Professor Challenger: New Worlds, Lost Places is what I like to call a “comfort food” anthology. It invites modern authors to take a whack at a beloved character or setting – in this case, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s second-most-famous literary protagonist, Professor George Edward Challenger. And take a whack they most assiduously do, with several authors also mixing in other old friends – among others, Mycroft Holmes, Carnacki the Ghost Finder, Indrid Cold, John Silence, Professor Cavor, Dr. Moreau, a set of Martians from War of the Worlds, and the Great Race of Yith. If you get all those references, odds are the anthology will hit your sweet spot. If you don’t, you may find yourself wondering what the fuss is about.
Part of the issue is Challenger himself. Pretty much the exact opposite of Sherlock Holmes in all but towering intellect, the good professor is a bit of a pain in the ass. An intellectual bully, he has nothing but contempt for those not as bright as he is, and he routinely engages in the sorts of behavior towards the hired help that would get him brought up on OSHA (or criminal) charges today. And yes, we are told again and again he has a heart of gold and all that he does is for the advancement of science and the human race, but in his pure form, Challenger is someone that Dr. Gregory House would suggest turn it down a notch.
That being said, the archetype is clearly fun for the authors to play with. Having a protagonist who’s always right, no matter how outlandish his theory, allows for some fun verbal pyrotechnics. And since we as readers are in on the joke, we can sympathize with the genius beset by dangerous idiots, and delight in his eventual triumph.
Some of the stories call back to the five “official” stories Doyle wrote with Challenger, most notably The Lost World and When the World Screamed. The former, the granddaddy of all “go into the jungle and find dinosaurs” stories, opens the door for a dinosaur or two to creep into a few stories, while the latter, in which the Earth traverses a deadly part of space, is played more for the reaction people have to Challenger’s having predicted the titular belt’s deleterious effects. Which is another way of saying that the writers who’ve contributed here know and clearly love the source material, and sometimes this helps and sometimes this hinders their stories.
“Time’s Black Gulfs” by Josh Reynolds takes period pastiche and turns it up to 11, referencing everything from Lovecraft to the Mothman Prophecies. It’s a fun if weightless gorge. John Takis; “The Crystal Miners” does a different sort of Lovecraft riff, hitting many of the same notes as “From Beyond”. “King of the Moon”, by Lawrence C. Connolly is all glib style as it references Wells’ The First Men In The Moon, while “Professor Challenger & The Crimson Wonder” is another pastiche, done largely for laughs and in epistolary style. “To One Table”, by J.R. Campbell and “The Shug Monkey”, by Stephen Volk, are really the only two pieces to dig for something a little darker, though it’s not spoiling anything to say that one of them gets there by offering up what appears to be a dinner party where the main course is velociraptor. Coincidentally, these are also probably the two best stories in the book, though Wendy N. Wagner’s “Hind and Horn” manages the difficult feat of summoning sympathy both for Challenger and his unfortunate traveling companion.
In the end, it’s still comfort food. If you know and enjoy getting the references, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the anthology. If you don’t, or you’re looking for a little more adventurous exploration of a seminal character in the history of the field, you may not find as much to love, velociraptor cutlets or no velociraptor cutlets.
(Edge, 2016)
