h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: 'The Lost World' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A87835134
Author: Bluebottle - U43530

A review of a classic book.

When I re-read it didn't seem quite the same as I remembered from my childhood...

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Grr - I was just in the middle of reviewing this in Pliny, and my internet browser coughed so the text disappeared before I had had chance to copy it...

This post will bookmark the thread, anyway, and I'll switch over to Brunel and try again...

Right - here we go again... Sorry I didn't see this Entry until this week, so I'm reviewing it now, and here are the questions as I go along:

In the first paragraph, my html eye spotted two different links with the same link text "Sherlock Holmes" - perhaps you could change the second mention to something like "the famous detective"

"After report Edward Malone's proposal is rejected" - should that be "reporter"?

"After initially being led to believe that Challenger would not be part of the expedition, he turns up" - who is it that has been led to believe Challenger wouldn't travel?

I was a bit puzzled by the switch to the name "Ed Malone" in the Characters section

It sounds like The Lost World inspired Casement to advocate Irish Independence - is that right, or is it just that he campaigned after 1912?

The Themes section is thought provoking...

Is it possible to say that some species are more evolved than others? Reminds me of the nonexistent hierarchy of disability that puts eg wheelchair users at the top of most disabled, but if the problem at hand is not eg a flight of steps but a sign on a train with no audio announcement, then a visually impaired person will be more disabled than a non-visually impaired wheelchair user...

"Gladys remains a shallow character, but perhaps a more realistic one than women such as Odysseus' noble Penelope who often feature in fiction." - I don't know what to make of that, either... To me it has just a bit of a flavour of saying women are incapable of heroic feats... and I know that is false for sure

In the introduction you say this was the first of four stories featuring Challenger, but then in the Sequels section, I see there are five stories featuring him.

In the Adaptations table, I think it would look better if you repeated Michael Sinelnikoff in two single cells, as the table looks very odd in Pliny.

Who was Charles Knight?

Very good

Looks good to me too.... and seems to ring a lot of half-rememberd things about having read this myself, oo... twenty plus years ago, when I was but a child... err, more of a child anyhow

and, oo, never heard of the sequels, may need to hunt those down Didn't spot any glaring omissions or errors

I think Sir Arthur would approve of this, who are we to argue. good work BB

Thanks everyone for your comments, even if it took a while to be able to post them. I've reworded it to hopefully make it clearer what is the novel's views rather than my own, added a footnote about Mr Knight and hopefully cleared most things up.

I probably should explain what I meant by 'a more realistic one than women such as Odysseus' noble Penelope'. Penelope is a heroine who was very popular as a role model in Greek, Roman, Mediæval and Victorian times who actually does very little except wait 20 years for her husband to come back, even though everyone believes he is dead. She waits. And waits. And waits. Yes, she is reunited with her husband, but if I had to choose my own personal role model, I think I'd be inclined towards someone more dynamic.
Where would the NHS and wider world of medicine be today if Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie had said to themselves, 'rather than being active, I'll spend 20 years not doing anything except waiting'? In fact, make a list of a thousand of the most famous women who have ever lived and achieved anything in any sphere, and see how many earned that success by waiting and not doing a lot else. I'm sorry, but I don't really see Penelope as being a particularly helpful role model, despite all the praise heaped upon her throughout history. Patience can be a virtue, but there are limits.

(Although, as I do not wish to offend any Penelope fans out there, I will admit that as well as her infinite patience, we can admire her cunning, deception, resistance to peer pressure, needlework skills, dedication, focus and ability to work both day and night. That said, I wouldn't want to be behind her in a queue, especially if she starts waiting 20 years again).

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Thanks <BB< - that's excellent

Thanks for clarifying your view of Penelope - I read the paragraph with exactly the opposite meaning... I thought you were praising Penelope as an ideal role model, but saying that real women were shallow!

I think it would be even clearer if you reordered the paragraph to include: "Odysseus' noble Penelope who did little except wait for her heroic husband's return."

I've reworded that paragraph as suggested.

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Thanks <BB<

Just one thing I spotted:

"A tepui is a 'table top' or flat-topped mountain. There are over a hundred such plateaus in South America and their appearance is identical to that of the plateau in the film, only without the dinosaurs." - it mentions "the film" but the parasgraph would probably read well if it ended after "South America"

What, me rabbiting on and on when I'd made my point 10-minutes earlier? Surely not!
Corrected there.

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No worries - it wasn't rabbiting on, but you hadn't mentioned a film before then, so the simplest solution was to delete the mention. Thanks for doing that

Bluebottle,

You've already given us a detailed list of all the film versions and films inspired by "The Lost World" in your entry on the 1925 film. Do you really need to give us all that information again in this entry? Entries in h2g2 are not supposed to just be repeats of information that is already in other entries.



Some details on this one:

and then first published as a novel in October that year -- leave out the word "first" here.

as does Malone and Lord John Roxton --> as do Malone and Lord John Roxton

the existence of The Lost World -- use a lowercase t on the

"with four main characters:

Edward Malone

The main character of Ed Malone"

-- that's too much repetition of "main character" and "Ed Malone".

Change Malone's summary to start:

"Malone is believed to have been inspired..."

an underlying assumption in the rightness of white superiority -- this doesn't sound right. I think it should be:
an underlying assumption of white superiority

"One of the novel's key themes is that of evolution, as the novel believes that some species are more evolved than others, it is uncomfortably implied that different races of humans have a similar hierarchy. " -- the grammar of this is wrong, with three clauses connected by commas. I think you should change the first comma to a full stop and capitalise the word "as".

black-hairedd -->
black-haired

many of Malone's actions are prescribed to his being Irish -->
many of Malone's actions are ascribed to his being Irish

Are ichthyosaurs now believed to have had a third eye or was this a belief of the time?

It would be nice if you could link to A22691469 Dublin's Dead Zoo - the Natural History Museum on the word Megaloceros, as the museum has two very fine specimens which are the first thing you see when you enter the museum.

obsecene reptilian life -->
obscene reptilian life

Hello Gnomon

You are right that there is a small degree of overlap between this article and the one on the 1925 version of 'The Lost World', though they're not identical. When I wrote the article on the 1925 film, I didn't know that I would write this one day. Should this entry be accepted into the Edited Guide, some of the overlap could be trimmed from the 1925 entry, however firstly I cannot assume that a reader of this entry has read the previous entry. Also, although there is similarity in the content, it is not identical. The 1925 film version listed films that were inspired by the 1925 film, whereas this article lists films etc inspired by the novel. Some, though not all, of these are the same. The 1925 film's legacy section lists 'King Kong', Ray Harryhausen, Jurassic Park and 'Up'. This article does not mention Harryhausen but does mention 'Two Lost Worlds', 'Lost Continent' and 'The Valley of Gwangi'.

Anyway, other changes made as suggested

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