Re: Five Works Inspired by the Legend of Atlantis

On 2024-08-16, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

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.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de