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Here’s a fun story: the ghost island of 1831! It was given various names by the many men who claimed it – “Julia,” “Ferdinandea,” “Graham Island.” When it disappeared, those men mostly forgot about it. 

But Charles Lyell, a good friend and colleague of Charles Darwin, was really excited about the island. He saw this underwater volcano as evidence of this theory of geologic uniformitarianism (the idea that the forces we see at work in the world today have always been shaping the world) and wrote about it the second volume of his major work. It was called Principles of Geology: being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth’s surface, by reference to causes now in operation.

Leshp may be based in part on the Roundworld island of Ferdinandea, an island near Sicily that rises above sea level after periodic volcanic eruptions, only to disappear again after it is sufficiently eroded. When it made its most recent appearance in 1831, it was claimed as territory by four nations (The United Kingdom, France, pre-Italian-unification Naples, and Spain).

Well, that explains the territorial feuding part, yes. However a city of squid-creatures that has lots of squiddy art about the place and occasionally rises to bedevil humanity also echoes R'lyeh, home of Great Cthulhu.

To add a third level of annotation, a theme of Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy** concerns the world being brought to the brink of World War Three, over ownership of the hitherto disregarded island of Fernando Poo. Manipulated by the evil Illuminati, the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans each claim that their legitimate sphere of interest is being interfered with, and one of the others must have destabilised a friendly sovereign nation by starting that coup d'état. (Meanwhile, the British don’t want another bloody damn war, not when we’ve only just paid for the last one, North Sea Oil’s coming on stream, and the balance of payments is straightening itself out).  It falls to the intrepid crew of the free submarine Leif Eriksson to sort things out… a submarine, whose crew are on a mission to prevent war breaking out over ownership of a previously unknown and disregarded island. Hmmm…

“Fernando Poo” really exists, in the Bight of Africa on the Atlantic coast. Initially named after its Portuguese discoverer - a man with something in common with Ponce da Quirm - independence saw it retitled Sao Principe. Shea and Wilson use it as a gateway to a Lovecraftian world of squid-creatures, Unmentionables, and makers of eldrich and evil artistic artefacts.

*Which will, incidentally, be celebrating its 10th anniversary in a couple of weeks.

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