Earliest instance of Atlantis-as-spaceship depiction in media?

March 3, 2016 5:58 AM

I've been watching the 1978-1979 Hanna-Barbera Godzilla series with my son. There's one episode where the characters encounter the lost city of Atlantis, which turns out to be an alien spaceship. The depiction is similar to the Atlantis city/ship from the Stargate TV series. I'm wondering when the earliest depiction of Atlantis as spaceship occurred.

TV Tropes and the Atlantis in Popular Culture page at Wikipedia list other examples but none from before 1978. Are you aware of any earlier depictions where the city of Atlantis is portrayed as a spaceship?

posted by audi alteram partem to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

Flight 714, an Adventures of Tintin story, depicts the discovery of a remote city on an island in the ocean populated by statues that look just like space travelers - that then slides into the ocean after a volcano eruption. Published in the late 60s.
posted by scolbath at 6:37 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't know the answer to this, but as a writer and vintage pop culture enthusiast with a specialization in the weird and high strangeness, I suggest you contact Greg Bishop and give him a crack at this question.

I'm certain the answer goes back to something in the 20's or 30's, which then itself goes back to somewhere in the late 1800's. Which then relates to a story or myth earlier than that.

Jules Verne was writing stories like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Around the World in Eighty Days, The Mysterious Island (the 50's movie based on this book is obscure but awesome!) , and Five Weeks in a Balloon starting in the mid-1800's. His stories mostly circle around this idea of Atlantis or similar as a technologically advanced hidden culture. His influences didn't just come from thin air.

How old is your son? If you're watching the original Godzilla cartoon (a gateway drug if ever there was one - and you're right! the Atlantis episode is excellent! the whole series draws very cleverly on more sophisticated stories and themes) you would not go wrong to watch 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) or Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959.) It's a slippery slope from there - ha ha - enjoy!!)
posted by jbenben at 7:02 AM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Atlantis Mystery (l'Énigme de l'Atlantide) by the Belgian artist Edgar P. Jacobs was the seventh comic book in the Blake and Mortimer series, first published in Tintin magazine from March 30, 1955 to May 30, 1956. It appeared in book format in 1957.

I haven't read it, but from the cover it should be obvious that the Atlanteans are depicted as a space-faring nation.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 8:10 AM on March 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

At least 1938. From Astounding Science Fiction: "And Jake thought the Genziks were Earth people, maybe folks from Atlantis, who had reached Mars thousands of years ago, long before the present Terrestrial race sent a spaceship there."

As jbenben says the rediscovery of Atlantis in some strange corner of the universe is very much a late 19th century/early 20th phenomenon. L. Sprague de Camp has a chapter on it in his Lost Continents, though sadly you can't read all of it in Google Books.
posted by crazy with stars at 12:54 PM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

There is an actual spaceship called Atlantis, which was formally commissioned in 1979. Don't know when the name was chosen.
posted by w0mbat at 6:20 PM on March 3, 2016 [1 favorite]