Lost world
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The lost world is a
The genre arose during an era when Westerners were discovering the remnants of lost civilizations around the world, such as the tombs of Egypt's
The genre has similar themes to "mythical kingdoms", such as Atlantis and El Dorado.
History
Earlier works, such as
James Hilton's
Hergé also explores the theme in his Tintin comics The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun (1944–48). Here the protagonists encounter an unknown Inca kingdom in the Andes.
Contemporary examples
Contemporary American novelist Michael Crichton invokes this tradition in his novel Congo (1980), which involves a quest for King Solomon's mines, fabled to be in a lost African city called Zinj. During the 1990s, James Gurney published a series of juvenile novels about a lost island called Dinotopia, in which humans live alongside living dinosaurs.
In video games, it is most notably present in the Tomb Raider and Uncharted franchises.
The Hanna-Barbera action cartoon Space Ghost features a segment "Dino Boy in the Lost Valley", about a young boy named Todd who survives a plane crash and lands in a hidden prehistoric valley in South America. In another Hanna-Barbera cartoon Valley of the Dinosaurs science professor John Butler and his family - wife Kim, teenage daughter Katie, young son Greg, and dog Digger - are on a rafting trip along the Amazon River in an uncharted river canyon when they are suddenly swept through a cavern and caught in a whirlpool. Upon resurfacing, they find themselves in a mysterious realm where humans coexist with various prehistoric creatures, including dinosaurs. The Butlers meet and befriend a clan of Neanderthal cavepeople.
In movies, the Indiana Jones franchise makes use of similar concepts. Also comics make use of the idea, such as the Savage Land in Marvel Comics and Themyscira in DC comics.
Geographic settings
Early lost world novels were typically set in parts of the world as yet unexplored by Europeans. Favorite locations were the interior of Africa (many of Haggard's novels, Burroughs'
Later writers favored Antarctica, especially as a
According to Allienne Becker, there was a logical evolution from the lost world subgenre to the planetary romance genre: "When there were no longer any unexplored corners of our earth, the Lost Worlds Romance turned to space."[3]
Brian Stableford makes a related point about Lost Worlds: "The motif has gradually fallen into disuse by virtue of increasing geographical knowledge; these days lost lands have to be very well hidden indeed or displaced beyond some kind of magical or dimensional boundary. Such displacement [...] so transforms their significance that they are better thought of as Secondary Worlds or Otherworlds."[6]
Below is a list of classic lost world titles drawn from Lost Worlds: The Ultimate Anthology. Titles were selected from drawn from 333: A Bibliography of the Science-Fantasy Novel, Jessica Amanda Salmonson's Lost Race checklist and E. F. Bleiler's Science-fiction, the Early Years.
Lost worlds in Africa
- King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard
- Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard
- She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard
- A Rip Van Winkle of the Kalahari by Frederick Carruthers Cornell
- The Great White Queen: A Tale of Treasure and Treason by William Le Queux
- The Gates of Kamt) by Baroness Orczy
- Wings of Danger by Arthur A. Nelson
- The Lost World (1992 film)
Lost worlds in North America
- Thomas A. Janvier
- Fruit of the Desert by Richard Hayes Barry
- The Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour
- H.P. Lovecraft
Lost worlds in Central America
- Phantom City: A Volcanic Romance by William Westall
- The Lost Canyon of the Toltecs by Charles Sumner Seeley
- The Bridge of Light by A. Hyatt Verrill
Lost worlds in South America
- The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells
- The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Web of the Sun by T. S. Stribling
- Immortal Athalia by Harry F. Haley
- Prisoners of the Sun by Hergé
- Lost in the Andes! by Carl Barks, 1948, Donald Duck and his nephews get to know square eggs.
Lost worlds in Asia
- The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling
- The Mountain Kingdom: A Narrative of Adventure by David Lawson Johnstone
- Om: The Secret of Abhor Valley by Talbot Mundy
- Lost Horizon by James Hilton
- The Valley of Eyes Unseen by Gilbert Henry Collins
- Harilek: A Romance of Modern Central Asia by Ganpat (Louis Gompertz)
- Fields of Sleep by E. C. Vivian
- The Purple Sapphire by John Taine
- The Metal Monster by A. Merritt
Lost worlds in Europe and the Middle East
- No-Man’s-Land by John Buchan
- The Knight of the Silver Star by Percy James Brebner
- H.P. Lovecraft
Lost worlds in Australia
- The Lost Explorer by James Francis Hogan
- Marooned on Australia by Ernest Favenc
- Eureka by Owen Hall
Lost worlds at the Poles
- Beyond The Great South Wall by Frank Savile
- The Ke Whonkus People: A Story of the North Pole Country by John O. Greene
- The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The Lost Ones by Ian Cameron
- H.P.Lovecraft.
- Polaris of the Snows by Charles B. Stilson
- The Smoky God by Willis George Emerson
- A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder by James De Mille
Hollow Earth
- At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs
- The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Under the Auroras: A Marvelous Tale of the Interior World by William Jenkins Shaw
- The Moon Pool by A. Merritt
- Dwellers in the Mirage by A. Merritt
- Zanthodon by Lin Carter
- Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
See also
- Lost city (fiction)
- Lost world films (category)
References
- ^
Deane, Bradley (2008). "Imperial Barbarians: Primitive masculinity in Lost World fiction". Victorian Literature and Culture. 36: 205–25. S2CID 162826920. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
- ^ According to Robert E. Morsberger in the "Afterword" of King Solomon's Mines, The Reader's Digest (1993).
- ^ ISBN 0-313-26123-7.
- ^ "The Lost World". "Reader's Guide" (from file name) to Doyle's The Lost World. The Lost World Read 2009 (lostworldread.com).
- ^ "Sex, Jingoism & Black Magic: The Weird Fiction of Dennis Wheatley". Jessica Amanda Salmonson. ©2000. Violet Books (violetbooks.com). Archived 2013-07-17 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Stableford, Brian (1997). "Lost Lands and Continents". The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Online at Science Fiction Encyclopedia (sf-encyclopedia.uk). Retrieved 2019-03-11.
In two linked entries by editor John Clute, the encyclopedia distinguishes "Otherworld" from its subclass "Secondary World", and also from the settings of Supernatural Fiction and Planetary Romance, and from related concepts.
La Gazette des Français du Paraguay, Le Monde Perdu, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - El Mundo Perdido, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle bilingual French Spanish, Numéro 9, Année 1, Asuncion 2013.
External links
- Jessica Amanda Salmonson's checklist of lost-world/lost-race books.
- A checklist of lost-world/lost-race books, and related material at Violet Books
- Lost Worlds: The Ultimate Anthology. A collection of 33 classic tales
- "Lost Worlds" at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction – with linked entries on "Lost Races" and related themes
- "Lost Lands and Continents" and "Lost Races" entries in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)