"...the fair and happy realm which the sea took back unto itself..." (p. 44)
sounds like the city of Ys in Poul and Karen Anderson's King of Ys tetralogy but here refers to Atlantis. Thus, the Andersons wrote four novels about one sunken civilisation and Poul wrote one novel about another. The Atlantis of myth, fantasy and much science fiction (sf), including Doctor Who, was a prehistoric civilisation, sometimes technologically advanced, on a mid-Atlantic continent that sank. In some works of fiction, it even survives into the twenty first century as a submarine civilisation whose inhabitants adapted by becoming merpeople.
Apart from the time travel premise that makes it sf, The Dancer From Atlantis is historical fiction and therefore is set not on the mythical continent but on Crete in accordance with the theory that Cretan Minoan civilisation was the source of the Atlantis legend. I am still rereading so have not yet retrieved all the details.
A well written time travel story makes more sense when reread. One such detail is that we know at an early stage that Reid will lose his wrist watch. Erissa says of the watch, "'You did not have this before..." (p. 40).
She remembers meeting him in her youth and he is soon to meet her in her youth.
8 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Just one tiny correction: ROMA MATER, GALLICENAE, DAHUT, and THE DOG AND THE WOLF, were not four novels but four volumes or parts of one big novel called THE KING OF YS. It was more commercially practical to publish them in parts. JRR Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS is another example of a large novel split into three volumes for commercial reasons.
Glad my comments about Frank Frazetta's painting for THE DANCER FROM ATLANTIS interested you. One of the best cover painings for any of Anderson's books I've seen. By contast, the awful book covers for Baen Books editions of YOUNG FLANDRY, CAPTAIN FLANDRY, and SIR DOMINIC FLANDRY still angers me.
Sean
The authors saw THE KING OF YS as a single novel? Far out.
I wonder how sophisticated any cultures were, that lived on land that flooded as melting glaciers raised sea level.
A society that can be sedentary because of eg: rich salmon runs like the coastal tribes of British Columbia can have large buidings & monuments, but won't spread far inland.
Any similar cultures by the sea during the last glacial period would have left all the evidence on land that is now underwater.
Kaor, Jim!
Reasonable comments. But I thin Neolithic cultures were in many ways quite advanced. I think we get a glimpse of what they were like in Anderson's stories "The Long Remembering" and "The Forest."
Ad astra! Sean
My understanding is that archeologists use 'neolithic' only for cultures that have adopted agriculture. What I'm talking about is in some ways like Neolithic because they can live year round in the same place because of rich local resources, and but doesn't count as neolithic because they haven't adopted agriculture.
They live in one place all year but can't expand their settlements over large areas like a culture which has domesticated plants.
I would expect an agricultural society that started in land that is now under sea would expand upslope to land that is above current sea level & so be known to current archeology.
I was speculating about something like the BC coastal tribes because that would have the sophistication allowed by a sedentary lifestyle, but could not expand into regions where we could see the evidence.
Kaor, Jim!
I can see some Neolithic (which I understand to mean LATE in the Stone Age) cultures gradually switching from hunting/gathering to agriculture. If I had to guess, I think that happened after about 5000 BC.
No, I don't think agriculture started as you suggested, in lands now under the sea. Most historians and archaeologists think it started along rivers: like the Nile, Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates rivers), the Indus valley of India, the Yellow River of China, etc.
Ad astra! Sean
Actually my meaning was that during the ice ages there might have been societies like the British Columbia coastal tribes living off rich sea life, but we can be fairly sure there was no agriculture in lands now under sea, because there would be no reason they would not have spread to lands above current sea level where we would find evidence.
Kaor, Jim!
Understood, I think. But I'm more inclined to thin hunter/gatherers preferred as much as possible to HUNT, as we see in such stories by Anderson as "The Long Remembering" and "The Forest."
Ad astra! Sean
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