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Danger! and Other Stories

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Danger! and Other Stories
Image
First edition (PDF)
AuthorSir Arthur Conan Doyle
LanguageEnglish
PublishedLondon
Publication date1918
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
OCLC1073045521

Danger! And Other Stories is a collection of short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1918.

Contents

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"Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius"

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The collection's title story, "Danger!: Being the Log of Captain John Sirius", was (the preface notes) written 18 months before the outbreak of World War I, and first published in the Strand Magazine in July 1914. It depicts a hypothetical scenario in which a small, fictional European country manages to defeat the United Kingdom by innovative naval strategy using a new technology, the practical combat submarine.[1] The story is a late example of the genre of invasion literature,[1] cautionary tales in which the British are caught unprepared by a continental enemy, often a stand-in for Germany (notable examples being Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands and Saki's When William Came.) Ironically, the work may have led to the thing it was warning against. The work was read by naval officers in Germany, including Alfred von Tirpitz, who cited it as influential on his thinking.[2]

"The Horror of the Heights"

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The collection includes the pioneering science fiction story "The Horror of the Heights", one of Doyle's most frequently anthologized short pieces, in which an aviator discovers an invisible ecosystem of translucent lifeforms floating in the upper atmosphere, including bizarre and terrible predators.

References

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  1. 1 2 Messinger, Gary S. (1984). British propaganda and the state in the First World War. Manchester University Press. p. 185.
  2. ↑ Manson, Janet. International law, German Submarines and American Policy (Thesis). p. 69–70.
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