“Some believe what separates men from animals is our ability to reason. Others say it’s language or romantic love, or opposable thumbs. Living here in this lost world, I’ve come to believe it is more than our biology. What truly makes us human is our unending search, our abiding desire for immortality.”

The Lost World is a first-rate adventure story; a fun-filled science-fiction from the post-Edwardian era. This book tells the tale of four brave men who travel to the unexplored heart of the Amazon to prove, or disprove, a fabled discovery of massive proportions — that somewhere deep in that unexplored jungle exists a high plateau, upon which all manners of prehistoric creatures still roam. Yes, that means dinosaurs.

The story champions many of the scientific conventions of its day, while simultaneously bending them to its will for the reader’s enjoyment. No doubt, raw adventure and intrigue were at the front of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mind when he penned this classic, which is complemented by a comical take on the place of romance in such things.

The Lost World introduces us to one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most beloved reoccurring characters, other than his famous detective of course. In that regard, Professor Challenger is certainly just as eccentric and nearly as memorable (although not as iconic) as Sherlock Holmes. Challenger is a big, powerful man who is sometimes violent and perhaps too comfortable in his seat of ridicule as a pseudo-scientist, so long as he can get the last laugh upon the entire scientific community that is.

“He was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all the time.”

On this adventure, Challenger is matched up well with his antithetical Professor Summerlee, who is a well-regarded, mainstream conservative scientist. Interestingly, it is this careful trait that often renders him wrong in the field of scientific discovery. And in many ways, this reads as a timely commentary on the rigid orthodoxy of our contemporary scientific field, but I digress.

But Summerlee is caught up in this expedition particularly because of his shrewd reputation amongst his peers. And in that regard, Summerlee’s skepticism proves to be the ideal whipping board for Challenger’s robust temper and outlandish personality. And the constant bickering between these two scholars proves quite entertaining.

Together with love-sick journalist Ed Malone, and playboy big-game hunter Lord John Roxton, the two professors set off into the deepest reaches of the Amazon River to ground Professor Challenger’s wildest claims.

Upon reaching South America, the expedition hires a team of natives to take them deep inland. And brilliantly, it is as this moment when the delivery of the tale abruptly pivots from ordinary narrative to epistolary, with each chapter representing a letter from the journalist, which Mr. Malone can only hope will reach its intended destination.

“So tomorrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate.”

Atop that great plateau, its as if the expedition had taken a journey back in time, where they encounter all manners of vicious brutes, of which I have included some of the artwork from The Lost World’s original printing in The Strand magazine.

“It was surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose tonight? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.”

But above all of these mysterious wonders, it is their collective encounter with strange ape-like men which teaches these explorers the most about their own humanity, with their newly learned experience showing them the distinction between brain, character and soul. And it is this encounter which sets their feet upon the greatest of primordial struggles, one which will tip the balance of power for one species over another.

“What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is meaningless. Each produces the same result. But those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tier folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests - the victories that count.”

On so many fronts, The Lost World is a must read for lovers of fantasy and raw adventure. Few books could live up to its title as well as this particular book has, given that The Lost World so well captures the spirit of the lost-world craze, which was a popular sub-genre of Victorian-era science-fiction.

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Why You Should Read 'The Lost World'