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Atlantis

Entry updated 25 January 2021. Tagged: Theme.

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The legend of Atlantis, an advanced civilization on a continent (or largeIsland) in the middle of the Atlantic which was overwhelmed by some geological cataclysm, has its earliest extant source inPlato's dialoguesTimaeus andCritias (circa 350 BCE). The legend can be seen as a parable of the Fall of Man, and writers who have since embroidered the story have generally shown less interest in the cataclysm itself than in the attributes of the prelapsarian Atlanteans, who have often been given moral and scientific powers surpassing those of mere modern humans. FrancisBacon'sNew Atlantis (bound in withSylva Sylvarum1626;1627 chap) portrays Atlantean survivors as the founders of a scientific utopia in North America. However, it was not until IgnatiusDonnelly published hisAtlantis: The Antediluvian World (1882) that the lost continent became a great popular myth. Donnelly's monomaniacal work contained much impressive learning and professed to be nonfiction. Unlike Plato and Bacon, who had treated Atlantis as an exemplary parable, Donnelly was convinced that the continent had existed and had been the source of all civilization. In fact, Donnelly's was a mythopoeic book of considerable power, arguably ancestral to all thePseudoscience texts of the twentieth century, and the inspiration for many works of fiction.

Atlantis had already been used in sf by JulesVerne. HisTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870; trans1873) contains a brief but effective scene in which Captain Nemo and the narrator explore the tumbled ruins of an Atlantean city. Some of the fiction inspired by the theories of the Theosophists (seeTheosophy) and spiritualists was less restrained – e.g.,A Dweller on Two Planets (1894) byPhylos the Thibetan (Frederick Spencer Oliver), in which the hero "remembers" his previous incarnation as a ruler of Atlantis. Other writers used Atlantis more as a setting for rousing adventure, one of the best examples beingThe Lost Continent (1900) by C J CutcliffeHyne, a first-person narrative "framed" by the discovery of an ancient manuscript in the Canaries. David MParry'sThe Scarlet Empire (1906), on the other hand, is set in the present (it depicts Atlantis preserved under a huge watertight dome, an image which has since become a comic-strip cliché) and intended as aSatire of socialism. (Other stories about a surviving Atlantis are listed inUnder the Sea.)

One of the most successful of all Atlantean romances, filmed four times (seeDieHerrin von Atlantis), was PierreBenoit'sL'Atlantide (1919; trans asAtlantida1920; vtThe Queen of Atlantis) which concerns the present-day discovery of Atlantis in the Sahara. Benoit was accused of plagiarizing H RiderHaggard'sThe Yellow God (1908) for many of the details of his story. In fact, the latter was not an Atlantean romance, and nor was Haggard'sWhen the World Shook (1919), set in Polynesia, although it has been so described. Arthur ConanDoyle produced one Atlantis story, "The Maracot Deep", to be found inThe Maracot Deep (coll1929), which is marred as sf by a large admixture of spiritualism. Stanton ACoblentz'sThe Sunken World (Summer 1928Amazing Stories Quarterly; rev1949) has much in common with Parry'sThe Scarlet Empire: it involves the contemporary discovery of a domed underseaCity, and the purpose of the story is largely satirical. DennisWheatley'sThey Found Atlantis (1936) contains more of the same, but without the satire.

The heyday of Atlantean fiction was 1885-1930. Often a subgenre of theLost-World story, sometimes of theUtopian story, sometimes both, it was perhaps most often the vehicle for occultist speculation about spiritual powers, and therefore only marginally sf. Atlantis rises and fallstwice in Ira CFuller's anonymously publishedThe Mysteries of the Formation of the Earth, the Rising and Sinking of Continents, the Introduction of Man and His Destiny Revealed, in God's Own Way and Time (1899).

Incidental use of the Atlantis motif by S PMeek and many others became common in USMagazine sf. Even E ESmith'sFar-FutureLensmanSpace Opera sequence devotes a chapter of back-story to "The Fall of Atlantis" in the novel version ofTriplanetary (January-April 1934Amazing; rev to fit the series1948). Many stories are set in other mythical lands cognate with Atlantis – Mu, Lemuria, Hyperborea, Ultima Thule, etc. Fantasy writers who have used such settings include LinCarter, AvramDavidson, L Spraguede Camp, Robert EHoward, HenryKuttner and Clark AshtonSmith. Two sf/historical novels,Stonehenge (1972) by HarryHarrison and LeonStover andThe Dancer from Atlantis (1971) by PoulAnderson, fit Atlantis into the Mycenean Greek world.

Several UK writers continued the pursuit of Atlantis. FrancisAshton'sThe Breaking of the Seals (1946) and its follow-up,Alas, That Great City (1948), are old-fashioned romances in which the heroes are cast backwards in time by mystical means. In PelhamGroom'sThe Purple Twilight (1948), Martians destroy Atlantis in self-defence, later almost destroying themselves by nuclearWar. John CowperPowys'sAtlantis (1954) is an eccentric philosophical novel in which the aged Odysseus visits the drowned Atlantisen route from Ithaca to the USA.

However, for post-World War Two readers Atlantis seems to have lost its spell-binding quality, and the later twentieth-century films in which it has appeared, such asAtlantis, the Lost Continent (1960) andWarlords of Atlantis (1978), have had little to recommend them – though more than the dire television seriesTheMan from Atlantis (1977-1978), which features a hero with webbed hands. An Atlantean series by JaneGaskell, colourful and inventive, but written in a highly emotive prose, is theCija sequence:The Serpent (1963; vt 2volsThe Serpent1975 andThe Dragon1975),Atlan (1965),The City (1966) andSome Summer Lands (1977). These form the autobiography of a princess of Atlantis, contain a considerable amount of sexual fantasy, and are closer to popular romance than to sf proper. TaylorCaldwell'sThe Romance of Atlantis (1975; published version written with Jess Stearn), is based, she claimed, on childhood dreams of her previous incarnation as an Atlantean empress. A very symbolic Atlantis arises again from the waves in Ursula KLe Guin'sThe New Atlantis (inThe New Atlantis, anth1975, ed RobertSilverberg;1989 chap dos) as aDystopian USA begins to sink.

Where Le Guin's story gave new metaphoric life to Atlantis, most of the sunken continent's few appearances in the 1980s were romantic melodramas whose view of Atlantis was on the whole traditional. One of these was Marion ZimmerBradley'sAtlantis Chronicles:Web of Light (1982) andWeb of Darkness (1984), both assembled asWeb of Darkness (omni1985; vtThe Fall of Atlantis1987). These fantasies about Atlantean conflicts between forces of light and darkness had their origin in a long, unpublished romance Bradley wrote as a teenager, and indeed their subject matter seems more appropriate to the 1940s than the 1980s. David AGemmell's livelyPost-HolocaustSipstrassi series of science-fantasy novels features stones of healing and/or destruction whose source is Atlantis; Atlantis itself plays a prominent role (through gateways between past and future) in the fourth of the series,The Last Guardian (1989) – a complex plan to save its destruction through changing history comes to nothing, though it does produce Noah.

In the twenty-first century, Disney offered an animated film treatment somewhat in the Verne tradition withAtlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). TheStargate SG-1 (1997-2007) spinoff seriesStargate: Atlantis (2004-2009) recklessly reimagined Atlantis as a mobileSpace Habitat orWorld Ship once stationed on Earth but long since moved far off in space. Rather similarly, "Camlantis" in StephenHunt'sThe Kingdom Beyond the Waves (2008) is a lost aerialCity. Many years earlier, halfway through the twentieth century, IsaacAsimov postulated another aerial Atlantis whose destruction provides the excuse for a feeble pun (seeFeghoots) in "Shah Guido G" (November 1951Marvel Science Fiction).

Several relevant stories are collected inIsaac Asimov's Magical Worlds of Fantasy #9: Atlantis (anth1987) edited by IsaacAsimov, Martin HGreenberg and Charles GWaugh. A good nonfiction work on the subject isLost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science and Literature (1954; rev1970) by L Spraguede Camp. Henry M Eichner'sAtlantean Chronicles (1971) is a bibliography with level-headed annotations. Other rational books on the subject are few and far between, butThe End of Atlantis (1969) by J V Luce andThe Search for Lost Worlds (1975) by James Wellard are useful and entertaining. H R Stahel'sAtlantis Illustrated (graph1982) is an entirely hypothetical reconstruction of Atlantis based remotely on Plato's description. ColinWilson'sFrom Atlantis to the Sphinx: Recovering the Lost Wisdom of the Ancient World (1996) locates its titular "lost wisdom" in cultures like Atlantis, before issues of fertility (and male control over reproduction) began to shape human civilizations. [DP/PN/DRL]

see also:Elements;Paranoia;Sweden.

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