Customer Reviews

The Poison Belt

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This is rather a science fiction novel, not what one would expect from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is not part of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

A group of people wait in a room with several tanks of oxygen, knowing that an ether is covering the earth and is killing everyone as it moves. It finally arrives in England, and those in the room watch as everyone in sight of their house dies. The observers have only about a day and a half of oxygen, and when it runs out, they find that the deadly ether has gone past and that they can live outside.

I won't tell you the ending, of course.

The first couple of chapters were rather boring. It became more interesting when the observers saw trains crashing and other vehicles out of control.

I don't feel bad that I read it, nor do I feel much else. If you haven't read anything by Doyle except Sherlock Holmes, you might want to pick this up. Or if you have a lot of time on your hands. Or if you just can't decide on anything else. Or if you're life is too exciting and you crave a bit of boredom.

'The Poison Belt' is a novelette that needs to be read in the context of its time; read so, it is a fascinating and well-written narrative, one which includes the return of characters from Conan Doyle's earlier novel, 'The Lost World'. The first looked to the past-- this second looked hopefully towards the future.

In 'The Lost World', a group of men accompany Professor Challenger to a plateau in what the English still saw in the early 20th Century as the 'mysterious dark jungle' of South America-- the Amazon-- to prove, or disprove, the claims he had made before a scientific society in London. He was accompanied by another scientist, the skeptic assigned to prove him wrong, by an upper-class professional explorer/guide, and by a journalist as a 'disinterested witness'. That book has continued to reach new audiences: it has been reprinted dozens of times, was made into a film in 1925 (and four or five more times, including a made-for-television film as late as late as 2001, and was made into multiple radio plays (in all of these cases, in order to better attract audiences, female characters well). [SPOILER ALERT:] Michael Crichton acknowledged his original source material for the best selling book and film "Jurassic Park" by naming its sequel "The Lost World", as did Hollywood, naming the sequel film "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". [End Spoiler.]

But if 'The Lost World' looked simultaneously to the far past and to then still-unknown reaches of the globe, 'The Poison Belt' looked, both fearfully and hopefully, to the future. Published just a year after 'The Lost World', it was written at a time that Britain was clearly on the brink of war, and of a war which, for the first time (with the inventions of the aeroplane and the dirigible), could easily spread beyond the European continent to England itself. In addition, naval power had increased significantly with the first Dreadnought Class vessel launched by Britain, sure to be copied by other nations. [SPOILER ALERT:]In 'The Poison Belt', Professor Challenger gathers the same group who'd accompanied him on his earlier expedition to observe, while breathing from oxygen tanks in a sealed room, the world-wide cataclysm as our solar system passes through a belt of poisonous gas, effectively appearing to kill everyone on earth. As a metaphor for the upcoming World War, it was a powerful anti-war message, yet one the author knew doomed to fail: the upcoming war, like the poisonous belt of interstellar gases, was unavoidable. And yet the story ends on a strongly hopeful note-- the solar system, including our planet, passes through the belt, and life returns, albeit with casualties. Conan Doyle seems to be telling his readers that the upcoming war, as terrible as it would be, would eventually end, and that life could return to a semblance of normalcy. He could not have anticipated the horrors of the second "poison belt" to follow just a few decades later, with the second World War.

This short book is thus doubly worth reading-- for the story itself (particularly if you've read 'The Lost World', as it's a chance to revisit the characters), and for the underlying message of hope in the face of incipient disaster. I first read this book 40 years ago, in paperback-- thanks to Kindle, I was able to revisit my own past at no cost, as I have long since lost my old copy!

Arthur Conan Doyle has written some gripping, innovative, and fascinating fiction. Sad to say, this is not on the list.

As in The Purple Cloud, some horrendous natural catastrophe overtakes the Earth. One Man of Science foresees the calamity and locks himself away, with a few others, to peek out their window at humanity's last moments. This consists of a few broad personality stereotypes interacting claustrophobicly: two Scientists (The Ego and The Contrarian), the good Victorian wife (hardly a personality at all, but that's her stereotype), a Man of Action, and a journalist.

So much could have been done with the material, but so little was - I found the ending especially weak. It's interesting to look back to a time when turning on a car's lights involved walking around it with a pack of matches, and it's good to see that we've come so far past the casual racism of the time.

Still, this disappoints. Recommended only for Conan Doyle completists.

-- wiredweird