The Continent Makers
The Continent Makers is a science fiction novella by American writer L. Sprague de Camp and is part of his Viagens Interplanetarias series. It first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in April 1951 and later appeared in the book The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens (1953) and in a Signet paperback (1971). It has also been translated into Portuguese, Dutch, and Italian.
In the story, geophysicist Gordon Graham works on the Gamanovia Project, which aims to increase Earth's land area by creating a new continent. The plan is to raise land near Ascension Island in the South Atlantic and name the new continent Gamanovia, in honor of Vasco da Gama and João da Nova.
A shady group calling itself the Churchillian Society pretends to be interested in Shakespeare, but it is really trying to learn the project’s secrets and uses Graham’s work for blackmail. When Graham meets Jeru-Bhetiru, an alien woman from the planet Krishna, the Society kidnaps her to pressure him.
Graham teams up with World Federation constable Reinhold Sklar and Jeru’s fiancé Varnipaz bad-Savarun, a diplomat from the Krishnan kingdom of Sotaspé, to thwart the plot. The real enemies are rogue Thothians from the Procyonic star system, who want to seize Ascension for themselves. The mission is complicated by Earth’s own slow bureaucracies and by treachery from the hypnotic reptilian Osirians.
A personal twist is that rescuing Jeru doesn’t help Graham directly, because in her country marriage is arranged for political or economic reasons, not love. Graham and Jeru love each other, but their society treats marriage as a bargain.
The setting is a future Earth ruled by a World Federation. Brazil is the leading power, and space travel is run by a Brazilian agency called Viagens Interplanetarias. Interstellar trips are common but travel is sub-light. Most inhabited worlds have alien civilizations, and Terrans (humans) and the reptilian Osirians are the main spacefaring peoples. The events take place around 2153 AD, making it the third Viagens story set on Earth in the series’ chronology.
Critic P. Schuyler Miller noted that the Earth-based parts may surprise readers, but the story’s aliens and its climactic ending are memorable.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 04:58 (CET).