If Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an esotericist himself, was drawing on memory of another lifetime in part when he created the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and if he remembered Atlantis, then, approaching Atlantis as a historical place, not merely a speculative one, to me, was in order.
So to begin these stories -- which I first put to paper in the late 80s/early 90s -- I began with research. Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1889 was first. This oft debunked by scholars of various scientific disciplines gave some good measure of structuring the place. Phylos the Thibetan's "A Dweller on Two Planets" published by Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1974 gave clues as to the types of technology that might be available in a time in Atlantis that would be similar to Victorian England, when the old and the new were colliding (typewriters and horseless carriages were beginning to appear). Taking a note from Frank Waters' "The Book of the Hopi" which chronicles the four migrations to Turtle Island (the North American continent) and listing the first one as "red" planted the seed that Turtle Island was first populated by a significant part of the Atlantean diaspora, and therefore, they would resemble Native Americans & Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Coasts of North, Central and South America.
The research, however, didn't end there. So, for those of you who read fiction (as do I) keep in mind that writers do go to nonfiction works to create their stories.
Because it's set in Atlantis, it would be called speculative. However, in writing these stories, I strive to approach it as if it were historical in reference -- stories that happened in a real time and place long since gone.
So to begin these stories -- which I first put to paper in the late 80s/early 90s -- I began with research. Ignatius Donnelly's "Atlantis: The Antediluvian World" published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1889 was first. This oft debunked by scholars of various scientific disciplines gave some good measure of structuring the place. Phylos the Thibetan's "A Dweller on Two Planets" published by Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1974 gave clues as to the types of technology that might be available in a time in Atlantis that would be similar to Victorian England, when the old and the new were colliding (typewriters and horseless carriages were beginning to appear). Taking a note from Frank Waters' "The Book of the Hopi" which chronicles the four migrations to Turtle Island (the North American continent) and listing the first one as "red" planted the seed that Turtle Island was first populated by a significant part of the Atlantean diaspora, and therefore, they would resemble Native Americans & Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Coasts of North, Central and South America.
The research, however, didn't end there. So, for those of you who read fiction (as do I) keep in mind that writers do go to nonfiction works to create their stories.
Because it's set in Atlantis, it would be called speculative. However, in writing these stories, I strive to approach it as if it were historical in reference -- stories that happened in a real time and place long since gone.