Atlantis flourished during The Pulp Years, 1923-1954. In L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents (1954) he discusses the romantic novels of the 1880-90s, then follows the themes up to the Pulp era. The sheer volume of material made the brave de Camp quail and decline to do a thorough job of the old magazines. (To be fair, he does state that such a listing would be a book unto itself. The year is important too, 1954. The year the Pulps died. People were looking away from the failing magazines. The interest in Pulp fiction would return in the next few decades.) Ironically, the book appeared first as a non-fiction series of essays in a Pulp magazine, Ray A. Palmer’s Other Worlds (October-July 1953). The chapter on fiction “Evening Isles Fantastical” was added afterwards.
Among the elder tomes he recommends are:
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) by Jules Verne, which had only one short scene with Atlantis but it inspired all that followed.
The Queen of Atlantis by Frank Aubry (Argosy, February-August, 1899)
The Lost Continent (Pearson’s, July-December 1899) by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
The Scarlet Empire (1906) by David M. Parry
Geyserland (1908) by Richard B. Hatfield
Mr. de Camp’s book is quite handy to fans of Atlantis fiction. He points out which of the older books are fun, and which are dull or unreadable clap-trap. He also divides the subject into three useful categories: stories that go back time to Atlantis (either Science Fictional devices like time travel or supernatural means like astral projection), stories about the survivors of Atlantis (usually living under the sea) or stories set in Atlantis without any device (such as Robert E. Howard’s Kull, popular with Sword & Sorcery writers). Supernatural, Science Fiction and Heroic Fantasy. That’s a lot of ground to cover.
1910s
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs (New Story Magazine, June-December 1913) features the city of Opar, which was once a colony of Atlantis. All the men there are brutish and ape-like while the women are beautiful. Their queen is La, who takes a shine to Tarzan. La and Opar will appear in four novels by Burroughs, and get a separate series by Jose Philip Farmer in the 1970s.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar by Edgar Rice Burroughs (All-Story Weekly, November 18-December 16, 1916) has Tarzan in desperate need of money. He saw the immense treasure in Opar and goes back to get some. La has other plans.
1920s
“The Eye of Balamok” by Victor Rousseau (All-Story Weekly, January 17-31, 1920) was reprinted in Fantastic Novels, May 1949. In the Australian desert a man discovers a fantastic memoir of another who entered an interior world inhabited by the survivors of Atlantis. There are dinosaurs, of course.
Tarzan and the Golden Lion by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 9, 1922- January 20, 1923) introduced Jad-Bal-Ja, the Golden Lion. Tarzan and others come back for another bank withdrawal. This is the first novel to use a Tarzan imposter but not the last.
“The Lure of Atlantis” by Joel Martin Nichols Jr. (Weird Tales, April 1925) is the first story in “The Unique Magazine” to use Atlantis. Later writers like Robert E. Howard would do much more with it. The submarine Nautilus finds the tomb of Wynona of Atlantis but never returns to the surface.
Lovecraft would do a better job of a Horror tale in a submarine in “The Temple” (Weird Tales, September 1925) though he suggests ancient eons without getting into many details. It is the suggestion that makes it creepy.
“The Lost Continent” by Cecil B. White (Amazing Stories, July 1927) was written by a student from British Columbia, who would go on to become an astronomer and physicist. Dr. Joseph Lamont invents a time machine and sends a ship, the Aurantia, back twelve thousand years to Atlantis. They get stuck there.
The Maracot Deep by Arthur Conan Doyle (The Strand Magazine, October 1927-February 1928) is Doyle’s second last Science Fiction piece with “The Disintegration Machine” following in 1929. Professor Maracot and his companions become trapped on the ocean’s floor where they discover an entire civilization living under the sea. Most of the Pulp tales of the 1930s borrow from Doyle.
“The Sunken World” by Stanton A. Coblentz (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1928) has an experimental submarine sunk during World War I end up in Atlantis on the sea floor. The heroes do the usual thing, get involved in politics and help a revolution. E. F. Bleiler in His Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998) says of it: “…one of the better documents of early pulp science-fiction.”
“The Last Test” by Adolphe de Castro & H. P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales, November 1928) is one of Lovecraft’s revisions so he got no credit at the time it appeared. Atlantis is very slight in this one, serving to provide some ancient mystery to an experiment.
“Cauphul, the City Under the Sea” by George Cookman Watson (Amazing Stories, January 1929) has an expedition find lost Atlantis on the sea floor. They are invited in, have Atlantis’s history and super-science explained. “…one of the most boring stories to ever appear in Gernback’s Amazing Stories” according to Bleiler.
“The Boneless Horror” by David H. Keller (Science Wonder Stories, July 1929) was reprinted in Startling Stories, November 1941. This tale explains how Atlantis, which possessed all the lands of the world, was destroyed. First a tunnel being dug beneath the earth explodes, sinking one third. The other two thirds engaged in a world war that ends with both portions destroyed and the Himilayas created as an after effect. Keller indulges in some Yellow Peril silliness with a Fu-like Emperor in Gobi.
“The Shadow Kingdom” by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, August 1929) is the first of two King Kull stories that appeared in Weird Tales. This story is seminal in the history of Sword & Sorcery, being the first. Howard blended history and Atlantean occultism with ghost story elements and Serpent Men to create a masterwork that began a sub-genre of heroic fantasy. King Kull must fight to keep his throne from plotters and an ancient evil, the Serpent Men, who can appear human.
“The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune” by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, September 1929) is the second Kull story. Not as action-oriented, it is a weird gem in its own right. Kull falls under the addictive effects of a magic mirror.
“The Time Oscillator” by Henry F. Kirkham (Science Wonder Stories, December 1929) has time machine inventors go back to Atlantis with ambitions to rule. They set themselves up as gods but only escape with their lives. I have to wonder if Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” wasn’t an influence.
Conclusion
Not all the Atlantis fiction was in magazines. Pierre Benoit had a hit with L’Atlantida or Queen of Atlantis (1920). Some critics accused Benoit of cribbing the book from H. R. Haggard’s The Yellow God (1908), which was not an Atlantis story. Whether this is true or not, it shows that Atlantis was popular outside the Pulps as well. This trend will continue with Dennis Wheatley in the 1930s and Lester Del Rey in the 1950s.
L’Atlantide was made into a film in 1921 by Jacques Feyder. It was called Lost Atlantis in the US. The silent film was three hours long. It shows Atlantis as a grand and beautiful place. This began a parallel history of Atlantis films to inspire Pulp writers to create even more tales of the lost civilization.
Next time…1930s!
