Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish physician and author who in 1887 introduced Sherlock Holmes, arguably the best-known fictional detective. He also wrote poetry, historical novels, influential gothic short stories, and more. Doyle's proto-sf series of Professor Challenger adventures include the novels The Lost World (1912), The Poison Belt (1913), and The Land of Mist (1926), and the short stories “When the World Screamed” (1928) and “The Disintegration Machine” (1929).
Conor Reid is a podcaster and writer from Ireland. He has published widely on popular fiction and science, including The Science and Fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs (2018). He is the Head of Podcasts at HeadStuff Media as well as the host and producer of his own critically acclaimed literature podcast, Words to That Effect. The podcast, which has been performed live in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, tells stories of the fiction that shapes popular culture.
Joshua Glenn is a consulting semiotician and editor of the websites HiLobrow and Semiovox. The first to describe 1900–1935 as science fiction's “Radium Age,” he is editor of the MIT Press's series of reissued proto-sf stories from that period. He is coauthor and coeditor of various books including the family activities guide Unbored (2012), The Adventurer's Glossary (2021), and Lost Objects (2022). In the 1990s, he published the indie intellectual journal Hermenaut.