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=                             Lost_world                             =
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                            Introduction
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The lost world is a subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres
that involves the discovery of an unknown Earth civilization. It began
as a subgenre of the late-Victorian adventure romance and remains
popular into the 21st century.

The genre arose during an era when Western archaeologists discovered
and studied civilizations around the world previously unknown to them,
through disciplines such as Egyptology, Assyriology, or Mesoamerican
studies. Thus, real stories of archaeological finds inspired writings
on the topic. Between 1871 and the First World War, the number of
published lost world narratives, set in every continent, increased
significantly.


The genre has similar themes to "mythical kingdoms", such as Atlantis
and El Dorado.


                              History
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'King Solomon's Mines' (1885) by H. Rider Haggard is sometimes
considered the first lost world narrative. Haggard's novel shaped the
form and influenced later lost world narratives, including Rudyard
Kipling's 'The Man Who Would Be King' (1888), Arthur Conan Doyle's
'The Lost World' (1912), Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'The Land That Time
Forgot' (1918), A. Merritt's 'The Moon Pool' (1918), and H. P.
Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness' (1931).

Earlier works, such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 'Vril: The Power of the
Coming Race' (1871) and Samuel Butler's 'Erewhon' (1872) use a similar
plot as a vehicle for Swiftian social satire rather than romantic
adventure. Other early examples are Simon Tyssot de Patot's 'Voyages
et Aventures de Jacques Massé' (1710), which includes a prehistoric
fauna and flora, and Robert Paltock's 'The Life and Adventures of
Peter Wilkins' (1751), an 18th-century imaginary voyage inspired by
both Defoe and Swift, in which a man named Peter Wilkins discovers a
race of winged people on an isolated island surrounded by high cliffs
as in Burroughs's Caspak. The 1820 Hollow Earth novel 'Symzonia' has
also been cited as the first of the lost world form, and Jules Verne's
'Journey to the Center of the Earth' (1864) and 'The Village in the
Treetops' (1901) popularized the theme of surviving pockets of
prehistoric species. J.-H. Rosny aîné would later publish 'The Amazing
Journey of Hareton Ironcastle' (1922), a novel where an expedition in
the heart of Africa discovers a mysterious area with an ecosystem from
another world, with alien flora and fauna. Edgar Allan Poe's 'The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket' (1838) has certain lost
world elements towards the end of the tale.

James Hilton's 'Lost Horizon' (1933) enjoyed popular success in using
the genre as a takeoff for popular philosophy and social comment. It
introduced the name Shangri-La, a meme for the idealization of the
lost world as a Paradise. Similar books where the inhabitants of the
lost world are seen as superior to the outsiders, are Joseph O'Neill's
'Land under England' (1935) and Douglas Valder Duff's 'Jack Harding’s
Quest' (1939).

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
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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
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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' Tarzan novels) or inland
South America (Doyle's 'The Lost World', Merritt's 'The Face in the
Abyss'), as well as Central Asia (Kipling's 'The Man Who Would Be
King', Haggard's 'Ayesha: The Return of She', Merritt's 'The Metal
Monster', Hilton's 'Lost Horizon') and Australia (James Francis
Hogan's 'The Lost Explorer' and 'Eureka' by Owen Hall (pseudonym of
New Zealand politician Hugh Lusk)).

Later writers favored Antarctica, especially as a refuge for
prehistoric species. Burroughs' 'The Land That Time Forgot' and its
sequels were set on the island of Caprona (a.k.a. Caspak) in the
Southern Ocean. In Edison Marshall's 'Dian of the Lost Land' (1935),
Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and mammoths survive in the "Moss Country",
a sheltered warm corner of the continent. Dennis Wheatley's novel 'The
Man Who Missed the War' (1945) also deals with a warm and hidden area
on the continent, where there live humans such as the descendants of
Atlantis. In Jeremy Robinson's 'Antarktos Rising' (2007), dinosaurs
and Nephilim emerge as the icecap melts.  Mat Johnson's 'Pym' (2011)
describes giant white hominids living in ice caves.  Ian Cameron's
'The Mountains at the Bottom of the World' (1972) has a relict
population of Paranthropus living not quite in Antarctica, but in the
southern Chilean Andes.  'Crusoe Warburton' (1954), by Victor Wallace
Germains, describes an island in the far South Atlantic, with a lost,
pre-gunpowder empire.

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."

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."  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.

Below is a list of classic lost world titles drawn from
[http://www.rohpress.com/masterworks_lost_worlds.html 'Lost Worlds:
The Ultimate Anthology']. Titles were selected from '333: A
Bibliography of the Science-Fantasy Novel', Jessica Amanda Salmonson's
[https://www.rohpress.com/lost_race_check_guide_1.html Lost Race
Checklist] and E. F. Bleiler's 'Science-fiction, the Early Years'.


Lost worlds in Africa
=======================
*'King Solomon's Mines' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'She: A History of Adventure' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'Allan Quatermain' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The People of the Mist' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'Benita: An African Romance' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Ghost Kings' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Yellow God: An Idol of Africa' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'Queen Sheba's Ring' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Holy Flower' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Ivory Child' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'She and Allan' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'Heu-Heu; or, The Monster' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Treasure of the Lake' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'The Return of Tarzan' (and many other Tarzan books) by Edgar Rice
Burroughs
*'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
*'By the Gods Beloved' (also known as 'The Gates of Kamt') by Baroness
Orczy
*'Wings of Danger' by Arthur A. Nelson


Lost worlds in North America
==============================
*'The Aztec Treasure House' by Thomas A. Janvier
*'Fruit of the Desert' by Richard Hayes Barry
*'The Haunted Mesa' by Louis L'Amour
*'The Mound' by 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
*'Heart of the World' by Sir H. Rider Haggard
*'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 Sir 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.
*'Under The Andes' by Rex Stout, 1914, This is the same author that
wrote the Nero Wolfe detective series.
*' Up', 2009 film by Pixar Animation Studios released by Walt Disney
Pictures.


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
*'The Rose of Tibet' by Lionel Davidson


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
*'The Nameless City' by 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
==========================
*'The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket' by Edgar Allan Poe
*'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
*'At the Mountains of Madness' by H.P. Lovecraft
*'The Greatest Adventure' by John Taine
*'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' (and its sequels) 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 Centre of the Earth' by Jules Verne


                              See also
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* Lost city (fiction)
* Tolkien and Edwardian adventure stories
* Lost world films (category)


                             References
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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
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* [http://www.rohpress.com/lost_race_check_guide.html Jessica Amanda
Salmonson's checklist of lost-world/lost-race books.]
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20081221153827/http://www.violetbooks.com/lostrace-check-guide.html
A checklist of lost-world/lost-race books, and related material at
Violet Books]
* [http://www.rohpress.com/masterworks_lost_worlds.html Lost Worlds:
The Ultimate Anthology. A collection of 33 classic tales]
* [http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lost_worlds "Lost Worlds"] at 'The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction' - with linked entries on "Lost Races"
and related themes
* [http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=lost_lands_and_continents "Lost
Lands and Continents"] and
[http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=lost_races "Lost Races"] entries
in 'The Encyclopedia of Fantasy' (1997)


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_world