From the Bookshelf of Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy"…
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A nice survey of, as it says on the tin, the Atlantis theme in history, science and literature, beginning with Plato's original dialogues (where "Atlantis" was mostly something he made up as a sort of allegory) and proceeding to wackadoo 19th & 20th century grifters and charlatans like Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce (with all of their secret masters, super-science and sorcery), plus some of the more rational adherents (for very relative values of "rational") like Ignatius Donnelly and Augustus
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de Camp's extremely reasonable and evidence-based approach is almost a comical contrast to the various lunatic theories he utterly demolishes. A sunken mid-Pacific Atlantis is impossible because there's no evidence of continental material on the ocean floor. Plato could not have been making reference to, say, Britain, in his original writings because the scope of Greek geographical knowledge did not spread that far. Comparative analysis of contemporary cultures in search of a root parent culture
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Jul 13, 2012
Steven
marked it as to-read
Aug 24, 2016
Simone G.
added it
