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Subgenres/Sci-Fi/Lost World

Lost World

Lost world stories find a hidden place that time forgot: a plateau of dinosaurs, a buried civilisation, an island off the map. Expedition and discovery lead the way.

Parent genre: Sci-FiPeaked from the 1880s to the 1930s1,775 books classified in Saga

Where lost world came from

Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) found prehistoric life underground, and H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She (1887) sent explorers to hidden African kingdoms. Haggard's success set off a wave of imitators in the age of empire, when the edges of the map still had blank spaces in them.

Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1912) gave the form its name and its most famous setting, a South American plateau where dinosaurs survive. Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot (1918) and James Hilton's Lost Horizon (1933), which gave the world the word Shangri-La, extended the tradition, and H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness (1936) found something much worse in Antarctica.

As the blank spaces filled in, the form moved: underground, undersea, into deep time or onto other planets. Michael Crichton's Congo (1980) and Jurassic Park (1990) updated it with technology. Modern readers also notice what the classics assumed about empire and the people the explorers found, and newer books often answer them.

What separates it from neighbouring subgenres

Lost world fiction is defined by discovery. A place survives, cut off from history, and the story is the expedition that finds it. That sets it apart from stories that simply travel somewhere strange.

Heroic Fantasy

Both celebrate courage and adventure. Heroic fantasy builds an invented world; lost world fiction hides its wonder in a corner of our own.

Space Exploration

Space exploration took over the lost world's sense of discovery once the map was full. The expedition, the dangers and the wonder are the same; only the distance changes.

Portal Fantasy

Portal fantasy reaches another world through a door. Lost world fiction reaches a hidden part of this one by walking, sailing or digging.

Utopian

Some lost worlds, like Shangri-La, are hidden utopias. Early utopian fiction often used the same device of a traveller stumbling on an unknown society.

Lost world fiction is what happens when the map says 'unexplored' and someone decides to find out why.

How it reads

Expect an expedition: a team of scientists, adventurers and a reluctant narrator, often told as a journal or report. The journey takes up much of the book, and the reveal of the lost world is the centrepiece. Dinosaurs, ancient civilisations and hidden kingdoms are classic finds.

The classics are short, fast and old-fashioned in style. They can be read as adventures and as documents of their time, with attitudes to empire that modern readers will notice.

Frequently asked

Where does the term lost world come from?+

From Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel The Lost World, about an expedition to a South American plateau where dinosaurs still live.

Where should a new reader start?+

The Lost World is short and still entertaining. For a modern version, Jurassic Park updates the idea with genetic engineering.

Is Jurassic Park a lost world story?+

In part. Its dinosaurs are created rather than discovered, but the island park and the expedition structure come straight from the lost world tradition. Crichton named its sequel The Lost World.

Are lost world stories still being written?+

Yes, though they've moved to deep oceans, underground caverns, deep time and other planets as the real map filled in.

Why do some readers find the classics uncomfortable?+

Many were written at the height of European empire and portray the people living in the 'lost' places in colonial terms. Some modern books are written in direct response.

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