The Professor Challenger Megapack. Arthur Conan Doyle
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COPYRIGHT INFO
The Professor Challenger Megapack is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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The Lost World originally appeared in 1912.
The Poison Belt originally appeared in 1913.
“The Land of Mist” originally appeared in 1926.
“When the World Screamed” was first published as a serial in Liberty magazine, 25 February to 3 March 1928.
“The Disintegration Machine” was first published in the Strand Magazine, January 1929.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of fantasy and science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle’s laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure.
Edward Malone, the narrator of The Lost World, the novel in which Challenger first appeared, described his first meeting with the character:
His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size, which took one’s breath away – his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.
He was also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades. Although considered by Malone’s editor, Mr McArdle, to be “just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science,” his ingenuity could be counted upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult several other people in the process. Challenger was, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he was a man capable of great loyalty and his love of his wife was all encompassing.
Like Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger was based on a real person—in this case, a professor of physiology named William Rutherford, who had lectured at the University of Edinburgh while Conan Doyle studied medicine there.
Professor Challenger appeared in 5 tales, all of which are included in this Megapack.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
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THE MEGAPACK SERIES
MYSTERY
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
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The Second Girl Detective Megapack
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The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack*
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The Jacques Futrelle Megapack
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack
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The Second Mystery Megapack
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The Third Cat Story Megapack
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The Classic American Short Stories Megapack, Vol. 1.
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SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
The Edward Bellamy Megapack
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The Dragon Megapack
The Randall Garrett Megapack
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack
The Edmond Hamilton