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by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
This Romance is the Holy Bible of Cryptozoologists
When I was young, my grandfather read this book aloud to me, and it was for me then, as it is now, a truly exciting story of dangerous lands, heroic exploits, fantastic situations and odd peoples and events. My grandfather was an amateur naturalist of some knowledge and experience, and I believed him when he told me that there were secret places on the map where Nature--the way he said it, I couldn't help but hear the term personified and capitalized--had given refuge from the forces of extinction and evolution to certain of her children, and that they had survived to the present day, just as the book promised. He and I conspired to travel someday to the plateau which the adventurers in this romance explore, and bring a stegosaurus or pterodactyl back to civilization, to put in our local zoo. This book was one of the strongest bonds we shared: he recited it to me time and again, until I knew it by heart. I still hear his strongly accented voice every time I re-read the tale. I can also hear him saying again and again, "You and I will go to that secret place, Hermes, we will go to Maple White Land and bring one of these prehistoric creatures back to civilization." Swept up in his vision, it was a dream I have never forgotten: to travel with him to seek out the places where nature kept her secrets, and to reveal her clandestine museum to the rest of the world. Such were my dreams of adventure, when I was but a child. It is possible to read this work as merely a tale of adventure, and that would be enough: it is one of the best of its kind (it also pokes fun at itself and the adventure genre as a whole). The prime mover in the story's events, Professor George Edward Challenger, is simply unforgettable: he is a renowned intellectual, who, in defending himself against accusations of fraud, behaves like a common street thug, and who storms through the narrative like a force of nature. His three fellow travellers, Malone, Summerlee, and Lord Roxton, each with their very different motivations, are no less fascinating and carefully drawn, and it is a pleasure to watch the clever way in which they face the difficulties into which their zeal for scientific inquiry, or glory, or adventure deliver them. In reading this book, one is swept away on a perfect mixture of realistic detail, exciting narrative, strong character sketches, and just the right amount of self-parody to be convinced that such a place as Maple White Land might really exist. Partly because of the conviction with which the story is told, and the risks the author takes by poking fun at the characters and their intentions, it has a deeper meaning in our culture than do most mere adventure stories. Just as Edward Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang is the Holy Bible of eco-terrorists, so too is this story the sacred tome of material cryptozoologists (material cryptozoologists being distinct from their paranormal colleagues, who work from the premise that cryptozoological creatures are in fact phantoms, or manifestations of the id). This book is less a step by step guide to mounting a cryptozoological expedition--such a book, I believe, yet remains to be written--than it is an invocation of the necessary world view for material cryptozoologists. The premise of Conan Doyle's text is that there are places where creatures which ought to have disappeared into the past are still alive. These creatures, if discovered, would more or less fit into our vision of biology as we know it now: there may be new species, genera, or perhaps even phyla, but there would be nothing that would demand that we revise our understanding of physics or psychology. These creatures could become part of the present paradigms quite nicely, and Linnaeus, Darwin and their intellectual progeny would retain their places in the scientific pantheon. Just how powerful its influences upon the field of cryptozoology have been is clear in the seminal work of that discipline, Bernard Heuvelman's On the Track of Unknown Animals. The index of this book lists Conan Doyle's name six times, and the title of Chapter 1, "There are Lost Worlds Everywhere," is clearly derived from the romance. The history of cryptozoology is full of adventurers and scientists like those in Conan Doyle's work, going forth into strange lands, seeking improbable beasts. The Lost World is the bible of all cryptozoologists, and Professor Challenger, their patron saint. He would be pleased at the efforts of such scientists as Clementi Onelli and Roy Mackal to expose to the eyes of the world those creatures that have escaped time's abyss. Because of this book, and the bond it gave me with my grandfather, I have been inspired to travel and seek out the hidden secrets of Nature, though my interests are largely protozoological rather than cryptozoological. In the same spirit of adventure in which this book was written, I have entered the hidden places of the globe in search of new protozoans, including the secret corners of South America, from the mouth of the Orinoco to the tops of the Andes. My eyes have seen great wonders there: one gets a different sense of time, as if it passed more slowly, as if the forces which shaped this world are still playing with this sphere and its inhabitants, safeguarding old forms and molding new ones out of the four elements known to the ancient philosophers. It would not surprise me very much if there were indeed lost worlds or new ones hidden amidst those jungles, plains, and mountains, or if supposedly extinct creatures lived there yet, or strange new monsters based on old models, born of the comminglings of Time and Nature, had been released to the world in that savage paradise. |
