The Maracot Deep by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

25,000 feet under the sea

The Maracot Deep is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s final novel. It was first published in book form in 1929; he died the following year. The novel was previously published in serial form in the pages of The Saturday Evening Post (1927) and The Strand Magazine (1927-1928). The Maracot Deep is a science fiction novel of undersea exploration. The work will spark obvious comparisons to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but it really has more in common with Conan Doyle’s own 1912 novel The Lost World.

Esteemed British oceanographer and marine biologist Dr. Maracot organizes an expedition to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. He takes along two companions: zoologist Cyrus Headley, who serves as the narrator for most of the book, and Bill Scanlan, an American mechanic who serves much the same purpose as Verne’s Ned Land of Twenty Thousand Leagues. The team are lowered to the ocean floor in a vehicle similar to a bathysphere, except that this submersible is box-shaped, like an elevator. They descend five miles down into the deepest trench in the Atlantic, named the Maracot Deep in honor of the professor. The lifeline to their surface vessel is cut, leaving them stranded at the bottom of the trench with impending death a foregone conclusion. They are miraculously saved, however, by a race of undersea dwellers who prove to be the descendants of the centuries-old sunken civilization of Atlantis. 

While Verne was more interested in actual oceanographic science, here Conan Doyle is more interested in fantasy. In order for his crew to have even the slightest chance of surviving, Conan Doyle conveniently dispenses with the intense pressure exerted by great depths of water. He just invents a theory to eliminate that obstacle. One commendable choice, however, is that these Atlanteans are not able to breathe in water like fish. Instead, they have created technology to master their environment, including a breathing apparatus that would put modern scuba gear to shame. At the bottom of the ocean, Maracot and company encounter all manner of sea serpents and lethal beasts that are more mythical than scientifically authentic. Regrettably, the reader only learns the bare basics about Atlantis and its inhabitants because as soon as the three heroes make it to the ancient sunken city, they’ve already started looking for an escape from their hosts.

Even as late as 1927, Conan Doyle is unwilling to allow for a disembodied third-person narration or an interior first-person perspective. Instead, he sticks with the Victorian convention that all stories must be told in the concrete form of a written document, such as a diary, a letter, or a message in a bottle. This makes for some clunky logistics in the telling of this story, such as unnecessary multiple perspectives and a jumbled chronology. The novel proper basically ends with chapter five, but Conan Doyle must have had a seven-issue contract with the Strand, because he tacks on two chapters at the end that really should have been integrated into the main narrative rather than presented as afterthoughts. Conan Doyle’s most egregious sin with this novel, however, is that he can’t find enough sci-fi potential in undersea exploration, so he resorts to throwing in some of his usual supernatural spiritualist mumbo jumbo.

I don’t believe Conan Doyle wrote The Maracot Deep to compete with or capitalize on Verne’s masterpiece. Rather, I think he simply wanted to try his hand at one of the few subgenres of adventure literature—undersea exploration—that he hadn’t yet covered. The Maracot Deep really doesn’t hold a candle to Twenty Thousand Leagues, and it reveals Conan Doyle to be past his prime at this point. There just isn’t enough science in this watered-down science fiction.

Round the Fire Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A lighter shade of Poe

Round the Fire Stories, a collection of 17 short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published in 1908. The stories included within had previously been published in various magazines, and this is their first time appearing in book form. In a brief preface, Conan Doyle explains that the volume brings together tales “which are concerned with the grotesque and with the terrible.” I had previously read about half of these stories in a volume called Tales of Terror and Mystery, published in 1922. Stories included here also show up in the collections The Great Kleinplatz Experiment and Other Tales of the Twilight and Unseen (1925) and The Dealings of Captain Sharkey and Other Tales of Pirates (1925).

To be honest, none of these stories are particularly “grotesque” or “terrible,” but they do all fall into the horror and mystery genres, with more emphasis on the latter than the former. There are a couple ghost stories here, such as the clever “The Brown Hand,” and the less successful “Playing with Fire,” but few other instances of supernatural phenomena. A few suspenseful thrillers involve threats of death or violence from wild animals or insane persons. “The Pot of Caviare” is a war story with a gruesome twist. The remaining selections are mystery and crime stories, with thefts far outnumbering murders. “The Jew’s Breastplate,” for example, is an unconventional story about a jewel thief stealing priceless gems from a museum. Each story concludes with a “surprise twist” ending. In most cases, however, an intelligent reader can see the ending coming well ahead of time. Conan Doyle is so good at fleshing out his stories with interesting characters and clever details, however, one doesn’t really mind. Even when the plot is predictable, his storytelling is not.

Conan Doyle’s fiction was influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. That influence is apparent here in some of the horror stories, particularly “The Leather Funnel,” which contains flashbacks to medieval torture. The stories of horror and murder that Conan Doyle presents here, however, have been softened to make them palatable for the general reading audience of his day. One need not be as dark and dreary as Poe to appreciate these stories; their thrills are suitable for Victorian English housewives. Poe also originated the mystery genre with his story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Although influenced no doubt by Poe’s mystery writings, Conan Doyle certainly made the genre his own. A few of the stories here venture into Sherlock Holmes-esque territory. “The Man with the Watches” and “The Lost Special,” for example, are intricate puzzles designed to baffle rather than terrify.

The best stories here are “The Brazilian Cat,” a suspenseful wild-animal horror story, and “The Japanned Box,” which won’t seem very scary or mysterious to today’s readers, but it is quite touching. Another strong entry is “B.24” (I don’t understand the title), a caper told from the point of view of a thief. It has a plot premise that has since shown up in many a film noir or cinematic thriller. The worst selection in this volume is “Playing with Fire,” a comedic story of a séance that applies unfunny slapstick humor to Conan Doyle’s obsession with spiritualism. Overall, this collection has a couple great stories and a couple stinkers, but for the most part the contents are consistently above average. The stories in this volume aren’t quite up to the standard of Sherlock Holmes’s more fascinating cases, but this book still makes for an enjoyable read.

Stories in this collection

The Leather Funnel

The Beetle Hunter

The Man with the Watches

The Pot of Caviare

The Japanned Box

The Black Doctor

Playing with Fire

The Jew’s Breastplate

The Lost Special

The Club-Footed Grocer

The Sealed Room

The Brazilian Cat

The Usher of Lea House

The Brown Hand

The Fiend of the Cooperage

Jelland’s Voyage

B.24

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Through the Magic Door by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A contagious enthusiasum for classic books

Although Arthur Conan Doyle is primarily known as an author of fiction, he also wrote a couple dozen nonfiction books, most of them about military history or his beliefs in spiritualism and the supernatural. He wrote one book of essays, however, that will appeal particularly to fans of his novels and short stories. That book is Through the Magic Door, published in 1907. Though the title may sound like a children’s fantasy novel, the “door” in question is actually the entrance to Conan Doyle’s personal library. The esteemed author invites the reader into his inner sanctum and introduces him to the most treasured volumes on his library’s shelves.

Unlike a typical work of literary criticism, Through the Magic Door is not only educational but also surprisingly lively and entertaining. Conan Doyle injects witty personal anecdotes into the discussion and occasionally goes off on tangents that are relevant enough to be quite interesting. In addition to a list of Conan Doyle’s favorite books, the reader comes away with an inside glimpse of how those works have influenced the author’s writing career.

Many of the writers covered here are to be expected. Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, both clearly influences on Conan Doyle’s work, are each given their due consideration. Other chapters are devoted to the usual suspects of the English canon. Thomas Macaulay’s essays, James Boswell’s biography of Samuel Johnson, the diary of Samuel Pepys, and Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire are classics that couldn’t go unmentioned in the literary memoir of a 19th-century English gentleman. In addition, however, Conan Doyle brings up some personal choices that are more unfamiliar, at least to the American reader. For instance, he pronounces The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade the greatest historical novel in the English language. (Scott’s Ivanhoe has to settle for second place.) He also extols the merits of George Borrow and George Meredith, the latter of whose novel Richard Feverel is deemed by Conan Doyle “one of the three novels which I admire most in the Victorian era.” Though foreign authors like Balzac, Hugo, Tolstoy, and Melville are mentioned briefly in the text, Conan Doyle mostly reserves his extended discourse for British authors. The exceptions are Edgar Allan Poe and Guy de Maupassant, whom he dubs the greatest and second-greatest artists of the short story.

Conan Doyle doesn’t confine himself to fiction but discusses works of history and science as well. In the former category, he delves as far back as the medieval chronicles of Froissart and de Comines. Having written historical novels on the Napoleonic Wars (The Great Shadow, Uncle Bernac) and medieval times (The White Company, Sir Nigel), it is not surprising that Conan Doyle has a large collection of histories and memoirs pertaining to those eras. Another chapter is devoted to exploration narratives, with an emphasis on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. The science books he admires also tend to have an element of exploratory adventure to them, such as Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and Alfred Russell Wallace’s Malay Archipelago.

I expected to walk away from this book with a short list of recommended readings, but Conan Doyle delivers much more than that. Through the Magic Door was truly an enjoyable reading experience. For the brief length of the book, one feels as if he were Conan Doyle’s personal friend, spending a pleasant afternoon of conversation in the gentleman’s study.
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The Professor Challenger Short Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

His two remaining adventures

It goes without saying that Sherlock Holmes was the character that made Sir Arthur Conan Doyle famous. The Holmes adventures, however, only constitute a fraction of Conan Doyle’s literary output. Outside of the Holmes universe, the most famous recurring character that Conan Doyle created is Professor Challenger, the hero of The Lost World. Challenger is the world’s preeminent authority on all manners scientific, or at least considers himself to be so, and he has little patience for those who disagree with his theories. He is described as a large man with a “spade-shaped” beard and a quick temper and blustering manner of speech that make him intimidating to all but his closest friends and family. Outside of his study and his laboratory, he is a man of action who, true to his name, never shies away from a challenge.

Conan Doyle featured Professor Challenger in three novels and two short stories. The Lost World, published in 1912, is one of Conan Doyle’s most popular books and has undergone several film adaptations. The rest of Professor Challenger’s adventures, however, have not fared so well. The novel The Poison Belt, published in 1913, features the scientist and adventure hero in a tepid affair with very little science and no adventure. In this apocalyptic story, the Earth passes through a noxious nebula, and the characters are left with nothing much to do but sit around and watch the effects. The third Challenger novel, The Land of Mist (1926) is even worse. In this awful story, Conan Doyle unforgivably sells out his own character by subverting Challenger’s scientific skepticism in order to promote his own beliefs in paranormal activity.

Thankfully, the two short stories are an improvement over the second and third Challenger novels, though their brevity leaves one wanting more. It’s too bad Conan Doyle didn’t produce an entire volume of Challenger stories, because these two turned out pretty well.

“When the World Screamed” (1928) — 4.5 stars

Unlike the other Challenger adventures, this story is narrated in the first-person by Peerless Jones, an expert in artesian wells and an old rugby buddy of Challenger’s journalist sidekick Ned Malone. Challenger hires Jones to join the team of his latest project. Challenger has bored a deep tunnel into the Earth, roughly 8 miles deep, in an attempt to pierce all the way through the planet’s crust and ascertain what lies beneath. He theorizes that the planet is actually a living organism that shows signs of respiration and circulation in its natural processes, like a gargantuan sea urchin. Though the science seems farfetched, the important thing is that Conan Doyle treats it with a ring of authenticity, which results in a well-written and entertaining sci-fi yarn, even better in some respects than The Lost World, though less substantial. At one point in the story, Mrs. Challenger is mentioned as still living, thus chronologically placing this story before The Land of Mist. Challenger’s great borehole might owe a debt of influence to Frank R. Stockton’s subterranean sci-fi novel The Great Stone of Sardis, published in 1891.
Read the story online at Project Gutenberg Australia.

“The Disintegration Machine” (1929) — 3 stars

A scientist named Dr. Nemor claims to have invented a machine that can break matter down into its individual atoms and then reverse the procedure to reassemble the disintegrated object—a process similar to teleportation but without the distance traveled. Assigned by his newspaper to investigate the matter, Malone takes Challenger along to meet the inventor. Nemor makes it clear that he intends to sell his device as a weapon to the highest bidder. This story is much briefer than “When the World Screams,” and it doesn’t delve very deeply into the science of disintegration. It is more of a Holmes-like caper in which Challenger and Malone must thwart a villain. The plot is pretty simplistic and the ending predictable, but Conan Doyle’s telling of it is still enjoyable and Challenger behaves in a matter true to his character.
Read the story online at Project Gutenberg Australia.

The Land of Mist by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Prof. Challenger betrayed for spiritualist propaganda

Outside of his Sherlock Holmes stories, the most famous recurring character in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is Professor Challenger, the bearded, blustering scientist who led the expedition to The Lost World. Conan Doyle featured Challenger in three novels and two short stories. Unfortunately, with the exception of The Lost World, none of them are regarded very highly. The Land of Mist, published in 1926, is the third novel in the Challenger series, which follows Challenger’s second adventure, 1913’s The Poison Belt. The two short stories were published later, but I believe they are prequels to The Land of Mist.

One of the things (among many) that makes this novel so disappointing is that Challenger is merely a guest star in this book and only present for small portions of the narrative. The story centers around Ned Malone, journalist and sidekick from The Lost World. Professor Challenger’s daughter Enid Challenger is also a reporter and plays a major role in the story. Malone and Enid are assigned by a newspaper to co-write a series of articles on the spiritualist movement. Though both begin as skeptics, they resolve to keep an open mind while investigating possible paranormal phenomena at a series of seances where mediums claim to receive communications from the dead. (Gee, I wonder if the two reporters will fall in love.) Lord John Roxton, another supporting character from The Lost World, also appears in a couple chapters.

Conan Doyle wrote many works on spiritualism and the paranormal, both fiction and nonfiction. He was a firm believer in the supernatural world and gave pubic lectures on the topic. Sometimes he even managed to craft an entertaining story around the subject, such as in The Parasite. The Land of Mist, however, reads more like one of his lectures than one of his entertaining stories. As Malone and Enid attend more seances and meet more mediums, they become more convinced of the veracity of spiritualist claims. Meanwhile, mediums are being persecuted in London for their beliefs. If they could only convert a confirmed materialist into seeing the truth and beauty of the spirit world, it would go a long way towards popularizing spiritualism for the good of the masses. Thus, Ned and Enid conspire with the spiritualists to convince Professor Challenger to attend a seance where he will see the light and become converted. By following this course, Conan Doyle betrays the integrity of his own character in order to push his spiritualist propaganda.

Conan Doyle was also a church-goin’ man, so he does not view spiritualism as a departure from the Bible. In fact, a few of the ghosts who appear in this story have actually met Christ, and the prophets mentioned in the Bible were nothing but mediums who received messages from the dead. The spiritualists’ belief system, as sketched by Conan Doyle in this novel, is an absurd house of cards built on convenient rationalizations. When a seance fails to achieve results, for example, it is because a skeptic in the room disturbs the energy. In addition to messages from beyond the grave, Conan Doyle asserts physical manifestations such as ectoplasmic apparitions, spirit photography, and poltergeists. Even those who believe in ghosts and TV mediums who speak to the deceased will find many of the Victorian Era spiritualist beliefs to be ridiculous.

Besides all the pseudo-science, this is just a poorly written story, boring for most of its length, that can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be an essay or a melodrama. Conan Doyle presents a dull catalog of dozens of paranormal occurrences he’s read about, which leaves room for only the thinnest of stories, every turn of which is predictable. Although Conan Doyle has every right to write about his supernatural beliefs, he should have left Professor Challenger out of it.
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Scientific Romance: An International Anthology of Pioneering Science Fiction, edited by Brian Stableford

A great time capsule of this important period in sci-fi history
Though examples of science fiction can be found as far back as ancient times, it was during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when this genre became popular and plentiful. Before the term “science fiction” gained widespread use in the 1920s, literary critics commonly referred to speculative fiction based on scientific concepts as “scientific romance.” In the book Scientific Romance: An International Anthology of Pioneering Science Fiction, published in 2017, editor Brian Stableford presents 27 short stories that exemplify the era of scientific romance. For the most part, the quality of the volume’s selections is very good. Reading this book is like opening an entertaining and educational time capsule of this pioneering period in science fiction.

In his introduction to the book, Stableford gives an overview of the origins of the scientific romance genre and its heyday from the 1830s up until World War I. It must be noted that in this case “International” only includes writings from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Stableford obviously reads French and is quite knowledgeable in the history of French literature. I don’t think he translated the French works for this volume, but he does supply helpful footnotes that provide historical context and explain difficulties of translation.

Due to their influential talents and prolific output, the undisputed giants of this era were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. This volume does not contain an entry by Verne, likely because he didn’t write any stories short enough to fit. Wells is represented by his excellent apocalyptic vision “The Star” from 1897. Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were also prominent authors in this genre, and Stableford includes their stories “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” and “The Horror of the Heights,” respectively. Readers of classic literature will also recognize familiar names such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (“The Artist of the Beautiful”), Ambrose Bierce (“For the Akhoond”), and Jack London (“The Shadow and the Flash”), as well as several regular contributors to the American and British pulp magazines. One of the best things about this volume, however, is that it draws attention to French writers with whom English-language readers are likely to be unfamiliar, such as S. Henry Berthoud, Charles Epheyre, Émile Goudeau, and Camille Debans. Stableford provides brief but valuable biographical introductions to each story, often referencing a few other works by each author for further reading.

The diverse range of topics these authors cover represents the scientific concerns of their times. The ideas around which these stories revolve include future utopias, the end of the world, artificial intelligence, automatons, alien life forms, evolution, eugenics, microbial disease, climate change, and human immortality. The protagonists of these tales invent flying machines, weather control devices, invisibility potions, and a method for creating artificial memories. Many of the authors take a humorous or satirical approach to their sci-fi visions, with some hilarious results.

This collection is published by Dover Books, a company known for its inexpensive, no-frills volumes of public domain material. It is therefore a pleasant surprise that Scientific Romance is such a well-edited collection. Stableford has done a great job of not only selecting the stories but also of educating the reader on the history of this literature. One could find these stories online for free, but Stableford’s knowledge adds value to the reading experience. Not every story in this collection is a masterpiece, but overall the outstanding entries far outweigh the mediocre.

Stories in this collection

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion by Edgar Allan Poe

A Heavenward Voyage by S. Henry Berthoud 

The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne

What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien 

The End of the World by Eugène Mouton 

A Paradoxical Ode (After Shelley) by James Clerk Maxwell 

The Ablest Man in the World by Edward Page Mitchell 

Josuah Electricmann by Ernest d’Hervilly 

The Child of the Phalanstery by Grant Allen 

The Salvation of Nature by John Davidson 

Tornadres by J.-H. Rosny 

Professor Bakermann’s Microbe by Charles Epheyre 

In the Year Ten Thousand by Edgar Fawcett 

The Revolt of the Machines by Émile Goudeau 

For the Akhoond by Ambrose Bierce 

The Philosophy of Relative Existences by Frank R. Stockton

June 1993 by Julian Hawthorne 

The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome 

The Conqueror of Death by Camille Debans 

The Star by H. G. Wells 

A Corner in Lighting by Gorge Griffith 

The Memory Cell by Walter Besant 

The Shadow and the Flash by Jack London 

The Gorilloid by Edmond Haraucourt 

The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson 

The Singular Fate of Bouvancourt by Maurice Renard 

The Horror of the Heights by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 

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