The Best Science Fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle

by Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles G. Waugh (Editor), George Edgar Slusser (Introduction)

Collection of 14 stories by Doyle in the science fiction genre, written over a period from 1879 to 1929.

Contents:
- The American's Tale (1879)
- The Los Amigos Fiasco (1892)
- The Great Keinplatz Experiment (1894)
- The Adventure of the Devil's Foot (1897)
- The Adventure of the Creeping Man (1903)
- The Terror of Blue John Gap (1910)
- Through the Veil (1911)
- The Last Galley (1911)
- The Great Brown-Pericord Motor (1913)
- Danger! (1914)
- The Lift (1922)
- The Disintegration Machine (1929)
- When the World Screamed (1929)

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer. In addition to the Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle's early short stories, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the brigantine Mary Celeste, found drifting at sea with no crew member aboard.

Reviews

[Lauren Stoolfire · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, my two favorite short stories included here are The Adventure of the Devil's Foot and The Adventure of the Creeping Man. Both are Sherlock Holmes stories that I was already familiar with as they were featured in His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. I also quite liked the two Professor Challenger stories, The Disintegration Machine and When the World Screamed. They helped remind me that I need to read The Lost World and its sequel.

[Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

While he's best known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes (and personally considered his historical fiction to be his real literary achievement), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote science fiction all through his career. (His best known work in that genre is The Lost World, published in 1912, which introduced the character of Prof. Challenger.) The 14 tales collected here span a 50-year period; they vary in quality, tone, technical skill, and meaningful thought content (the later ones --they're chronologically arranged here, with dates cited-- tend to have more of the latter qualities), but they're nearly all enjoyable as at least passable, well-written entertainment. Some of the "science" employed is dubious or dated, but that's characteristic of the period. One pundit has opined that, "There is a common theme in Conan Doyle's science fiction: an extremely delicate balance exists between man, machine, and monster." For the more serious stories, that's an observation with some merit, and a serious critical study could probably be done with that as its theme.

Two of the stories here are from the Holmes canon, "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" and "The Adventure of the Creeping Man" (in his Holmes stories, Doyle eschewed the literally supernatural, but he did employ some SF premises at times). These are two of the best ones in the book. (The crime fiction genre also mixes with SF in "The Great Brown-Pericord Motor.") Prof. Challenger appears twice, though in the last story, "When the World Screamed," he's pretty much a caricature of himself, and the story's premise is so fantastic that it works against suspension of disbelief. The other Prof. Challenger story, though, "The Disintegration Machine," is an excellent expression of Doyle's reaction to the then-rising belief that science should be completely divorced from ethics; that scientists have a "duty" to do, and discover, anything whatever that they can, but no moral responsibility whatsoever for the use made of that knowledge. (He didn't think much of that theory, and the story shows it!) Where the earliest story, "The American's Tale," is a foray into humorous SF with a tall tale worthy of American frontier humor, the later monster stories "The Terror of Blue John Gap" (one of my favorites here!) and "The Horror of the Heights" are straight horrific works. "Danger!" written on the eve of World War I, is a very prescient warning of the dangerous possibilities of submarine warfare. Other themes treated include the possible properties of electricity, and psychic phenomena. Arguably, some stories, like "The Lift" and "The Last Galley," are not strictly science fiction.

For readers who like, or have a literary interest in, the SF of this period, this is definitely a collection worthy of a read!

[Monty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved the creativity of the author. Each story had its own storylines and was filled with fascinating circumstances.

[Mike Suter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good writing, uneven plot lines. Included are 2 Sherlock Holmes stories and 2 Professor Challenger stories. These are science fiction only by the broadest definition, and this collection has the feeling of being somewhat arbitrarily compiled. I can't discourage reading AC Doyle, but this is not a good place to start.