The Poison Belt

Summoned by their eccentric friend Professor Challenger, Malone, Summerlee and Ruxton travel from London to Challenger’s country estate, brandishing bemusedly at the behest of their host’s several canisters of oxygen. As the journey progresses, journalist Malone recounts tales of strange goings on around the world, and the behaviour of all three men grows increasingly erratic. Reaching a pinnacle of bafflement, they arrive at the house of the outlandish Professor and are regaled with an eccentric theory relating their experiences to apparent impending apocalypse. A dramatic departure from detective fiction from the perennially popular creator of Sherlock Holmes, “The Poison Belt” is an important document in the history of science fiction and affords a valuable glimpse of Conan Doyle’s incredible creative range.