Cocos Island in Fiction
The book Desert Island proposed the highly detailed theory that Daniel Defoe used the Isla dell Cocoze as an accurate model for his descriptions of the island inhabited by the marooned Robinson Crusoe. However Defoe placed Crusoe's island not in the Pacific, but rather off the coast of Venezuela in the Atlantic Ocean.
Robinson's neighbouring Terra Firma is shown on the colour map of Joannes Jansson (Amsterdam) depicting the northeastern corner of South America, entitled Terra Firma et Novum Regnum Granatense et Popayan. It belongs to the early group of plates printed by William Blaeu from 1630 onwards. The properly called Terra Firma was the Isthmus of Darien. Crusoe's two references to Mexico are against a South American island as well.
The Michael Crichton novel Jurassic Park centers on the fictitious Isla Nublar that is off of the west coast of Costa Rica. Isla del Coco may be the inspiration for this island. Supporting this argument is the Dreamworks Interactive game Jurassic Park: Trespasser (1998) which used Cocos Island's topography as a substitute for the fictional island on which it takes place. Also, "Isla Nublar" is intended to mean "Cloudy Island", and Cocos Island is the only island with cloud forests in the eastern Pacific. The book The Silent Sea (2010) of Clive Cussler, uses the mystic pirate tales but puts the island in US north Pacific cost.
Read more about this topic: Cocos Island
Famous quotes containing the words island and/or fiction:
“The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful, gentle robber!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)