(urth) Atlantis and Gonawanaland

[Gerry Quinn]

The simplest explanation of Atlantis and Gondwanaland is that it's a riff on 
the observations of the narrator in the first novel, when forced by Mr. 
Million to debate the origins of the abos:

******
"...it is disrtinctly possible that the aborigines were descendants of some 
earlier wave of human expansion..."
Mr. Million says mildly, "I would confine myself to arguments of higher 
probability if I were you."
I nevertheless gloss upon the Etruscans, Atlantis, and the tenacity and 
expansionist tendencies of a hypothethical technological culture occupying 
Gondwanaland.
******

The Shadow Children have forgotten the name of their original home. 
Speaking for them, the Old Wise One mentions certain names as possibilities: 
"I, for five, remember all these names."

Of course these possibilities are for the most part absurd (except for 
Africa, I guess) - it is pretty clearly established that the Shadow Children 
are the descendants of human star travellers who arrived a century before 
the French colonists.  They have forgotten the name of their original home 
(though they remember where it is and point out Sol in the sky).  Wolfe 
whimsically has them remember some of the same names mentioned by the 
narrator of the first novel. The names also serve as an additional 
demonstration that they originate from our own culture or a successor, for 
only such a culture would know the names Atlantis and Gondwanaland.

- Gerry Quinn