The Atlantis World

Novel. It is science fiction. It is the third and last book of A. G. Riddle’s Origin Mystery trilogy.

I have not read the book. This is not a chapter-by-chapter reading. The outline below comes from the publisher’s description and from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

What the book is

The title is The Atlantis World.

A. G. Riddle is the author. The series frame is an “origin mystery.” The publisher’s description names the first novel as The Atlantis Gene. The same description, in its Antarctica section, speaks of the aftermath of The Atlantis Plague. So this book assumes those two stories. I have not read them either. I only use what this book’s own description says about them.

Legion Books published an edition on 15 May 2014. The ISBN-13 is 9781940026084. Amazon’s listing for that ISBN gives the ISBN-10 as 1940026083, the publisher as Legion Books, the date as 15 May 2014, and a length of 378 pages.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database also lists 15 May 2014, and it lists this ISBN with 302 pages. It lists other editions on the same day under the author’s own name, with other ISBNs. I have not seen a copy. I report both page counts for the Legion ISBN.

The Atlantis idea

In this series Atlantis is not a sunken island that a ship might reach. The publisher calls the third book an adventure across space and time, into the history of an Atlantean homeworld and culture.

The description is more specific about the hardware. An Atlantean ship was left on Earth. Atlantean science stations stand through the galaxy. The heroes move through the ship’s ruins, then through those stations, then into the past of a culture whose secrets might save humanity.

A signal from deep space sits at the front of the pitch. The publisher says that signal may be humanity’s last chance, and that it could show the truth of human origins.

So the Atlantis idea here is a mother civilization off the Earth, still tied to human beginnings, with wreckage and outposts a team can enter. That is a science-fiction frame. It is the frame the title “Atlantis world” is built to hold.

The plot as the publisher describes it

I am not opening the chapters. The publisher splits the setup by place. I follow that split, and I stop where the description stops.

In northern Morocco, Dr. Kate Warner has cured a global pandemic. She cannot cure herself. She has also misunderstood how large the Atlantis conspiracy is. A new enemy threatens humanity. Her own time is running out, and human civilization is near collapse. A coded message arrives from a possible ally.

At the Arecibo Observatory, Mary Caldwell has spent her life watching for intelligent life. When a sign comes, she is pulled into a struggle older than the human race. She has to decide whom to trust.

In Antarctica, after the Atlantis Plague, Dorian Sloane is under the control of a figure called Ares. When Dorian tries to take control, Ares sets off a cataclysm that spreads around the globe. Ares then tells him what the threat really is. Dorian accepts one last mission. He is to find and kill David Vale and Kate Warner. The orders are to destroy them, not to capture them. He is promised answers of his own if he does it.

Kate, David, and their team then race through the ruins of the Atlantean ship, across the stations in the galaxy, and into that culture’s past. Dorian is behind them. The publisher says their lives are at stake and that time is short. It calls this the final test for Kate, David, and Dorian.

I do not know, from this description, what the signal says, or what the homeworld’s history actually contains. Those answers are the book. I am not going to guess them.

My view

I file this as fiction about origins. The trilogy’s first title, The Atlantis Gene, already points at the human body. This third book, as advertised, points at a homeworld and at a signal from space. Together they make Atlantis the author of humanity, and then a civilization that did not stay on Earth.

That is a modern form of a very old wish. People have long wanted Atlantis to be the parent of later cultures. Riddle moves the parent into genetics and into galactic stations. The move is interesting as a story. It is not a finding.

Antarctica in the description is a present-day theater of the plot, after a plague from the previous novel. It is not, in the text I have, the site of Plato’s sunken island. I keep that distinction. A reader who collects Antarctic Atlantis claims should not add this novel to the pile of evidence.

Arecibo is a real observatory. Its presence in the blurb does not make the signal real. A coded message from an ally, a pandemic already cured, and a figure named Ares are plot. I leave them inside the novel.

I have not read the trilogy. I cannot say whether the science talk is careful. From the outside, the contract with the reader is speed, a collapsing world, and a last revelation about who humans are. That contract is fiction.

Sources

I used these public sources. I did not use the text of the book.

• Amazon listing for ISBN 9781940026084. Publisher description and edition details.
• Internet Speculative Fiction Database title record.