The Last Man from Atlantis

One of Alexander Belyaev’s earliest works. For the first time, the novel saw the light in the fifth through eighth issues of the magazine “World Pathfinder” in 1925. The following year, 1927, it was published in Belyaev’s first author collection together with “The Island of Lost Ships.” Then the novel was long not reprinted until, in 1957, the magazine “Knowledge—Power” (No. 4–5) reprinted it with significant cuts.

Belyaev’s idea about searching for the lost civilization of Atlantis was inspired by a note published in the French newspaper “Figaro”: “In Paris, an association has been established for the study and exploitation of Atlantis.” In the first quarter of the 20th century, such societies arose and collapsed rather often—enterprising swindlers skillfully profited from the heightened interest in Atlantis history (Atlantomania) that spread at that time. Thus, the newspaper note turned, at the writer’s desk, into a prologue to “The Last Man from Atlantis” (the story of Mr. Solly). The material for describing Atlantis itself is drawn largely from Roger Devigne’s book “The Vanished Continent: Atlantis, the Sixth Part of the World” (in Russian, under the title “Atlantis, the Vanished Continent,” published in 1926), which the text of the novella directly mentions (see p. 136). To a great extent, the novella is a work of fiction based on Devigne’s book—just as “The Island of Lost Ships” was a literary version of an American action film.