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The Poison Belt

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The Poison Belt

By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrated by: Glen McCready
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About this listen

The sequel to The Lost World, Arthur Conan Doyle's Poison Belt reunites the ever-popular Professor Challenger, intrepid journalist Edward Malone, dashing Lord John Roxton, and the querulous Professor Summerlee for yet another adventure.

When a sinister poison envelops the earth, the entire human race teeters on the brink of destruction, forcing the comrades to implement a desperate plan for survival.

A cryptic telegram, a mysterious airborne poison, and an eerie journey around post-apocalyptic London - this is vintage Conan Doyle. Glen McCready?s exhilarating reading brings all the tension and excitement of this classic tale vividly to life.

Public Domain (P)2009 Naxos Audiobooks Science Fiction Fiction

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Editor reviews

In Doyle's short novel featuring Professor Challenger, the earth moves through a poisonous belt of the "ether" - the stuff supposedly filling space - and the protagonists observe what seems to be the end of all life. The novel, though a classic of science fiction, is painfully dated in its science and in its casual racism, which only surfaces occasionally but is off-putting. But Glen McCready's genial narration helps. He supplies appropriate voices for the major characters, including the rumbling, bull-like Professor Challenger, his dainty wife, and the drawling Lord Roxton. Overall, McCready delivers the somewhat talky text with careful expressiveness, helping to bring it to life.
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Not a patch on the first Prof Challenger book (Lost World). I was glad it was relatively short, it just isn't up to Conan Doyle's usual standard !

not a patch......

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Good narration, wasn’t 100% convinced by the story. I guess taken in isolation it was good. Just not as a follow up to a ‘boys own’ type adventure like The Lost World.

Loved The Lost World, this was…different

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It's a fun, albeit short, follow up to The Lost World. However, listeners should be aware that this book is a product of its time and contains clearly racist stereotypes and language at points.

The science is also completely out of date: we haven't believed in the aether since about 1900 but, of course, at that time it was an accepted explanation of how light could travel from the sun to us (i.e. they thought it needed a substance for transmission as opposed to travelling in a vacuum) until a series of experiments proved it couldn't exist as previously believed.

I guess the above factors are why it doesn't get the same exposure as The Lost World but if you can look past the historical artifacts it's worth listening to.

A great story but a product of its time

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I chose this as a sequel to the brilliant Conan Doyle novel The Lost World as it follows the same characters through later adventures. But for anyone hoping for the comforting strength and moral certainty of that previous story, this one comes as a bit of a surprise. There is very little actual action and the plot is rather disturbingly creepy and I wondered if there was an allegorical meaning buried inside it as environmental annihilation threatens mankind! Too early for climate change but rather like Noah's flood? The Victorian adventurers still brave the most terrible perils but it's not a patch on The Lost World in my opinion

Science fiction story quite unlike most of Conan Doyle

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