New Title 1

by Campbell, J R

  Challenger Unbound Challenger Unbound

  Edited by Michael R. Brush & S. G. Mulholland

  KnightWatch Press 2015

  Challenger Unbound copyright © 2015 Michael R. Brush & S.G. Mulholland Preface © Tom Ue 2015

  Introducing Challenger Unbound © Michael R. Brush 2015 The Last Expedition © Simon Kurt Unsworth 2015

  River of Bones © Paul Lewis 2015

  Challenger and the Isle out of Time © Michael R. Brush 2015 The Damnation Gate © Harding McFadden 2015

  The Death of Challenger © Steve Lockley 2015

  Professor Challenger and the Spider’s Kiss © Bob Lock 2015 The Vendetta Virus © Rhys Hughes 2015

  The Lady and the Professor © Ian Millsted 2015

  Challenger of Two Worlds © Tom English 2015

  An Unnatural Selection © Ian Faulkner 2015

  Challengers in Space © Michael R. Brush 2015

  Two Challengers © J R Campbell 2015

  Postscript © Theresa Derwin 2015

  Cover artwork from ‘The Lost World’ by Joseph Clement Coll Cover design © Steve Shaw of Great British Horror 2015 Edited by Michael R. Brush & S.G. Mulholland

  Preformatting Initial Design © Ethan Tudor Lloyd (Age 12) 2015 Interior Design © Steve Shaw of Great British Horror 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, except by inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Authors retain copyright of their individual stories.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters and situations in this book are imaginary. No resemblance is intended between these characters and any persons living, dead or undead.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  Published in Great Britain in 2015 by KnightWatch Press

  Birmingham, UK

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Introducing Challenger Unbound

  Tom Ue 1 Michael R. Brush 3

  The Last Expedition River of Bones

  Challenger and the Isle out of Time

  The Damnation Gate

  The Death of Challenger Professor Challenger and the Spider’s Kiss

  The Vendetta Virus

  The Lady and the Professor Challenger of Two Worlds An Unnatural Selection Challengers in Space

  Two Challengers

  Simon Kurt 11 Unsworth

  Paul Lewis 22 Michael R. Brush 43

  Harding McFadden 69

  Steve Lockley 83

  Bob Lock 93

  Rhys Hughes 117

  Ian Millsted 140

  Tom English 152

  Ian Faulkner 184

  Michael R. Brush 210

  J.R. Campbell 238

  Postscript Theresa Derwin 258

  PREFACE

  In January 1889, Conan Doyle described to his mother Mary Doyle an idea that he had for a new novel:“I am thinking of trying a Rider Haggardy kind of book called ‘the Inca’s Eye’ dedicated to all the naughty boys of the Empire, by one who sympathizes with them. I think I could write a book of that sort con amore... The notable experiences of John H Calder, Ivan Boscovitch, Jim Horscroft, and Major General Pengelley Jones in their search after the Inca’s Eye. How’s that for an appetite whetter” (260). Conan Doyle’s and, indeed, our appetites are, as he had so precipitously foretold, whetted. As Michael Dirda relays in On Conan Doyle, the book got no further though his thinking here would form the foundation of The Lost World, published over two decades later in 1912 (34).

  Storytelling is central to Conan Doyle’s literary project: Edward Malone, a reporter for the Daily Gazette, aspires for a quest that would prove his love for Gladys and the novel relays his expeditions with Professor Challenger in South America. Malone’s friend and colleague Tarp Henry laughs off Professor Challenger’s account. “My dear chap,” he warns Malone, “things don’t happen like that in real life. People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists” (38). Here, fiction and non-fiction, the stuff of novels and that of real life, are brought together.

  The Challenger stories were celebrated in Challenger Unbound, an academic conference held in the Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London and the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London. This one-day event has invigorated both scholarly attention to and creative energies on Conan Doyle’s incredible creation as this new collection of short stories, inspired by the conversations that emerged, so clearly demonstrates.

  Tom Ue

  Department of English Language and Literature University College London

  Dirda, Michael. On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters. Ed. Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, and Charles Foley. London: Harper Perennial-Harper Collins Publishers, 2008. Print.

  ---. The Lost World. Ed. Ian Duncan. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

  INTRODUCING CHALLENGER UNBOUND

  by Michael R. Brush I received the request to become one of the editors of this collection with some trepidation. KnightWatch Press had approached The Conan Doyle Estate with the idea of the anthology, and the Estate were keen with the proviso that the stories adhered to the Challenger characterisation as defined by Conan Doyle.

  After a few moments it seemed that I could not refuse! Most especially after KnightWatch Press had accepted my manuscript for a work where I took on Mycroft Holmes. Deciding on my own approach, and having to deal with the consequences of my decisions,is a far cry from looking after others’ work, however. So, after accepting a post as editor I then asked how I should go about my task. The reply was that I had accepted the editorialship and had to decide for myself how I was going to fulfil that post. It was a daunting prospect, but it was my choice!

  Taking on a well-known but minor character is a very different thing indeed to taking on the major character. Mycroft is only in, directly or by being named, five of the sixty odd Sherlock Holmes stories. Challenger is in every one of his– the wriggle room appeared much smaller to come up with tales of excitement, mayhem and anything else, seemed to me at the beginning of this venture therefore much harder. The character of George Edward Challenger (The Great G. E. C.) is more developed and so is the setting he inhabits.

  The quality and inventiveness of the stories you will find here are a testament to the individual imaginations and their creators’ craft.

  As daunted as I was I went off and reread all the Challenger stories Arthur Conan Doyle had written. I identified two main problems with this material, the first is Challenger himself but we will deal with the second one first, which is how strict did I want to be about ‘keeping to the canon’?

  Reading the stories in order is a fine and simple thing but if trying to be faithful to the life and times of G. E. C. it is simplest starting from the end and working to the beginning. When the World Screamed was published in 1928, before The Disintegration Machine (1929) but they were published in reverse order in the first collection they appeared in and that has stuck. As there are no internal pieces of evidence to do with their dating to accept that they are set when published – 1929 i
s a simple decision. Next comes The Land of Mist, published 1925 but near the beginning it is noted that the events that unfold happened two years after The Great War. As every work of fiction has even a lag of sometime between being written and being published, even when working on a blog. The time started is not the same as when finished and betwixt the two events may change the perception of the writer. Back in the days before blogging, or even the internet, this gap is even clearer. I am not sufficiently aware of Doyle’s literary life to know when he wrote The Land of Mist– was it in 1920 and he added the line before it was published or did he write it later with that time frame in mind? It is enough for me to set it comfortably, and with good reason, two years after the Great War. This is due to what’s called internal evidence.

  However the first two stories cannot be dealt with separately. The Poison Belt was published in 1913 but on the first page of that tale we read, ‘It was upon Friday, the twenty-seventh of August…’ Whilst every August has a twenty-seventh they do not always fall on a Friday. The nearest one, going backwards, from 1913 is 1909. Later Malone relates that it is the third anniversary for the expedition recounted in The Lost World. This would then throw that story back to 1906. That will not do though, because whilst The Lost World was published in 1912, Malone refers to his dairy as having a Tuesday, the eighteenth of August and that would give us the years 1903 or 1908. While we may with artistic discretion claim that Malone may have got his dates muddled on the expedition, it would seem to stretch the point too far to say he had brought an outdated dairy for the trip!

  But does this matter? It does, to an extent, because The Lost World feels more set in the wider world than the other stories and that with the lapsing of time, some of the characters die off due to their increasing age, as noted in the later works. In the end, I gave advice on historical matters and made sure that stories set before The Lost World were, at least, comfortably before this conflicting time problem or at least somewhere in the middle of the published date and the earliest time we can push The Lost World back to. I was also aided by the potted biography of Challenger’s early life, as given by Malone’s editor, McArdle of The Gazette, in the second chapter of The Lost World.

  Having worked out an answer to the second problem, let us return to the first– Professor Challenger and his cohorts. I remember reading an interview about Ghostbusters, the famous eighties film starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis as the three ghostbusters. In the interview it was said that they made up a whole person– Murray’s Venkman was the mouth, Aykroyd’s Stantz the stomach and Ramis’ Spengler the mind. It was not until I started writing my first piece for this anthology that I truly recognised the importance of that characterisation myself. Challenger is a prickly intellect, he may be a great intellect but he is not, on first introduction a sympathetic one. We approach him in each story via Malone who is much more sympathetic, Malone would be the heart and between the two we have our whole. Challenger himself is not without his endearing side, his love of his wife and later Enid, his daughter and his sense of loyalty towards his friends, as clearly seen in The Poison Belt.

  Challenger in company is a fine figure with all his pride, idiosyncrasies (his enthusiasm for grappling with journalists, for example) and intellect but otherwise he is not easily approached. One of the stories that had the greatest impact on my approach as editor was Steve Lockley’s The Death of Challenger because he bravely grappled with Challenger almost to the exclusion of all the other available characters – Malone, Lord Roxton, Enid – and took up his tale. It took me aback. But it worked – I hope you enjoy his tale which I will return to in due time. With his offering I was forced to face the fact that I could not demand that Challenger be accompanied by Malone or anyone else. It was a break through moment in my editing of this volume, for which I am grateful.

  Challenger, taken in the right light can be a very sympathetic character. No others are needed. Of course other contributors took a very different line, having a rather large posse of characters chasing down intellectual investigations into the world around Challenger. I am happy that there is such a mixture included in this volume. On this note, I will now turn to say a few words about the tales this volume contains.

  Simon Kurt Unsworth kicks off this volume with The Last Expedition. The spirit of the story is pure Challenger; we approach him in his old age and find him not yet daunted. It is a story that in turns,reminds me of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and then Poe’s or Lovecraft’s investigators into the unknown – it is a fabulous piece and starts our journey off on the right note.

  River of Bones by Paul Lewis throws up all the main characters associated with G. E. C. and shows just how you can set them to investigate the weirdest of problems. Arthur Conan Doyle meets Lovecraft in a disturbing little contribution. Following that is my first piece and I will leave my thoughts here on it except to say that, to avoid any chance of playing with somebody else’s idea that I wrote it before I read any of the stories submitted for this anthology. I will also state that I wrote my second piece after reading all the submissions as I wanted to make sure that I was not standing on anybody’s toes, so to speak.

  The Damnation Gate is a great piece which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was refreshing to have a different narrator than Malone and whilst being a good Challenger tale it was also one that could have been penned from Mr Wheatley.

  Black Magic himself, Dennis

  Lockley’s The Death of Challenger takes the difficult scientist and places him where he is most vulnerable, which shows a rare insight into the nature of The Great G. E. C. Apart from being a sober tale of love towards the end of life this is also the first story to make use of Professor Theodore Nemor’s device, the eponymous Disintegration Machine.

  Professo r Challenger and the Spider’s Kiss by Bob Lock brings out Challenger’s loyalty to his friends and his sense of ruthless morality. An intriguing story set after The Lost World it draws from the eternal question regarding forbidden treasure…

  In turn, Rhys Hughes with The Vendetta Virus shows the problems that insatiable curiosity can lead to. This is, out of all the other stories, Challenger meets Steampunk and a riotous ride it certainly is. This features Malone, Roxton and Challenger at their most eccentric and yet they are still very identifiable from the original– a fine line well taken.

  As Mcardle’s potted bio shows, there are years before The Lost World which are not accounted for. Ian Millsted’s The Lady and the Professor takes on the prickly eponymous hero before he gained his ensemble of Malone et al and demonstrates the courage that lies behind the fearsome exterior in sharp relief.

  Tom English with Challenger of Two Worlds is the second story to use Nemor’s invention but in a way that I had not anticipated. Not only that, but he also introduces a new character to the pack, the Reverend Montague Summers. From my wide reading of Victoriana and their Introductions – I found the Reverend Summers as depicted here in keeping with what I have heard about him. This story depends on the rewriting of Challenger’s canon in that it ‘replaces’ The Land of Mist. Whilst you, the reader, can decide which one you prefer, there is the other option of just enjoying the story rendered here.

  On a rather more literary note I would argue that whilst The Land of Mist is a propaganda piece regarding the world of spiritualism, within the Sherlock Holmes canon there are plenty of examples to be found of a propaganda nature. The Last Bow being the most obvious, it is not alone and we should perhaps be kinder to The Land of Mist when we realise that Conan Doyle wrote from the heart when it comes to these passages– they reflect what he genuinely believed.

  Ian Faulkner returns to Challenger before he met Malone et al and finds him facing a rather unique peril. Set in 1908 An Unnatural Selection, above all others, uses the period to great effect. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I did, despite landing itself in the Chronological Conflict of the first two Challenger novels. This does really place our eponymous hero in the grip of a deadly danger and I was g
enuinely gripped by it.

  There is more than one way to have a multitude of Challengers and J. R. Campbell’s Two Challengers is a slow but entrancing tale. He takes Challenger on his own merit and discovers a new side to this character that is gentle when compared to all the rest. Campbell’s Challenger is still very identifiable as Conan Doyle’s scientist and is a great way to end this anthology.

  Both copy editor S. G. Mulholland and I do hope you enjoy this amazing collection of Challenger stories.

  Michael R. Brush April 2015

  THE LAST EXPEDITION

  by Simon Kurt Unsworth “ I believe,” said Quarmby, “that the soul is released from the flesh at the point of death, free to rise to God or descend to Hell. I am merely proposing that we delay this process for the briefest of moments.”

  “I understand your idea, Quarmby, and I wish to protest in the strongest terms,” said Perriman. “ Protest, then,” said Challenger, his voice little more than a whisper. “It changes nothing. I pay well for this room and such as it is, it is my home and I will entertain precisely whomsoever I want within it.” The effort of speaking dried Challenger’s voice, reducing it to a papery scrawl of coughs.

  “ Entertain who you will, within reason, I have no issue with that,” said Perriman. “It is the actions you and your guest are discussing I object to. They are, at best, ill-advised, and at worst I believe they may count as blasphemy.”

  “Blasphemy!” whispered Challenger. “You damned old woman, Perriman.” The man slumped back in his chair, his head lolling against the antimacassar. The skin was stretched taut over his great, square skull, the hair straggling in thin wisps across the crown of his head and falling at his temples in lank curls. His beard, once a black shovel-blade of hair, had thinned and whitened so that Perriman could see the veins pulsing in his throat through it. In the gloom, his paleness made him appear ghostly, insubstantial. He was the faintest thing in the room, Perriman thought; carved African masks glared darkly down at them from the walls, a heavy spear leaned across the surface of Challenger’s desk as though he had only put it down momentarily and would return to pick it up soon. A huge plant dominated the far corner of the room, its leaves glossy and dark, its smell pungent. Challenger had refused to tell Perriman what kind of plant it was, or where it was from, despite his repeated asking. It was potted into something that looked like an elephant’s foot but larger and fronted by three huge claws. It had scratched the floor, Perriman saw, the dark talons dragging grooves through the boards when it had been moved.