Atlantis in Popular Culture - Literature

Literature

(Alphabetical by author, then by title)

• In the series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams the mysterious planet Magrathea is the Galactic equivalent of Atlantis
• The Dancer from Atlantis (1971) is a novel by Poul Anderson.
• K. A. Applegate's series of novels Animorphs featured one incident in which the small group pursue their alien enemies, the Yeerks, and inadvertently find a hostile civilization in a city at the bottom of the ocean. The civilisation, known as the Nartec, tell their own tale as to how they came to be under the sea, but although Marco jokingly suggests that the group have discovered Atlantis, the name never appears. After the Animorphs make their escape, the Nartec do not appear or are even mentioned in later novels, leaving their fate undetermined.
• Another series by K. A. Applegate, "Everworld," depicts Atlantis as an underwater city in Everworld's oceans. The gods Poseidon and Neptune---who both seem to have their own underwater cities nearby---war over control of the city, but the politically savvy leader of the city, Jean-Claude LeMieux, manages to keep it independent.
• Alexander Beliaev, famous Russian sci-fi writer, has depicted the last days of Atlantis in his novel "The Last Man From Atlantis", the highlight of the book being love story of princess Sel and sculptor Adishirna.
• Pierre Benoit's classic L'Atlantide (1919) was a variation on a theme introduced by Henry Rider Haggard in She, and told the story of two French Officers who find the last city of Atlantis in the midst of the Sahara, and fall in love with its beautiful queen, Antinea. It was filmed several times.
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Fall of Atlantis. Her Avalon Series tells the story of how the ancient druids were descendants of the survivors of Atlantis who landed in Britain.
• Fredric Brown's short story "Letter to a Phoenix" mentions Atlantis as the most recent civilization of six that an immortal has lived in.
• Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan series features a lost city known as Opar, said to be a colony of Atlantis.
• The book Romance of Atlantis by Taylor Caldwell.
• In Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card Atlantis is given passing mention; it is revealed through a machine that can look into the past that Atlantis was a 'raft city' on the banks of the Red Sea, and was completely submerged when the water from the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans came over the natural dams.
• Lincoln Child's novel Deep Storm features a supposed find of the site of sunken Atlantis. The reality is much more sinister.
• In Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, Atlantis is a Lower Elements city populated by Atlanteans.
• In book three of Bruce Coville's Alien Adventures series, The Search for Snout, Rod Albright's Father is eventually revealed as an Atlantean starfarer, from 35,000 years ago.
• The Final section of Hart Crane's 1930 epic poem The Bridge is entitled "Atlantis", dealing with Brooklyn Bridge and uses the city as a metaphor for a nearly-attainable Utopia.
• The book Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler, inspired by the non-fiction, When the Sky Fell by Rand & Rose Flem-Ath.
• Kara Dalkey's Water Trilogy is a blend of Atlantis and Arthurian legends.
• Arthur Conan Doyle's science fiction novel The Maracot Deep describes the discovery of the sunken remains of Atlantis by a deep-sea diving expedition, who find that it is still inhabited by a high-technology society which has adapted to life underwater.
• In "The Towers of February", the Dutch writer Tonke Dragt describes Atlantis as a country in the parallel world IMFEA (Inter Menses Februarium Et Aprilem).
• Diane Duane's young adult fantasy novel Deep Wizardry describes how the downfall of Atlantis was triggered by the failure of an ancient wizardry meant to preserve the balance of the earth and sea.
• Atlantis is also referenced in Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.
• David Gemmell's fantasy novels make use of story of Atlantis in the Jon Shannow series (Wolf of Shadow, The Last Guardian and Bloodstone) and the Stones of Power series (Ghost King and Last Sword of Power).
• The book Atlantis by David Gibbins.
• Intended to be the fifth book in its Godzilla novel series, Godzilla and the Lost Continent would have seen Godzilla encounter monsters on a landmass risen from the Pacific sea, rather than the Atlantic, which might have been Atlantis. However, the book was never published by Random House Publishing, which had produced the previous four books, for reasons unknown.
• In the novel Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias, it depicts Atlantis being buried beneath the ice of Antarctica suggesting a large climate shift took place and covered up the ancient city.
• In Traci Harding's The Ancient Future Trilogy (Book 2 - An Echo in Time: Atlantis), Tory Alexander travels back in time to visit the lost city paradise of Atlantis, and its superior civilization, where she is taught of the mind sciences and expands her psychic capabilities, and is inspired of a city plan which features in later books.
• In the short stories of Robert E. Howard, the character Kull was an Atlantean, and eventually became King of Valusia. His more famous character Conan the Cimmerian was descended from Kull's Atlanteans.
• Robert A. Heinlein's story Lost Legacy imagined Atlantis as a colony of Mu. In a war for independence both lands sank.
• In Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark-Hunter series, the leader of the Dark-Hunters is an Atlantean god.
• In Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis, the fallen civilization of Atlantis is used as a metaphor for the ideals and aspirations of popular culture in the 1960s.
• Henry Kuttner's Atlantis stories feature the sword-and-sorcery adventures of the hero Elak.
• In the Pendragon Cycle of Stephen R. Lawhead survivors of Atlantis settle in Britain.
• In Doris Lessing's Shikasta, it is briefly mentioned in the Canopean reports that due to natural disasters certain advanced cultures have suddenly been exterminated including the culture of "Adalanterland".
• In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, Digory Kirke's uncle Andrew received a box with Atlantean symbols from his dying godmother that contained dust from another world that he used to make the magic rings that sent Digory and his friend Polly Plummer to the worlds of Charn and Narnia.
• In C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, it is debated by two of the villains that the character of Merlin may be from Numinor or as it is more commonly known, Atlantis.
• H. P. Lovecraft's The Temple tells the story of a German Naval submarine sinking to the bottom of the ocean after a World War I battle and ultimately settling on the lost city of Atlantis.
• The novel The Hunt For Atlantis by Andy McDermott.
• Walter Moers' book The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear bases several chapters in Atlantis, a city described as having every civilization in time occupying it, since sailors came here from every period and stay. The tale includes some real creatures, as well as a myriad of fantasy ones which make up the citizenry.
• Edith Nesbit's The Story of the Amulet contains a chapter describing the fall of Atlantis.
• Stories in Larry Niven's The Magic Goes Away series often mention Atlantis or feature Atlantean characters. The Burning City (2000), a novel by Niven and Jerry Pournelle set in that same fictional universe, features an Atlantean wizard. Within the novel the wizard briefly tells the story of how waste and misuse of mana, the scarce "magic energy" resource, had caused the sinking of Atlantis.
• David Maclean Parry's The Scarlet Empire (1906) is a political satire set in Atlantis.
• Stel Pavlou places Atlantis two miles under the ice in Antarctica in the adventure novel Decipher (2001). He also suggests orichalcum was pure C₆₀.
• Diana L. Paxson wrote Ancestors of Avalon, a book linking Marion's Fall of Atlantis with the rest of Avalon Series.
• Charles Portis's comic novel Masters of Atlantis concerns the establishment, and problems thereafter, of a cult dedicated to exploring the secrets and wisdom of Atlantis, gleaned from a short text supposedly recovered from Atlantis.
• In Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, Dagny Taggart searches for a technologically advanced city many other characters refer to as Atlantis.
• In Mothstorm, the final book of Philip Reeve's Larklight Trilogy, it is claimed that Atlantis was a lost continent on which the Mercurians had a colony before they left the Solar System thousands of years ago.
• Michael Scott's series The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel centers much of the storyline around Atlantis (referred to as 'Danu Talis"). The magical 'elders' and their Shadow Realms' originate from Danu Talis.
• Darren Shan's Dark Calling (2009) features a destroyed planet that is said to be Atlantis. The myths about the place apparently originated from visits that the atlantaens made to earth.
• In Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy Hagbard Celine and crew travel to sites in submerged Atlantis. A portion of Atlantean history is also included in the book and it is suggested that the island of Fernando Pó (part of Equatorial Guinea) is the last surviving remnant of the continent. Shea and Wilson's story suggests that the Illuminati has its origins in Atlantis.
• Heart of The Dragon, Jewel of Atlantis, The Nymph King, and The Vampire's Bride are a series of books by Paranormal Romance author Gena Showalter. They depict the magical hidden underwater land of Atlantis where the Greek Gods banished the horrible races of beings that were the product of the Titans.
• E. E. "Doc" Smith mentions Atlantis in the first novel of the Lensman series as an advanced society ultimately destroyed by nuclear weapons which extinguished civilisation before it could get too powerful.
• In Neal Stephenson's far-future novel "The Diamond Age" Atlantis is an Anglo-Saxon Great Phyle, mainly based on artificial islands but with enclaves elsewhere.
• Jonathan Stroud's novel The Amulet of Samarkand mentions Atlantis as a former Greek colony on the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean
• Christia Sylf’s Markosamo le Sage (1973) takes place during the Atlantean age.
• A powerful slave-owning city that sinks and rises in an ocean very much like the Mediterranean is one of the main plot points in Duncan Thornton's book, Captain Jenny and the Sea of Wonders.
• J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion includes the Akallabêth of Atalantë (The Downfallen), the history of his adaptation of Atlantis, known as the Island of Númenor or Westernesse, where the Númenóreans lived. Númenor was the home of the most advanced civilization of Men in the history of Middle-earth, and, much like Atlantis, the Island of Númenor was swallowed into the sea in a single night. (Aragorn of The Lord of the Rings is descended from the survivors of this people.)
• In Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's novel Aelita (1923), soviet engineer Mstislav Los' and a retired soldier Alexei Gusev arrive to Mars and find a civilisation of Atlantis survivors.
• The novella in the December 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact titled "Audubon in Atlantis" by Harry Turtledove. In this story, which is an alternate history tale, Atlantis is not mythical at all, but is the result of the eastern seaboard breaking off of North America sometime during the formation of the continents.
• Jacint Verdaguer's 1877 classic Catalan poem L'Atlàntida.
• Jules Verne's classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea includes a visit to sunken Atlantis aboard Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus.