roughly half the work deals with their journey to the Lost World, and another half their attempts to survive and escape.
Evolutionary racism
Unfortunately, while a seminal work of lost world literature and science fiction, the novel is brimming with evolutionary racism, common in the late 19th and early 20th century. The entire novel is in support of Darwin, describing the ape-men as the missing link, and the undisturbed plateau as the single place unaffected by evolution. The Englishmen are described as the most cultured and developed race, while native South Americans are considerably less developed, and the lone black man is cast as a dumb brute. Thus, the work has shed a sour light on the work of Doyle as a whole.
Impact
The Lost World inspired Michael Crichton's novel of the same name, which was adapted into the film Jurassic Park.
