When the World Screamed

What It's About

Peerless Jones, an expert in artesian borings, receives an unsolicited invitation to a job interview from the famously eccentric Professor Challenger. Encouraged by his friend, the journalist Edward Malone, who has been involved in Challenger's earlier adventures, Jones accepts. Challenger's theory is that the Earth is not merely rock and metal but a living organism, structured much like a giant sea urchin, and he intends to use Jones's drilling expertise to reach deep enough into the crust to make contact with it. The story follows the construction of the drilling rig at Hengist Down and the escalating tension as the project edges toward its startling conclusion.

Key Concepts

The story is built around the idea of the Earth as a living organism with its own nervous system and consciousness, and the hubris involved in trying to "wake" it. It's a late example of Doyle's fascination with bold, semi-scientific speculation, sitting alongside contemporary anxieties about how far scientific ambition should be allowed to go.

About the Author

Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scottish writer born in Edinburgh in 1859. He trained and practised as a physician before turning to writing full-time, and served as a military doctor during the Boer War, for which he was knighted in 1902. In his later years he became a committed spiritualist, a preoccupation that increasingly shaped his outlook and his writing. He died in 1930.