The Poison Belt

The Poison Belt is a science fiction novella by Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1913. It is the second Challenger adventure. Edward Malone again narrates as Challenger summons Professor Summerlee and Lord John Roxton, the companions of The Lost World, to his home in Sussex.

Each guest receives the same unexplained instruction: bring oxygen. Challenger believes that Earth is entering a belt of poisonous cosmic ether, and the outbreaks of irrational behavior observed on the journey seem to confirm that an invisible change has already begun.

Challenger seals the group, together with his wife, inside a room supplied with oxygen. From that confined refuge they watch people and animals collapse and confront the possibility that they are witnessing humanity's extinction. Scientific argument gives way to a test of character under absolute isolation.

Conan Doyle compresses an apocalypse into a country house, then expands it through newspaper reports and the group's journey into a silent London. The novella combines speculative science, dark comedy, and a meditation on human fragility before forces too large to perceive or control.

"It is imperative that now at once, while these stupendous events are still clear in my mind, I should set them down with that exactness of detail which time may blur. But even as I do so, I am overwhelmed by the wonder of the fact that it should be our little group of the "Lost World"—Professor Challenger, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton, and myself—who have passed through this amazing experience."