Airship 27 has for quite a while been doing their excellent series of new canon Sherlock Holmes stories, so it’s great they started to do a series for Arthur Conan Doyle‘s other series character: Professor George Edward Challenger. So far we’ve gotten two volumes of The Challenger Chronicles.
Professor Challenger is probably best known for his first appearance in The Lost World (1912), which has been adapted into film several times and inspired other works.
The Professor is a zoologist, anthropologist, and explorer, who is a large and larger-than-life character. He is always joined by reporter Edward Malone. There are a few other secondary characters who occasionally appear in the original stories. There were three longer works and two short stories until the last in 1929. I’ve posted on the originals. So there is certainly room to fit in other stories in between these. And I agree with the author of one of these new stories that the kind of stories that might confront Professor Quatermass or an Earth-bound Doctor Who would be perfect for Challenger.
I thought it interesting that both volumes had Clayton Hinkle do both the covers and interior artwork. Will be interesting to see when we get a third if this holds true.
Volume 1
Volume 1 gives us four stories by four authors: Gordon Dymowski, Barbara Doran, Michael Panush, and Samantha Lienhart.
Our first story by Gordon Dymowski takes the Professor and Ned to a remote English village which has largely been isolated. They are there to do scientific research on Halley’s Comet, which is returning. They are joined by two other researchers, a Professor Drake and Diana Chen, who are looking into the history of this village, which was founded by Catholics who fled during the reign of Henry VIII.
The small village has a notable monumental column in the village center. But things seem off from the beginning. The village librarian/records keeper has recently been assaulted. Not only does there seem to be friction between Drake and the Professor, but the whole group doesn’t seem much welcomed in the village. And things seem to turn deadly, as the violence seems to increase to include mayhem and murder. Can they get to the cause of this before more are hurt?
Barbara Doran gives us a story that is a sort-of sequel to one of the originals: “The Disintegration Machine.” The British government took possession of said machine and want to investigate the origin of the crystal at its heart, which apparently came from Central Asia. So they sent the Professor and Malone along with two of their agents — one a Captain Wright and Lady Francis Dennistoun, an adventuress.
Once in Asia, they are joined by a translator: an albino Chinese man who was educated in Scotland. The party of five heads out, though there is danger from some bandit group. They will discover a strange underground world inhabited by a strange race. Are they a threat to us, and how are they connected to the “Disintegration Machine”? All is revealed.
At the end, we are told that Challenger and Malone mounted a return expedition to the Lost World, accompanied by Song Wulong. I hope we will read that, along with the two other expeditions mentioned.
Our next story by Michael Panush takes Challenger and Malone to Siberia during the Russian Civil War. They meet up with a British agent and head into the interior to find a new “lost land” in Siberia, as well as meet with a White Russian baron fighting the Bolsheviks. Along the way, they rescue a young girl whose family was murdered. They run into a group of Bolsheviks. Will they be able to find this lost land of mammoths and Neanderthals, and if so, can they save it and their lives? Interestingly, the British agent and the White Russian baron are based on real people.
And our final story by Samantha Lienhart gives us a sort-of reunion of all the main characters from The Lost World: not just Challenger and Malone, but Lord John Roxton and Professor Summerlee. Challenger has apparently joined some kind of cult, and Lord Roxton and Malone go to visit him. Turns out he really didn’t join them, but is looking into this cult. The group has taken over an island off the coast of East Africa and is trying to make contact with an alien intelligence. The threat seems very Lovecraftian. Can the three of them put a halt to matters on the island?
Volume 2
Volume 2 gives us three stories by Thomas Kent Miller, Wayne Carey, and Kevin Findley. Miller has been doing a series of new stories involving Allan Quatermain and Sherlock Holmes, and Wayne Carey has done the same.
In the story by Wayne Carey, the Professor and Malone are summoned to British West Africa by Lord John Roxton. He found something unusual in the wild and needs help to ensure it doesn’t fall into the hands of the Germans, as WWI is going on. He seems to have found an alien spacecraft, which may provide weapons and technology that might help the Germans. Will they be able to do so, and what happens when they find the pilot is somehow still alive? The German general they encounter is a real person.
We get a novella from Thomas Kent Miller set during WWI. We find Challenger and Malone in South America on the Third Challenger Expedition there. Challenger is also working on resolving issues that occurred after the events of “When the World Screamed.”
In Ecuador, they see a couple of craters in the distance and go to investigate them. They find they are man-made, and created in recent decades, as they find modern equipment abandoned there, like trains. And they work to try to figure out who created them and why. Along the way, another classic character, identified only as “S,” appears. I’m sure readers will know who it is. He is able to fill in the rest of the mystery.
Be advised that this is a “sequel” story to one of the author’s Allan Quatermain stories, “The Star of Wonder,” which is found in the fifth Quatermain: The New Adventures volume from Airship 27. They have also reprinted both stories in their own volume, Quatermain and Challenger’s 13.5-Billion-Year Detour. However, this story can be read by itself and enjoyed.
In the final story by Kevin Findley, reports from Afghanistan about some kind of new weapon lead the British government to send a small group to investigate: Professor Challenger and Malone, along with former MP Winston Churchill. The weapon seems to be similar to the “Destruction Machine.” What will they find and how will they deal with it?
Overall, I enjoyed both volumes and look forward to any new others. I hope that some of these authors will be returning. These aren’t the only works out there with new Professor Challenger works, and I hope to get to them sometime soon.
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