George Edward Challenger

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German first edition, Scherl, Berlin 1926

Professor Professor Challenger is one of the British writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created fictional character who in his playing at the time of the early 20th century novels has worked as a researcher and discoverer. However, it is overshadowed by the figure of the detective Sherlock Holmes, created by the same author .

person

Professor Challenger is provided with a fictional biography in the main work The Forgotten World from 1912, which has been translated into many languages ​​and filmed several times : he was born in Langs, NB ( Scotland ) in 1863 , and went to school in this city's high school gone, studied at the University of Edinburgh , had been at the British Museum since 1892 , where he is currently deputy head of the department for comparative anthropology . He is described as quick-tempered and violent, his outward appearance is that of a bushy-bearded giant .

Actions

The focus of the novel The Lost World is the exploration of a mysterious South American plateau in the jungle (see Tepui ), which is said to be inhabited by ancient animals. The Sidekick Challenger is the up and coming Irish journalist Edward Dunn Malone; he is looking for an opportunity to assert himself as a man and thus win his great love for himself. Also there are the big game hunter Lord John Roxton and Challengers colleague Professor Summerlee. In Im Poison Current , Challenger invites these friends to watch the end of the world as a cosmic cloud of poison hits the earth, but in the end it all ends lightly. In the novel Das Nebelland , Professor Challenger, his charming daughter Enid and the journalist Malone take part in séances and immerse themselves deeply into the Edwardian spiritualist scene . In the short story When the Earth Screamed , Challenger uses a deep hole to prove that the Earth is a living organism. The last of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories in which Challenger appears, The Disintegration Machine, brings him and Malone together with a mad scientist who invented a machine that can dissolve objects and organisms and put them back together.

After the novels and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, other authors occasionally tried their hand at the character of Professor Challenger with so-called pastiches . Often Challenger was associated with Doyle's most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. In the novel Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds , in German: Sherlock Holmes vs Mars , by Manly Wade Wellman and Wade Wellmann from 1975, Holmes and Challenger meet on the occasion of the story told by HG Wells about the invasion of the Martians, the war of the worlds . In Guy Adams' The Army of Dr. Moreau (in German The Army of Dr. Moreau ), in addition to Sherlock Holmes and Professor Challenger, the fictional characters Dr. Moreau from The Isle of Dr. Moreau and Professor Cavor from The First People on the Moon (both by HG Wells) and Professor Lidenbrock from the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth (by Jules Verne ).

literature

Film adaptations

Other adaptations

  • The Forgotten World (radio play), Ripper Records 2005, direction and adaptation: Frank Gustavus
  • The forgotten world (audio book), AUDIOBUCH Verlag 2008, ISBN 978-3-89964-311-4 , unabridged reading. 6 CDs, Hubertus Gertzen (speaker)
  • André-Paul Duchâteau / Patrice Sanahujas: Callenger, graphic novel in 2 parts (French), France 1990, 1992; see main article Challenger (comic)