HOLLOW EARTH

   The concept of the Earth as a hollow, spherical shell with a habitable, internal concave surface accessible through polar openings or caves, or by mechanical bores, has long been a significant motif in sf. The idea's dual origins, from RELIGION and PSEUDO-SCIENCE, are still potent. Traditionally Hell was sited inside the Earth, a notion that persisted at least untilthe 18th century, when a theologian proposed that Earth's rotation was caused by the damned scrambling to escape from Hell. In pseudo-science the astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742), to account for magnetic phenomena, suggested in a paper published by the Royal Society in 1692 that Earth (and the other planets) consisted of concentric, nested spheressurrounding a small central sun, with, possibly, openings at the poles.The first important use of Halley's concept came in Ludvig HOLBERG's Nicolaii Klimii iter subterraneum (1741 in Latin; exp 1745; trans anon as A Journeyto the World Under-Ground. By Nicolas Klimius 1742 UK; vt The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground 1960 US; vt A Journey to the WorldUnderground 1974 US), in which a young Norwegian falls through the Earth's crust to the hollow interior, where he has adventures on an inner planet and on the concave shell among nonhuman intelligent beings. Derivative from Holberg's work is Giacomo CASANOVA's Icosameron (1788; cut trans Rachel Zurer as Casanova's 'Icosameron' 1986 US), which is concerned,inter alia, with ALIEN lifeforms inside the Earth.The largest impetus to modern hollow-Earth fiction came from a persuasive US soldier, John Cleves SYMMES, who revitalized and publicized Halley's theory of concentricspheres and polar openings. Symzonia (1820) by Adam SEABORN (an unidentified pseudonym), a pleasant early IMAGINARY VOYAGE, satirizes Symmes's ideas; it also comments, a clef, on the political structures ofEurope and the USA. It has been suggested that Edgar Allan POE's "MS Found in a Bottle" (1833) and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) are indebted to Symmes and Symzonia, but it is more probable that Poe had in mind the caves and water engine involved in the traditional Abyss of Waters.Much the best known hollow-Earth stories are Edgar Rice BURROUGHS'sPellucidar novels: At the Earth's Core (1914 All-Story; 1922), Pellucidar (1915 All-Story-Cavalier; 1923) and several sequels. Based loosely on Symmes, these stories develop Burroughs's usual themes: Gibson-girl romance, frustrated sexual assaults and dominance (here empire-building among naive natives) against a background of palaeontological survivals. While the earlier stories are rational in their assumptions, later onesslip into supernaturalism involving REINCARNATION and Hell. For Burroughs the Moon, too, is hollow, as in The Moon Maid (1923-25 Argosy-All-Story; 1925).The concept of the hollow Earth has otherwise been used for the mostvaried fictional purposes. In a dystopian attack on FEMINISM, Pantaletta (1882 US) by "Mrs J. Wood" (probably a man), the world within is run byarrogant dominant woman who have changed even personal pronouns to avoid sexism. "Vera Zarovitch"'s (Mary E. Bradley LANE) Mizora (1880-81 Cincinatti Commercial; 1890 US), on the other hand, posits a feminist,socialist UTOPIA, where males are no longer biologically necessary. In Nequa (1900) by Jack ADAMS the themes are sexual equality, altruism andsocialism. The "single tax" proposed by the US economist Henry George (1839-1897) offers the leitmotif for Byron Welcome's From Earth's Centre(1894 US), and an odd mixture of occultism, anarchism and Fourierist socialism supports the story thread of M. Louise Moore's Al Modad (1892 US). John Uri LLOYD's Etidorhpa (1895) describes occult advancement as thenarrator progresses to the centre; George W. Bell's Mr Oseba's Last Discovery (1904 New Zealand) promotes New Zealand real estate by comparingthat country to the edenic interior; and "My Bride from Another World" (1904 Physical Culture) by "Rev. E.C. Atkins" plugs for BernarrMACFADDEN's hygienics - nudism, vegetarianism and back-to-Nature. Plutoniia (1915; 1924; trans as Plutonia 1957) by the great Russian geologist Vladimir Afanasevich OBRUCHEV is frankly written as a simple introduction to palaeontology. Obruchev adds a new supposition: the Earth solidified hollow, and a comet knocked a hole in the shell, permitting access.Fantastic adventure with less message characterizes Charles Willing BEALE's The Secret of the Earth (1899), William R. BRADSHAW's occult TheGoddess of Atvatabar (1892), Frank Powell's lurid boys' thriller The Wolf-Men (1905 UK), Roy ROCKWOOD's boys' book Five Thousand Miles Underground (1908), William J. Shaw's Under the Auroras (1888 US), Fred THORPE's serialized DIME NOVEL "In The World Below" (1897 Golden Hours) and Park Winthrop's "The Land of the Central Sun" (1903 Argosy).A religious note is not uncommon. In the later stories of the paranoid Shaver mystery (Richard S. SHAVER) the inner world is a Hell; however,edenic stories, in which creation took place inside the Earth, like Casanova's Icosameron, are more frequent. There is an internal city calledEden in Willis George EMERSON's The Smoky God or, A Voyage to the Inner World (1908). In William A. Miller's The Sovereign Guide (1989 US) Eden still exists, though overgrown, as does the tomb of ADAM AND EVE. Seaborn's Symzonia and Beale's The Secret of the Earth both considersurface humans as descendants of exiles from the interior.The gravitational peculiarities of a hollow Earth are seldom utilized. Exceptions are Clement FEZANDIE's "A Journey to the Center of the Earth"(1925 Science and Invention) and Konstantin TSIOLKOVSKY's "Dreams of Earth and Sky" (1895; trans in The Call of the Cosmos coll 1963).In most cases the writers cited do not take the hollow-Earth concept seriously. On the whole, the hollow Earth is simply a convenient alien place for odd adventures or panaceas, but it would be easy enough to work out a psychoanalytic or other metaphoric interpretation of the motif.True hollow-Earth stories should not be confused with stories set in deep cave-systems, another very common theme. Two of the most famous underground stories of this type are LYTTON's The Coming Race (1871; vt Vril: The Power of the Coming Race 1972 US) and Jules VERNE's Voyage aucentre de la terre (1863; exp 1867; trans anon as Journey to the Centre of the Earth 1872 UK). A third example, not often thought of as being such, and especially prone to the psychoanalytic interpretation, is Lewis CARROLL's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).Hollow-Earth storiesstill show up occasionally in the modern period. Among the more interesting are "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" (1977 New Dimensions 7) by Howard WALDROP and Steven UTLEY, Richard A. LUPOFF's Circumpolar!(1984) and Rudy RUCKER's The Hollow Earth (1990). Nothing is ever crystal clear in a novel by James P. BLAYLOCK, but The Digging Leviathan (1984) appears also to be marginally a hollow-Earth story. It is interesting that all these tales are couched as nostalgic pastiche (and often close to MAGIC REALISM), as if merely to mention a hollow Earth today were to evokea wondrous past time.

   EFB