Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizatio (40 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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The Hollow Earth
by Rudy Rucker is fresher and more imaginative. Set in the 1830s, it features Edgar Allan Poe as one of the main characters. In the novel he is Eddie, an endearingly disreputable reprobate. Poe’s child bride Virginia appears as well, although she dies early on. Eventually Eddie is discovered to have pulled her teeth as grisly souvenirs, just as Poe’s narrator does in “Berenice.” Rucker clearly did his research and wasn’t afraid of a certain amount of black humor.
by Rudy Rucker is fresher and more imaginative. Set in the 1830s, it features Edgar Allan Poe as one of the main characters. In the novel he is Eddie, an endearingly disreputable reprobate. Poe’s child bride Virginia appears as well, although she dies early on. Eventually Eddie is discovered to have pulled her teeth as grisly souvenirs, just as Poe’s narrator does in “Berenice.” Rucker clearly did his research and wasn’t afraid of a certain amount of black humor.
The story is told by Mason Reynolds, a Virginia teenager who’s on the lam from the law with his pal Otha, a black youth about his age who’s technically his slave (echoes of Huck Finn). Soon both are working for Eddie at the
Southern Literary Messenger,
with Mason sometimes handling the writing chores when Eddie’s too stoned or hung over to hit his deadlines. Eddie’s all fired up about the hollow earth, Symmes, and J. N. Reynolds, who shows up with counterfeit paper money plates that they use to print enough bogus cash to finance a polar expedition. They construct a hot-air balloon to descend into the Symmes’ Hole, charter a schooner, and head for the Antarctic. Resemblances to previous hollow earth novels end not long after the southern polar ice cracks and they’re falling toward the inside—except perhaps a distant kinship to John Uri Lloyd’s hallucinogenic
Etidorhpa,
with the large difference that Rucker’s trippy comedy is deliberate and deft.
Southern Literary Messenger,
with Mason sometimes handling the writing chores when Eddie’s too stoned or hung over to hit his deadlines. Eddie’s all fired up about the hollow earth, Symmes, and J. N. Reynolds, who shows up with counterfeit paper money plates that they use to print enough bogus cash to finance a polar expedition. They construct a hot-air balloon to descend into the Symmes’ Hole, charter a schooner, and head for the Antarctic. Resemblances to previous hollow earth novels end not long after the southern polar ice cracks and they’re falling toward the inside—except perhaps a distant kinship to John Uri Lloyd’s hallucinogenic
Etidorhpa,
with the large difference that Rucker’s trippy comedy is deliberate and deft.
They tumble slowly for hours down the center of a vast tunnel through strangely thick air, past yellow-hot cliffs gushing lava, and a curious round metal thing with a “shape something like a fried egg.” On leaving the tunnel they’re becalmed in nearly zero gravity. And still below? “The appearance of the sphere’s very center was as puzzling as before. All lines of sight near the center were warped and distorted, surrounding the center’s blobs of blue with weird halos and mirages. The light there was bright and chaotic and lacked all coherence. Central sun? Perhaps not. I resolved to call it the Central Anomaly. Earth’s interior was illuminated not so much by the Anomaly proper as by the branching pink streamers of light that stretched from the Anomaly to the inner surface of the planetary rind we’d fallen through.” Psychedelic!
Rucker’s
Hollow Earth
Hollow Earth
Spotting a thick green jungle in the distance, they get to it by hitching a ride on one of the many flying creatures inhabiting the pinkish air. In the low gravity, water collects in great pond-size drops, some of which contain fish. Mason swims through one, poking his head up occasionally for air, to spear dinner for them, and then finds he has to build his cooking fire in midair, something of a trick. Making their way to the jungle’s edge, they come upon, floating in space, an enormous sunflower half a mile across, inhabited by spritelike flower people who like to ingest the juice of a seed that takes them higher and higher—lotus-eaters living right on their own giant lotus—and the whimsy goes on from there. Huge flying shrigs—shrimp–pig creatures that move on jet flames of methane produced by what they eat (practically everything) blasting out of their rear ends—a telepathic all-knowing black race living near the Central Anomaly, and the anomaly itself, gateway to a Mirrorworld—it’s all a lot of fun.
By now you’d think the hollow earth would be little more than this—the stuff of science fiction. We all know that the earth
isn’t
hollow, don’t we?
isn’t
hollow, don’t we?
Apparently not all of us—at least judging from the amount of hollow earth weirdness alive and well on the Internet. The hollow earth even has its own newsletter—
The Hollow Earth Insider.
Editor Dennis Crenshaw is less of a strict constructionist than I’ve tried to be here—which is to say, looking only at hollow earth ideas chiefly derived from Halley’s original notion and skipping the material about underground civilizations in general—but anything subterranean or UFOlike seems to fit his purview, which gives him
plenty
to write about.
The Hollow Earth Insider.
Editor Dennis Crenshaw is less of a strict constructionist than I’ve tried to be here—which is to say, looking only at hollow earth ideas chiefly derived from Halley’s original notion and skipping the material about underground civilizations in general—but anything subterranean or UFOlike seems to fit his purview, which gives him
plenty
to write about.
There’s also the New Agey “2012 Unlimited” website at
http://www.eu.spiritweb.org/Spirit/hollow-earth.html
, which has a section about Agartha. This is the name certain Buddhists give to the underground world they believe in, but here it refers to a subterranean New Age utopia of the same name. This Agartha has very specific entrances, which include Mammoth Cave, Argentina’s Iguassu Falls, and Mt. Shasta in California—to name a few of “over 100 subterranean cities that form the Agartha Network.” The site gets quite specific about what’s going on under Mt. Shasta. Over a million people living there in Telos, on five different levels. Here’s the rundown from the website:
http://www.eu.spiritweb.org/Spirit/hollow-earth.html
, which has a section about Agartha. This is the name certain Buddhists give to the underground world they believe in, but here it refers to a subterranean New Age utopia of the same name. This Agartha has very specific entrances, which include Mammoth Cave, Argentina’s Iguassu Falls, and Mt. Shasta in California—to name a few of “over 100 subterranean cities that form the Agartha Network.” The site gets quite specific about what’s going on under Mt. Shasta. Over a million people living there in Telos, on five different levels. Here’s the rundown from the website:
The dimensions of this domed city are approximately 1.5 miles wide by 2 miles deep. Telos is comprised of 5 levels.LEVEL 1: This top level is the center of commerce, education and administration. The pyramid-shaped temple is the central structure and has a capacity of 50,000. Surrounding it are government buildings, the equivalent of a courthouse that promotes an enlightened judicial system, halls of records, arts and entertainment facilities, a hotel for visiting foreign emissaries, a palace which houses the “Ra and Rana Mu” (the reigning King and Queen of the royal Lemurian lineage who are Ascended Masters), a communications tower, a spaceport, schools, food and clothing dispatches and most residences.LEVEL 2: A manufacturing center as well as a residential level. Houses are circular in shape and dust-free because of it. Like surface living, housing for singles, couples and extended families is the norm.LEVEL 3: Hydroponic gardens. Highly advanced hydroponic technology feeds the entire city, with some to spare for intercity commerce. All crops yield larger and tastier fruits, veggies and soy products that make for a varied and fun diet for Telosians. Now completely vegetarian, the Agartha Cities have taken meat substitutes to new heights.LEVEL 4: More hydroponic gardens, more manufacturing and some natural park areas.LEVEL 5: The nature level. Set about a mile beneath surface ground level, this area is a large natural environment. It serves as a habitat for a wide variety of animals, including those many extinct on the surface. All species have been bred in a non-violent atmosphere, and those that might be carnivorous on the surface now enjoy soy steaks and human interaction. Here you can romp with a Saber-Toothed Tiger with wild abandon. Together with the other plant levels, enough oxygen is produced to sustain the biosphere.
Hard to resist quoting just a bit more detail:
COMPUTERS: The Agarthean computer system is amino acid-based and serves a vast array of functions. All of the sub-cities are linked by this highly spiritualized information network. The system monitors inter-city and galactic communication, while, simultaneously, serving the needs of the individual at home. It can, for instance, report your body’s vitamin or mineral deficiencies or, when necessary, convey pertinent information from the akashic records for personal growth.MONEY: Non-existent. All inhabitants’ basic needs are taken care of. Luxuries are exchanged via a sophisticated barter system.TRANSPORTATION: Moving sidewalks, inter-level elevators and electromagnetic sleds resembling our snow mobiles within the city. For travel between cities, residents take “the Tube,” an electromagnetic subway system capable of speeds up to 3,000 m.p.h. Yes, Agartheans are well versed in intergalactic etiquette and are members of the Confederation of Planets. Space travel has been perfected, as has the ability for interdimensional shifts that render these ships undetectable.ENTERTAINMENT: Theatre, concerts and a wide variety of the arts. Also, for you Trekkies, the Holodecks. Program your favorite movie or chapter in Earth history and become a part of it!CHILDBIRTH: A painless three months, not nine. A very sacred process whereby, upon conception, a woman will go to the temple for three days, immediately welcoming the child with beautiful music, thoughts and imagery. Water birthing in the company of both parents is standard.
It goes on like this. Apparently it was premature of me to think hollow earth utopias were dead.
So the old hollow earth is still with us.
And why not? It’s been an appealing dream for centuries.
And … uh, wait a minute. I’m just getting an incoming message from one of the fillings in my teeth. Um … yes, unhuh, no kidding? That was Yzxrnth, my own personal channeler from—well, I’d better not say. The CIA will be after me. He finally got through all the static from my computer. He just gave me the true scoop on the hollow earth. Those dreary scientists
do
have it wrong. And Symmes was
almost
right. The earth
is
hollow, and there’s an opening—but it’s not at the poles. It’s on a lovely uninhabited island in the Pacific, and Yzxrnth has given me the specific coordinates.
do
have it wrong. And Symmes was
almost
right. The earth
is
hollow, and there’s an opening—but it’s not at the poles. It’s on a lovely uninhabited island in the Pacific, and Yzxrnth has given me the specific coordinates.
Gotta run. Time to hit the lecture circuit, petition Congress, and begin raising money for The Dave Expedition To The Hollow Earth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Nequa; or, The Problem of the Ages.
Topeka, KS: Equity, 1900.
Forty Years with the Damned; or, Life Inside the Earth.
Chicago: Regan Printing House, 1895.
Relation d’un voyage du pole arctique au pole antarctique par le center du monde.
Paris: Pissot, 1723.
A Voyage to the World in the Centre of the Earth, Giving an Account of the Manners, Customs, Laws, Government & Religion of the Inhabitants, their Persons & Habits Described, with several other particulars: In which is introduced the History of an Inhabitant of the Air, written by Himself, with some account of the planetary worlds.
London: Crowder & Woodgate, 1755; London: Fisher and Hurst, 1802.
The Coming of the Saucers.
Boise, ID; Amherst, WI: Privately published by the authors, 1952.
Physical Culture,
June 1904.
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz.
Chicago: Reilly and Lee Co., 1908.
The Secret of the Earth.
New York: Neely, 1899; New York: Arno Press, 1975.
Mr. Oseba’s Last Discovery.
Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Times, 1904.
Thyra, A Romance of the Polar Pit.
New York: Holt, 1901; New York: Arno, 1978.
The Hollow Earth, the greatest geographical discovery in history made by Admiral Richard E. Byrd in the mysterious land beyond the poles—the true origin of the flying saucers.
New York: Fieldcrest Publishing Co., 1964.
The Goddess of Atvatabar: Being the History of the Discovery of the Interior World & Conquest of Atvatabar.
Introduction by Julian Hawthorne. New York: Douthitt, 1892; New York: Arno, 1975.
The Coming Race.
London: Blackwood, 1871; New York: Francis Felt, 1871.
Archaeologie Philosophicae: sive Doctrina antiqua de rerum originibus.
London: Kettilby, 1692.
The Sacred Theory of the Earth.
London: 1684.
At the Earth’s Core.
Chicago: McClurg, 1922; originally serialized in
All Story Weekly,
April 4–14, 1914.
Back to the Stone Age.
Tarzana: Burroughs, 1937; originally serialized in
Argosy,
January 9 through February 13, 1937, as “Seven Worlds to Conquer.”
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