Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizatio (26 page)
Authors: David Standish
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BOOK: Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizatio
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6
HOLLOW UTOPIAS, ROMANCES, AND A LITTLE KIDDIE LIT
TOWARD THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
, the hollow earth began turning up regularly in fiction. Symmes’ famous holes were well-known, if widely ridiculed, and Verne’s
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
became a perennial best seller that moved the idea from the esoteric fringe into mainstream culture. Writers found it had many uses—as a handy place to set utopias, or their dark or satiric mirror opposite, dystopias; as somewhere to set improbable romances now that formerly remote, unknown corners of the earth were becoming less believable as settings the more they were explored and reported upon; and as a convenient fairyland where magical adventures could take place to amuse younger readers. Some used it for several of these ends at once.
, the hollow earth began turning up regularly in fiction. Symmes’ famous holes were well-known, if widely ridiculed, and Verne’s
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
became a perennial best seller that moved the idea from the esoteric fringe into mainstream culture. Writers found it had many uses—as a handy place to set utopias, or their dark or satiric mirror opposite, dystopias; as somewhere to set improbable romances now that formerly remote, unknown corners of the earth were becoming less believable as settings the more they were explored and reported upon; and as a convenient fairyland where magical adventures could take place to amuse younger readers. Some used it for several of these ends at once.
The period between the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century saw the scribbling of more utopian fiction than any other time before or since. Jean Pfaelzer, in
The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896,
says that more than one hundred such fictions were written in the United States in that ten years alone. There were only a few before the Civil War—
Symzonia
comes to mind—because the culture hadn’t needed utopian literary productions before then. From the beginning America was seen as its own meta-utopia, one coming into actual existence. European settlers, dating back to the Pilgrims, had thought of it that way, and generations of new arrivals after them carried on the belief. If one forgot about those inconvenient Indians (and most tried to), North America’s bounteous landscape and democratic vistas were an empty canvas on which to paint actual utopian experiments. It was a perfect society aborning—the City on the Hill, a moral beacon to the world—no need to create literary counterparts.
The Utopian Novel in America, 1886–1896,
says that more than one hundred such fictions were written in the United States in that ten years alone. There were only a few before the Civil War—
Symzonia
comes to mind—because the culture hadn’t needed utopian literary productions before then. From the beginning America was seen as its own meta-utopia, one coming into actual existence. European settlers, dating back to the Pilgrims, had thought of it that way, and generations of new arrivals after them carried on the belief. If one forgot about those inconvenient Indians (and most tried to), North America’s bounteous landscape and democratic vistas were an empty canvas on which to paint actual utopian experiments. It was a perfect society aborning—the City on the Hill, a moral beacon to the world—no need to create literary counterparts.
Before the Civil War America seemed bright with this promise of perfectability, of a utopia being realized. But in the years following the war, for many, that promise shattered in bewildering, demoralizing ways. The industrialization of the United States, begun in earnest during the Civil War, went roaring on, bringing with it huge change, for better and worse. A grid of shining steel rails was being laid on the country, making movement easy in unprecedented ways. The Gilded Age (so named by Mark Twain) saw the rise of the first cyclopean corporations and the multimillionaire robber barons who headed them. Monopolies and trusts, new mutant financial creatures, ran roughshod over economic life. With all that money, corruption was inevitable, and it reached the inner sanctums of the White House. Factories multiplied like mushrooms after rain, and people poured out of the countryside to work in them, creating a huge urban laboring class that hadn’t existed before. Most worked long hours for little pay—another source of social difficulty. This population shift gave rise to big cities, with all their attendant pleasures and problems.
54
It was a qualitative change, from tranquil, uneventful village life where everyone knew everyone else, to the anonymous, crowded, uncaring, fast-paced metropolis. Waves of new immigrants were also rolling into the cities looking for work.
54
It was a qualitative change, from tranquil, uneventful village life where everyone knew everyone else, to the anonymous, crowded, uncaring, fast-paced metropolis. Waves of new immigrants were also rolling into the cities looking for work.
And the stuff these factory workers were turning out! It was a period of galloping materialism fueled by almost overwhelming technological change—telegraph, telephone, electric lights, automobiles, movies, even air conditioning—and everyone seemed to be out to get his share (or more), using whatever methods came to mind. Darwinism, chiefly as interpreted by Herbert Spencer, was being applied to the social organism, and survival of the fittest became the ringing slogan of the day (it helped the robber barons sleep peacefully at night). Forget milquetoast Sunday school lessons about loving thy neighbor and treating him as you would yourself. It was a ruthless, bloodthirsty world, and only the strong survived. Poverty simply meant you were inferior.
All of this was a long way from the America of Jeffersonian dreams. It added up to major-league culture shock on a national scale. But social upheaval, disruption, disillusionment, and confusion weren’t confined to the United States. The shock wave was worldwide. And one response writers had was to create literary utopias offering solutions to the rampant social problems they saw all around them. They began constructing ideal, alternate societies and/or dystopic satires on the evils they saw proliferating in their own. Most of these are forgotten, or nearly so, and for good reason—they were generally pretty bad. But some have lasted, most notably Samuel Butler’s
Erewhon
(1872) and Edward Bellamy’s
Looking Backward
(1888). Mark Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(1889) can arguably be tossed in here as well, as could H. G. Wells’ still nicely creepy
The Time Machine
(1895). Others that haven’t quite fallen off the cultural charts into oblivion include William Morris’s
News from Nowhere
(1890), William Dean Howells’
A Traveler from Altruria
(1894), and Wells’
When the Sleeper Wakes
(1899). The list of novels that only academic utopian specialists remember would run to many pages.
Erewhon
(1872) and Edward Bellamy’s
Looking Backward
(1888). Mark Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
(1889) can arguably be tossed in here as well, as could H. G. Wells’ still nicely creepy
The Time Machine
(1895). Others that haven’t quite fallen off the cultural charts into oblivion include William Morris’s
News from Nowhere
(1890), William Dean Howells’
A Traveler from Altruria
(1894), and Wells’
When the Sleeper Wakes
(1899). The list of novels that only academic utopian specialists remember would run to many pages.
It was a dark and stormy night … inside the hollow earth.
Well, it wasn’t
really
dark and stormy down there. But the writer who kicked off this thirty-year fling with utopias and dystopias inside the hollow earth with
The Coming Race
(1871) is best remembered for those timelessly dopey opening words to his 1830 novel,
Paul Clifford,
made famous by Snoopy at his typewriter atop his doghouse.
55
really
dark and stormy down there. But the writer who kicked off this thirty-year fling with utopias and dystopias inside the hollow earth with
The Coming Race
(1871) is best remembered for those timelessly dopey opening words to his 1830 novel,
Paul Clifford,
made famous by Snoopy at his typewriter atop his doghouse.
55
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) was a prolific, popular author in his lifetime. Of his many books, only
The Last Days of Pompeii
(1834) is remembered, largely because it was filmed in 1908, 1913, 1935 (Basil Rathbone as Pontius Pilate), and 1960 (Steve Reeves as Marcus), and made into a miniseries in 1984 (Ernest Borgnine as Marcus). He was born in London as just plain Edward Bulwer and added the hyphenate Lytton, his mother’s surname, after inheriting her ancestral family manse.
The Last Days of Pompeii
(1834) is remembered, largely because it was filmed in 1908, 1913, 1935 (Basil Rathbone as Pontius Pilate), and 1960 (Steve Reeves as Marcus), and made into a miniseries in 1984 (Ernest Borgnine as Marcus). He was born in London as just plain Edward Bulwer and added the hyphenate Lytton, his mother’s surname, after inheriting her ancestral family manse.
Compared to the pace in Verne, the narrator in
The Coming Race,
an American, gets below in nothing flat. Once he is out in the well-lit, carefully groomed landscape of the inner earth, he is discovered by members of a serene, advanced civilization. They take him home and commence teaching him about their society—in fairly alarming detail.
The Coming Race,
an American, gets below in nothing flat. Once he is out in the well-lit, carefully groomed landscape of the inner earth, he is discovered by members of a serene, advanced civilization. They take him home and commence teaching him about their society—in fairly alarming detail.
They are the descendants of surface dwellers who fled from prehistoric floods by descending into caverns. In this
The Coming Race
is only a semi–hollow earth novel, in that the interior space, while vast, is a cavern system further enlarged by vril, to which they owe everything from their living space to their social perfection. It’s a versatile source of energy, both physical and mental, created from focused willpower and directed by wands that the An-ya carry—the essence of Nietzsche turned into an all-purpose laser zapper.
The Coming Race
is only a semi–hollow earth novel, in that the interior space, while vast, is a cavern system further enlarged by vril, to which they owe everything from their living space to their social perfection. It’s a versatile source of energy, both physical and mental, created from focused willpower and directed by wands that the An-ya carry—the essence of Nietzsche turned into an all-purpose laser zapper.
You name it, vril can do it: “It can destroy like the flash of lightning yet, differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life … by this agency they rend their way through the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they extract the light which supplies their lamps.”
Bulwer-Lytton was a politician who started out as a liberal member of Parliament in 1831 but resigned in 1841 over the government’s Corn Law policies. He returned in 1852 as a conservative Tory, and
The Coming Race
reflects both his political interests and his somewhat conflicted views on social ideals.
The Coming Race
reflects both his political interests and his somewhat conflicted views on social ideals.
Vril has created a society of perfect harmony. No competition or ego-driven striving for power or fame. No poverty—robots do all the work. No crime. No lawyers. All worship the same Creator—there are no pointless theological disputes and religious services are short. They have flying boats and detachable vril-powered wings they use to flit from place to place. Like the Symzonians, they’re all handsome and beautiful, strict vegetarians and teetotalers, most living well beyond one hundred years. Everyone’s kind to everyone else and nobody’s rude—not even the kids (
truly
utopian!). The economy is a sort of laissez-faire socialism. They’ve moved beyond base, lowest-common-denominator democracy, which they consider a barbaric social structure. You can be rich and have vast estates if you feel like it. But most don’t bother, preferring to live modestly, kick back, and smell the roses. Working as an obscure artisan is as valued as being a muckety-muck, and not working at all is just fine. “They rank repose among the chief blessings of life.”
truly
utopian!). The economy is a sort of laissez-faire socialism. They’ve moved beyond base, lowest-common-denominator democracy, which they consider a barbaric social structure. You can be rich and have vast estates if you feel like it. But most don’t bother, preferring to live modestly, kick back, and smell the roses. Working as an obscure artisan is as valued as being a muckety-muck, and not working at all is just fine. “They rank repose among the chief blessings of life.”
Women down here have equal rights—and then some. The beautiful Gy, as the women are called, are bigger and stronger than the men (“an important element in the consideration and maintenance of female rights”) and generally smarter, exercising a better control of vril, “her will being more resolute than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril force.” Most work is performed by children as a form of training. One job generally given to the little girls is “the destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile” because the girls are “by constitution more ruthless under the influence of fear or hate.” The Gys initiate courtship, which leads to most of the narrator’s troubles while he’s there. One Gy named Zee falls in love with him, pursuing him so avidly it scares the hell out of him, largely because her important father doesn’t like this inferior creature from above and has plans to vaporize him with vril to eliminate the problem. At the end she selflessly helps him escape back to the surface world. He writes this book to warn people about the An-ya’s plans to come to the surface and kill humans and start over—
The Coming Race
of the title.
The Coming Race
of the title.
The Coming Race
draws on two important ideas of the time: evolution and the emerging machine age. The An-ya are an evolutionary step ahead of surface people and have solved the problems of the nineteenth century. But their superior, rational society comes at a price, and is ultimately seen as a threat. They’re coming to get us! So is evolution, even if true, a good thing or not? Maybe not so good if you happen to be the Neanderthals and the brainy Cro-Magnons are coming. As regards the machine age, the novel suggests that science, and the technology it produces, will eliminate all difficulties. As J. O. Bailey puts it in
Pilgrims Through Space and Time,
“By gaining control over such forces as electricity … man will establish a civilization in which there will be no toil, struggle, or poverty.” Again and again, science will be the savior, and electricity the chief instrument of salvation. It’s presented as a virtual religion in many of these novels.
56
draws on two important ideas of the time: evolution and the emerging machine age. The An-ya are an evolutionary step ahead of surface people and have solved the problems of the nineteenth century. But their superior, rational society comes at a price, and is ultimately seen as a threat. They’re coming to get us! So is evolution, even if true, a good thing or not? Maybe not so good if you happen to be the Neanderthals and the brainy Cro-Magnons are coming. As regards the machine age, the novel suggests that science, and the technology it produces, will eliminate all difficulties. As J. O. Bailey puts it in
Pilgrims Through Space and Time,
“By gaining control over such forces as electricity … man will establish a civilization in which there will be no toil, struggle, or poverty.” Again and again, science will be the savior, and electricity the chief instrument of salvation. It’s presented as a virtual religion in many of these novels.
56
One such is Mary Bradley Lane’s
Mizora: A Prophecy.
When the visitor-narrator voices shock that the inhabitants of Mizora have no religion, a resident replies, “Oh, daughter of the dark ages, turn to the benevolent and ever-willing Science. She is the goddess who has led
us
out of ignorance and superstition; out of degradation and disease, and every other wretchedness that superstitious degraded humanity has known. She … has placed us in a broad, free, independent, noble, useful and grandly happy life.”
Mizora: A Prophecy.
When the visitor-narrator voices shock that the inhabitants of Mizora have no religion, a resident replies, “Oh, daughter of the dark ages, turn to the benevolent and ever-willing Science. She is the goddess who has led
us
out of ignorance and superstition; out of degradation and disease, and every other wretchedness that superstitious degraded humanity has known. She … has placed us in a broad, free, independent, noble, useful and grandly happy life.”
The goddess Science has worked wonders in Mizora, but She had a little help. The critical factor in making their perfect society possible has been the total elimination of
men.
Mizora is all-female. Men have been extinct for 2,000 years, and with their disappearance all social ills have disappeared as well.
men.
Mizora is all-female. Men have been extinct for 2,000 years, and with their disappearance all social ills have disappeared as well.
Mizora
seems to have been the first feminist utopia—certainly the first set in the hollow earth. Originally published under a pseudonym as “The Narrative of Vera Zarovitch” in the
Cincinnati Commercial
between November 6, 1880, and February 5, 1881, it didn’t appear in book form until 1890.
57
Its author was a Cincinnati housewife. The story takes its geography directly from John Cleves Symmes. The Cincinnati area was his old stomping ground, and his devoted son Americus had just written a summary defense of his father’s ideas.
The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres
appeared in 1878, two years before Lane’s story began serialization.
seems to have been the first feminist utopia—certainly the first set in the hollow earth. Originally published under a pseudonym as “The Narrative of Vera Zarovitch” in the
Cincinnati Commercial
between November 6, 1880, and February 5, 1881, it didn’t appear in book form until 1890.
57
Its author was a Cincinnati housewife. The story takes its geography directly from John Cleves Symmes. The Cincinnati area was his old stomping ground, and his devoted son Americus had just written a summary defense of his father’s ideas.
The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres
appeared in 1878, two years before Lane’s story began serialization.
As the novel opens, Vera, an aristocratic Russian, has been sentenced to life in the Siberian mines for her revolutionary opinions. Bribing her way free, she escapes northward in disguise on a whaling ship, which crashes into an ice floe and sinks in Arctic waters. She and other survivors make their way to an Eskimo encampment, but she wakes up one day to find the others in her party gone. She overwinters with the Eskimos and accompanies them in the spring as they head north to hunt. At about eighty-five degrees latitude, they come upon the open polar sea. Vera feels an overpowering desire to sail farther north on it. The accommodating Eskimos build her a boat on the spot, and she sets off.
Soon she drifts right into the closing pages of
Arthur Gordon Pym:
her boat is caught in a fast current and travels in an accelerating circle, while before her rises “a column of mist,” spreading into “a curtain that appeared to be suspended in midair … while sparks of fire, like countless swarms of fire-flies, darted through it and blazed out into a thousand brilliant hues”—as if she’s sailing through the aurora borealis itself. Not inconveniently, “a semi-stupor, born of exhaustion and terror, seized me in its merciful embrace.” She later awakes along a broad river flowing through paradise:
Arthur Gordon Pym:
her boat is caught in a fast current and travels in an accelerating circle, while before her rises “a column of mist,” spreading into “a curtain that appeared to be suspended in midair … while sparks of fire, like countless swarms of fire-flies, darted through it and blazed out into a thousand brilliant hues”—as if she’s sailing through the aurora borealis itself. Not inconveniently, “a semi-stupor, born of exhaustion and terror, seized me in its merciful embrace.” She later awakes along a broad river flowing through paradise:
The sky appeared bluer, and the air balmier than even that of Italy’s favored clime. The turf that covered the banks was smooth and fine, like a carpet of rich green velvet. The fragrance of tempting fruit was wafted by the zephyrs from numerous orchards. Birds of bright plumage flitted among the branches, anon breaking forth into wild and exultant melody, as if they rejoiced to be in so favored a clime. And truly it seemed a land of enchantment.
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