Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is, of course, best known for the creation of Sherlock Holmes, probably the world’s most famous detective in over a century of crime fiction, but among his other works (such as his historical novels) he also created one of the enduring tales of the fantastical genre, The Lost World. A great science fiction adventure yarn where explorers discover a remote, hidden land where prehistoric creatures still exist and flourish, its a part of that early 20th century staple of SF&F which was fascinated by the possibility of lost worlds, civilisations and creatures in remote lands or even deep within the Earth itself. Although modern SF may have updated the technology and window dressing (genetics labs and DNA extraction and rebuilding) the basic notion of coming face to face with creatures separated from humans by millions of years of evolution remains just as compelling today and just as endlessly attractive and fascinating to readers.
(dinosaur art to support the Lost World reading campaign, art by Mark Mechan, borrowed from the Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature site)
The last couple of Februarys have seen campaigns by the UNESCO City of Literature folks in Edinburgh and their partners in education, publishing and libraries to use the graphic novel as a way to encourage more reading and discussion of books, using comics particularly as a good way to interest those who might othewise be put off from a prose work. The previous campaigns featured the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, adapted by Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy, with national news coverage, exhibitions, events, readings, school projects and more, all successfully generating interest in our rich literary heritage and promoting comics as an important part of that mix, I’m pleased to say. This year it is the turn of Doyle, another prominent Edinburgh writer (who would have studied not far from where I sit right now) – the Lost World is the book (in different prose editions, I believe, rather than a comic this time) which will be featured for this February’s reading campaign, with a website, online text, free editions of the novel (original and adapted, ‘easier’ text) and a lot more (including an audio version, reader’s guide), most of which will go live at the end of this month.
(Wallace and Gromit feature on the artwork for the holding page for the national site)
And this year it isn’t just Edinburgh – free copies of the books and support materials to use them for reading groups and classes will also be available in Glasgow, Hampshire, Shrewsbury, City of Westminster and most of South West England from February 2009. I see from the Edinburgh site that as well as enjoying and celebrating Conan Doyle’s work some of the nation-wide events tied to this will include the Darwin graphic novel biography by Simon Gurr and Eugene Byrne which we talked about yesterday, it being the 150th anniversary of Conan Doyle’s birth and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth (Darwin having also spent some time studying in Edinburgh, coincidentally). Encouraging both reading and education with some classic science fiction and comics, I do like that. There are details of the books and numerous events here on the Edinburgh page and you should bookmark the national Lost World Read page which goes fully live on the 31st. And for those of you who work with kids, if the previous campaigns are anything to go by then this is a great opportunity to stimulate some young minds, entertain them and get them asking questions about both storytelling and science.And I know from personal experience that it works – it was tales like the Lost World as a young boy which gave me a fascination for dinosaurs, which in turn lead to me going through the library for factual books on them as well as more stories, then from there as I got older to books on natural history, geology, evolution… Amazing how you can create the beginnings of a chain of lifelong reading, but that’s the power of the written word…
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