Numenor and The Devil's Eye

 Last week I took my kids to the local library to get them some more summer books to read.

After spending some time helping my youngest pick out a couple books, I went to go pick out a book or two for myself.  I was kind of feeling something science fiction, so headed over to that section.  I didn't really have anything specifically in mind, and didn't really know what I was looking for.  So, I just browsed the shelves, and tried to find something that looked interesting.  Usually I go to the library with a book in mind that I am going there for the specific purpose of picking up, but that wasn't the case here.

After looking at a few options, I picked up a book called "The Devil's Eye" by Jack McDevitt.  There had actually been a couple books before this that I had thought of or that were recommended based on some of the authors' names I had scanned, but the library didn't have any copies on hand.  So I just grabbed this one.

I had never heard of the author before or this book, so I guess we'll see how it goes. 

There was a big soccer tournament in the Twin Cities last week and over the weekend that all 3 of our kids participated in, so it was fairly busy and I didn't really have a chance to read much.  However, after I had gotten home from the library, I did have a chance to read the prologue and started in on the first chapter.

In the very first paragraph of chapter one, Atlantis is mentioned.  This was kind of funny because this is meant to be a book about an adventure in Space, and here the book opens up with Atlantis.  

Atlantis, if you recall, is associated with Numenor in my story here.  In an earlier post titled "The restoration of Numenor", I linked the sinking of Atlantis with the drowning of Numenor:

This 'wave' is the Numenorean wave that completely submerged that 'island'.  Tolkien would associate this event, and Numenor itself, with the myth of Atlantis.  In fact, the Quenyan/Elvish name for Numenor is "Atalante", meaning "the Downfallen".  Tolkien called it a 'happy accident' that the name matched up so well with Atlantis.

That post focused on the theme of the restoration of Numenor.  Specifically, that it is necessary for Numenor to be restored as part of a 'highway' that is cast up in the midst of the great deep (per D&C 133), with the great deep being Space.

So, here I am in the very first paragraph reading about Atlantis (in a book that is meant to be about Space), and the narrator talks about, of all things, the restoration of Atlantis, and whether it should be done.  How funny.

Here is picture of the page, and I will include the relevant quote in case you can't read it:

here is the first paragraph:

Atlantis, despite all the hoopla, was no big deal.  I mean, how could it be after twelve thousand years at the bottom of the sea?  Alex and I looked out the cabin windows at the ruins, which weren't much more than mounds in the quiet, clear water.  You could still pick out a wall here and there.  Not much else.  There'd been periodic talk of restoration over the centuries, but the prevailing opinion had always been that if you restored it, it would no longer be Atlantis.

This is a fascinating phrase not only for the mention of restoring Atlantis right at the beginning of a space novel, but for the mention that if restored, it would no longer be Atlantis.

On that second point, in context of my story, my answer is of course it wouldn't be, and all the more reason to restore it!  Atalante, as mentioned above, means "the Downfallen".  If that world is restored, it will no longer be Downfallen, but something else.  It would require a new Name given to it by the Elves.  Meaning, the author here is writing something they hadn't obviously intended, but works very well with both the concept or idea of restoration and the original meaning of Atalante (Atlantis) that solely points to its downfall.

It needs to be restored, for the very purpose of it no longer being Atlantis, if you follow.

In any case, I hadn't read even a sample of the book at the library, so to come home and see mention of Atlantis and its restoration in the very first paragraph of the first chapter in a book that was about space travel with a picture of spaceship flying toward a star on its cover was something I took notice of.

I thought the caption that started off Chapter 1 was interesting as well.  The quote goes:

Civilization is about constructing and maintaining a coherent time line to the past.  If we are to know who we are, and where we are going, we must remember where we have been and who took us there.

-- Etude in Black

I will need to look up this "Etude in Black" (if it a thing, or just made up for the novel), because this Black mention, along with a song (the Etude), seems to also match up well to the story of Numenor - a Black or Dark Study, perhaps.  But, the quote itself is interesting because that is essentially what I argue that we have lost in our present state.  We have no coherent understanding or our past, and are lost as a result.  This is particularly true for the Numenorean story.  Pippin and Merry worked very hard, apparently, in the years following the War of the Ring to try and reconstruct and capture the timeline of the first 3 ages that led up to their own adventures.  Appendix B "The Tale of Years" captures some of the results of their labor, where we actually are given a literal timeline of dates and important events. 

But, for the period of the 2nd age - the Numenorean Age - we get the disclaimer "Of events in Middle-earth the records are few and brief, and their dates are often uncertain".  There wasn't a lot to work with, basically, and many things were lost.  Part of our story here involves the restoration of not only the land of Numenor, but also the true tales of what happened - a restoration of a world and its stories.

Lastly, the mention of Numenor (in the form of the Atlantis myth) in a book titled "The Devil's Eye" was interesting for another personal reason.  Over the last several weeks, I have had imagery come to my mind of scenes of the destruction of Eressea by the Numenoreans.  These are sort of dramatic scenes, usually set to music while I am on a morning run or something.  Many of these scenes conclude where my vision zooms out, and as I pan away from the scene, I find that these images have been happening within the eye of Sauron, as he sits upon a throne with an evil smile on his face.  In other words, the Numenorean scenes inevitably shift out and away first to Sauron's eye (which encompassed the scene), then to his face, and then finally to his whole Being sitting on this chair as my vision continues to move farther back from whatever Numenorean scene I had been imagining, if that makes sense.

Since Sauron was the "Devil" of the 2nd Age, seeing this mention of Atlantis in a book called The Devil's Eye called to mind those scenes.