Science Fiction Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur: Professor Challenger Omnibus. v5. 10 Oct 2013

[HarryT]

"Professor Challenger" is, of course, a much less well-known literary creation of Doyle's than Sherlock Holmes, but is still a worthy figure whose books deserve to be read. Challenger is the original bad-tempered professor, brilliant but completely lacking in "social skills". This omnibus contains all the novels and short stories Doyle wrote which feature Professor Challenger, as follows:


The Lost World

This is the one that everyone's heard of through its innumerable movie adaptations, but probably relatively few have read the book. The architypal story of heroic explorers discovering a lost land where dinosaurs still exist, etc etc. Much cliched, but this is the "original".


The Poison Belt

A novella featuring the same characters who appear in "The Lost World". Astronomers discover that the Earth is about to pass through a region of poisonous gas in space. Is this the end of the world? Professor Challenger to the rescue...


The Land of Mist

"Spiritualism" was hugely popular in Victorian times, and Doyle was very much influenced by it in many of his later works. This novel, again featuring Professor Challenger, has spiritualism as its basis. Lots of spooky goings on.


The Disintegration Machine

A short story, the title of which says it all!


When the World Screamed

Another long short story or short novella (take your pick). The final Professor Challenger story. I won't describe the plot, because it would be a "spoiler".

Enjoy!


EDIT: 24 Apr 08

Completely recreated the book with greatly improved layout and formatting. Added an illustration. Uploaded v2.

EDIT: 20 Sep 08

MR user Jellby has very kindly supplied me with numerous corrections to both "The Lost World" and "The Land of Mist". Applied these and created a new version 3.

EDIT: 27 Sep 08

Wonderful new cover added thanks to Paul Durrant. Many thanks for this! Uploaded new v4.

EDIT: 10 Oct 13

Thoroughly revised and proof-read. Illustrations added to "The Lost World" and "The Poison Belt". Numerous formatting improvements and many errors fixed. I would now regard this as a finished product, so please let me know if you find even the smallest error in it. Version 5 uploaded.

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[AlexBell]

Thanks, Harry

[aardbewoner]

Thank you.

[Byrdie]

Thanks, remember reading some of these years ago in paper, back when I could still see normal print. Wonderful to have them again in a format my tablet -- and eyes -- can handle. :-)

[sbaylor]

Nice book, Harry.

Didn't know about Professor Challenger by Doyle after all these years of reading Sherlock Holmes until I discovered this book here a few days ago. Thanks!

It would be nice to have a two-level Table of Contents, with the chapters of each story displaying at one level below its title for easier navigation.

[AlanHK]

I was perusing the code in Sigil, as I can't help but tweak any book I get, (at least to change the default font from Times) and was surprised to see it is apparently a Calibre conversion from a Kindle. I'd guess a KF7 mobi.
The styles are named calibre1, calibre2, etc, the files are
Professor_Ch-lenger_Omnibus_split_000.htm, etc.
-- the title page seems to have been split over two files/pages, probably because both title and author are a h2.

So how was this coded? Are there source HTML files, and are they available? I would like to try to compile them directly to epub if they are.

[radius]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

So how was this coded? Are there source HTML files, and are they available? I would like to try to compile them directly to epub if they are.

I don't believe HarryT has made his source code available in the past. You'd likely need to kindleunpack and recreate your own epub.

But HarryT does a great job of proofreading and maintaining fixed versions so it's hard to see how that labour would be worthwhile.

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by radius

I don't believe HarryT has made his source code available in the past. You'd likely need to kindleunpack and recreate your own epub.

That appears to be how this epub was made, thus the automatically synthesised and named styles.

Anyway, there are only about 15 styles so I'll work out what they do and rename them.

Originally Posted by radius

But HarryT does a great job of proofreading and maintaining fixed versions so it's hard to see how that labour would be worthwhile.

Not talking about the text, or redistributing a different version. Just revising the formatting to my own preference.
Such as removing the setting of font to "Times".
Which I can override, but prefer to fix in the code.

And as sbaylor noted above 2 years ago, the TOC only has only the books, not the chapters.

There are a few errors I noticed.

The title page in the epub for instance is split in two.
Also a few reversed quote marks.

Anyway, he hasn't responded, so I guess he isn't monitoring this thread.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

That appears to be how this epub was made, thus the automatically synthesised and named styles.

Most likely it was created by a text file from Project Gutenberg.

Originally Posted by AlanHK

And as sbaylor noted above 2 years ago, the TOC only has only the books, not the chapters.

The title page in the epub for instance is split in two.

Fixing what you noted may take 10 minutes in Calibre's editor, but someone put out a modified version back in May of 2009. Part of the changes were a 2 level TOC and fixed the title page.

[LDB]

I was not aware of these. Thank you. How do you get it from computer to Kobo? I tried copying it from the download folder to the kepub folder but it doesn't show up. Then I had Calibre do 'convert books' on it and copied the result but still no show. I'm less than a week into Kobo Aura One ownership, and Calibre, so pretty clueless so far. Thanks for any and all help on this.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by LDB

I'm less than a week into Kobo Aura One ownership, and Calibre, so pretty clueless so far. Thanks for any and all help on this.

Probably best to ask in the Calibre or Kobo forums. There are many Kobo add-on plugins for calibre that might help. But for the most part use calibre to send the books to your Kobo.

[AlanHK]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Most likely it was created by a text file from Project Gutenberg.

Ultimately. But I was talking about the epub in this thread, which is clearly a Calibre conversion of a mobi.
Ones from AZW/KF8 are usually easier to work with, retain original style names, takes me about 15 minutes to de-calibre them, but this must have been a KF7 and took a bit longer.

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

Fixing what you noted may take 10 minutes in Calibre's editor, but someone put out a modified version back in May of 2009. Part of the changes were a 2 level TOC and fixed the title page.

So we just fork our own versions? OK, anyway, I've already fixed my version, typos, TOC, fonts and a few other things.

Another thing I found a bit odd was the lack of any acknowledgement of the cover artist in the book, or the sources for the text.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by AlanHK

Ultimately. But I was talking about the epub in this thread, which is clearly a Calibre conversion of a mobi.

Here is a link to the mobi version. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=12816

You can find links to the complete book list at the top right of this page.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/eb...&sort=dateline