Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis

[James Nicoll]

Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis

The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.

https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

[Garrett Wollman]

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

I have actually read the Norton!

The library I grew up in seemed to have had, at some point before I
started going there, a librarian who considered all SF to be
"juvenile". As a result, *all* of Norton's SF was still shelved in
the YA section twenty years later. (If my fallible memory isn't
acting up, they seemed to have stopped buying Norton some time in the
early 1970s.) I have strong memories of reading OPERATION TIME SEARCH
but could never remember the title. (I also read MOON OF THREE RINGS
and EXILES OF THE STARS, and probably some others that didn't make as
distinct an impression on me. There was a whole shelf of Norton, and
I don't know why I glommed onto these three titles in particular.)

-GAWollman

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

Post by Garrett Wollman

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

I have actually read the Norton!
The library I grew up in seemed to have had, at some point before I
started going there, a librarian who considered all SF to be
"juvenile". As a result, *all* of Norton's SF was still shelved in
the YA section twenty years later. (If my fallible memory isn't
acting up, they seemed to have stopped buying Norton some time in the
early 1970s.) I have strong memories of reading OPERATION TIME SEARCH
but could never remember the title. (I also read MOON OF THREE RINGS
and EXILES OF THE STARS, and probably some others that didn't make as
distinct an impression on me. There was a whole shelf of Norton, and
I don't know why I glommed onto these three titles in particular.)
-GAWollman

Pretty much all Norton *is* YA, or acceptable as YA. Did she ever
write a sex scene? (Maybe in Witchworld, which I saw as "romancey"
and never got into?)

[Michael F. Stemper]

Post by Garrett Wollman
The library I grew up in seemed to have had, at some point before I
started going there, a librarian who considered all SF to be
"juvenile". As a result, *all* of Norton's SF was still shelved in
the YA section twenty years later.

Interesting. Your library had a YA section? Mine only had a children's
section, and an adult section. The children's section had nursery rhymes
up through Freddy the Pig and Doctor Dolittle.

By the time that I was eight, I was going into the adult section, so
that I could get Norton's work.

Although, if a library had a young adult section, that would, in my
opinion, be the proper place for Norton. I've read at least forty of
her novels, and every one of them seems like young adult (or "juveniles"
as they used to be called).

[Garrett Wollman]

Post by Michael F. Stemper

Post by Garrett Wollman
The library I grew up in seemed to have had, at some point before I
started going there, a librarian who considered all SF to be
"juvenile". As a result, *all* of Norton's SF was still shelved in
the YA section twenty years later.

Interesting. Your library had a YA section? Mine only had a children's
section, and an adult section. The children's section had nursery rhymes
up through Freddy the Pig and Doctor Dolittle.

There was a "children's library" which took up one floor of the old
Carnegie building, and an "adult library" which was all of the new
wing that opened in 1981. Inside the children's library there was an
open area down the middle, leading to the librarians' desk and behind
them the former main entrance (now an emergency exit). On the left
side was what we'd now call "middle grades" and below, everything from
picture books to Encyclopedia Brown, and on the right side was
actually labeled "Young Adult", with big sectionos of packaged series
(Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, etc.) and the rest either Dewey (for
the non-fiction) or alpha by author (for the fiction). In the center
aisle, in addition to the card catalogs, were display shelves of new
books along with some children's reference books (encyclopedias,
Something About the Author, dictionaries). It's been 40 years but I
could walk in there tomorrow and point out nearly everything I've just
mentioned -- except of course that everything has changed.

My brain wants me to believe that Diane Duane and Robin McKinley were
shelved in the same place, which obviously doesn't make sense
alphabetically. I am not sure if more modern YA fantasy got its own
subsection -- it was, after all, forty years ago. They don't seem to
publish a map showing the current layout of the building, and it's a
five-hour drive so I won't be making a detailed comparison.

I forget at what point I was allowed to use the "adult library". It
must have been some time in 5th or 6th grade because I remember doing
a 6th-grade book report on the first volume of Asimov's autobiography,
which I would have had to go to the adult side to read. I never read
any of Asimov's juveniles; I'm pretty sure my gateway to Asimov was
through his F&SF science essay collections.

-GAWollman

[Ahasuerus]

On 8/17/2024 9:00 AM, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
[snip]

Post by Michael F. Stemper
Although, if a library had a young adult section, that would, in my
opinion, be the proper place for Norton. I've read at least forty of
her novels, and every one of them seems like young adult (or "juveniles"
as they used to be called).

Most of her books were a good match for teen readers, but some were a
better fit for elementary school kids. The "Magic" series (
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?4687) and the "Star Ka'at"
(https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?1461) series are two of the better
known examples, but there were others, e.g. _Seven Spells to Sunday_ and
_Ten Mile Treasure_.

[Don]

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

"The earliest mentions of fabled lost Atlantis were, as you know, in
two essays by Plato, Timaeus and Critias." ...

"I didn’t even mention the role Atlantis played in the Perry Rhodan
novels"

Thank you for enlightening me to Atlantis' Platonic origins. It ought to
prove useful in the future.

My inner pedant petitions me to play. Francis "Shakespeare" Bacon's
_New Atlantis_ is located in the Pacific, proximally preceding Perry's
place called "Lemuria:"

<http://lemuria.net/>

_Black Tuesday_ (Mayer) puts Atlantis back where it belongs: in the
Atlantic.

Danke,

--
Don.......My cat's )\._.,--....,'``. https://crcomp.net/reviews.php
telltale tall tail /, _.. \ _\ (`._ ,. Walk humbly with thy God.
tells tall tales.. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.' Make 1984 fiction again.

[Lynn McGuire]

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

Wow, two for five here, "Assignment In Eternity" by Heinlein which is
the prequel for "Friday", and "Operation Time Search" by Norton.

"Triplanetary" by E.E. Doc Smith spends a chapter on Atlantis being
destroyed by nuclear weapons over 10,000 years ago in a previous
civilization of Earth.

"Perry Rhodan" spends many books talking about a survivor of Atlantis
named "Atlan" and how Atlantis was destroyed.

Lynn

[Michael F. Stemper]

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

Wow, two for five here, "Assignment In Eternity" by Heinlein which is the prequel for "Friday",

It turns out that _Assignment in Eternity_ is a collection of four stories.
One of them is "Gulf", which shares a character with _Friday_.

[Lynn McGuire]

Post by Michael F. Stemper

Post by Lynn McGuire

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
The Lost City of Atlantis has been inspiring wacky theories and speculative
fiction ever since Plato made it up.
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

Wow, two for five here, "Assignment In Eternity" by Heinlein which is
the prequel for "Friday",

It turns out that _Assignment in Eternity_ is a collection of four stories.
One of them is "Gulf", which shares a character with _Friday_.

And the parents of "Friday" are in "Gulf".

Lynn

[Christian Weisgerber]

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

As others have mentioned, Atlantis makes an appearance in
_Perry Rhodan_, where it is destroyed by alien action some 10,000
years ago. The authors later introduce another lost continent,
Lemuria, located in the Pacific and hosting a space-faring human
civilization before it was also destroyed, by alien action, some
50,000 years ago.

Rainer M. Schröder's German juvenile _Unheimliche Gegner der vierten
Art_ (1978) is effectively an unauthorized sequel to _Close Encounters
of the Third Kind_. I had a big light bulb moment when I saw the
movie for the first time a few years after I had read the book.
The humans that are whisked away by the spindly aliens eventually
learn that the aliens aren't that alien: They're really an intelligent
species from Earth and conveniently long-lived survivors from the
sunken continent of Atlantis.

Like UFOs and psychics, Atlantis was a staple of the 1960s and 1970s
pseudoscience ciruit. I don't recall what von Däniken spun from it,
but he must have used it in his writings.

[The Dancer From Atlantis]
| A malfunctioning time machine clearly out of warranty scoops up
| American Duncan Reid, Kievan Russian Oleg, Hun Uldin, and Minoan Erissa
| from their native eras,

I think that's a "Kievan Rus" or "Kyivan Rus". Sorry for being
such a stickler, but people are dying over this as we speak. Also,
historical linguists want to know what language Uldin speaks. Is
Erissa Greek or pre-Greek Minoan? In the latter case, historical
linguists REALLY want to squeeze her for her language.

[Michael F. Stemper]

Post by Christian Weisgerber

Post by James Nicoll
Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis
https://reactormag.com/five-works-inspired-by-the-legend-of-atlantis/

As others have mentioned, Atlantis makes an appearance in
_Perry Rhodan_, where it is destroyed by alien action some 10,000
years ago.

I happen to be rereading Asimov's _Buy Jupiter_. One of its stories is
"Shah Guido G.", in which, once again, Atlantis sank beneath the waves.