Atlantis, part 3

In ancient times the people of Atlantis were blessed with wisdom. They used their advanced arts and sciences for the benefit of all, not to increase the power and comfort of the few. The Atlanteans harnessed the power of the sun, the water, and their own minds to achieve wondrous things. But over time, the comforts and ease of life that they gained made them selfish, petty and quarrelsome. As a people they became greedy and warlike, and used their knowledge to create new technology and terrible new weapons, with which they conquered other peoples and ruled over them like gods. The Atlanteans became masters of the planet, but in so doing they lost the wisdom that had once guided them. They forgot the true power that came from their own hearts and minds, and began instead to worship the machines that brought air, land and sea under their control.

According to Plato, Zeus grew angry at the aggression and arrogance of the Atlanteans and he punished them by destroying their island and sinking it under the waves. In our time, various prophets and visionaries have come up with their own explanations for the fall of Atlantis. In one such story, the Atlanteans developed a power source using immense crystals. At first the crystals were used for good, but an evil faction among the people took power and used the crystals wrecklessly, as weapons. The result was a catastrophic explosion that sank the island. Other writers suggest the island was struck by an asteroid or suffered some other natural disaster, like a tsunami.

These three stories illustrate three main ways in which the story of Atlantis has been made use of: first, to give a lesson on the power of the gods, secondly, to warn us of the dangers of our own arrogant over-reliance on technology, and thirdly, perhaps to suggest that nature itself has the final say, no matter how powerful we humans think we are.

It's no wonder the story of Atlantis has captivated our imaginations for centuries. Like any myth, it's a story that can have many meanings, and yet not be exhausted by the meanings that we find in it.

Atlantis, part 2

Over the centuries, many have believed that the people of Atlantis, or at least some of them, survived the sinking of their homeland and became underwater dwellers.

The most popular version of this myth shows up in comic books. Both DC's Aquaman and Marvel's Prince Namor are monarchs of the sunken civilization of Atlantis (and both, interestingly, are cranky and given to suspicion, if not outright hatred, of surface dwellers.




Many novels have been written about this undersea civilization; there have been movies, TV shows, cartoons, and at least one song (Donovan's "Atlantis"). It's intriguing to imagine how different human life might be in a world of water. Would Atlanteans wear clothing? Would they have books? What would their pastimes and sports be like? And wouldn't they be keen to find out what was up there, above the water? As keen as we are to explore the depths of the ocean?

Imagine what would happen if a book fell overboard from a passing ship and an Atlantean found it and tried to figure out what this strange object was:


It was rectangular, and covered in a dry, stiff green skin. I thought at first it was some kind of box, but as I turned it over it seemed to come apart in my hands. The “box” was really a stack of superthin white membranes of some fibrous material that had been compressed together by the green cloth. I made a sound of alarm, thinking that the membranes were about to spill to the floor, but then I saw that they were all affixed somehow to the skin covering on one side.  I quickly grasped that this had been done to keep the membranes in a particular order: one could manipulate them back and forth without having to worry that they would slip out or become disorganized. I also noted the black rows of markings on both sides of each membrane, arranged in neat rectangular “boxes” of their own. The markings or symbols had not been carved or incised into the membranes; rather, they seemed to have been impressed there with some liquid medium that had later dried. I understood that these markings formed a text, such as we Atlanteans might have traced in the water with our pouches of squid ink. This text, however, was so long that a device for holding it all together had been found necessary. However, the reader could not swim through the text, or come at it from different angles, as we could. These land dwellers were limited to the shape and order that had been predetermined by whoever had bound together the membranes within the skin. Their only freedom from this order, it seemed to me, would be to place a marker of some kind at a certain point between the membranes, and move back or forward from there to another place.

[from The Logogryph, by Thomas Wharton, copyright 2004]

Atlantis

The island / continent of Atlantis was first mentioned in two dialogues of the Greek philosopher Plato. He asserted that the Atlanteans sank in a cataclysm of earthquake and flood thousands of years ago.

Since Plato was generally thought of as a truthful sort of fellow, people have spent the past couple of millennia trying either to find Atlantis or to speculate on where it might have been. Despite the fact that Plato said the island was located in the Atlantic Ocean, just beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, various "experts" have located it in just about every other part of the globe, including places on dry land.

The thing these experts don't realize is that they will never find Atlantis by looking for it under the ocean floor or in ancient ruins. That's because it exists only in one place, the Realm of Story.

In the next couple of posts I'll have more to say about Atlantis and what you might find there.

Announcement:

The Shadow of Malabron has been nominated for next year's Red Cedar Award.

Book trailer of the Shadow of Malabron

"The Shadow of Malabron" - Book Trailer from Chris Hill on Vimeo.


This is the book trailer for The Shadow of Malabron created by a very talented former writing student of mine, Chris Hill, along with Nathan Brown of Swashbuckler Productions. Much thanks and appreciation also to Conor Wharton (Will Lightfoot), Jess Bell (Rowen), James Cadden (the Angel), Patrick Kerr (the motorcycle rider), and Kiefer the "wolf" (and his owner Azal Abedi).