Review: CLASSIC PULP FICTION (SiFI) FROM ONE OF THE MASTERS
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 7, 2012
To begin with, I was delighted to see Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar Series become available on Kindle.  I have almost all of Burroughs' books in my collection, including this one and the six that follow; have had them for years and to be honest, like me, they are getting pretty ratty looking and worn around the edges...well, actually, they are falling apart.This work `At the Earth's Core' was the first of the series.  It was first published in 1914 where it appeared in four installments of the pulp magazine, `All-Story Weekly.' It has been available, and indeed been in print in one form or another for almost all this time.  There is a reason for this.  It is good stuff that for some reason never goes old and is rediscovered by each generation.Our primary hero in his book and this series is David Innes.  He, along with a long time family employee who has happened to have invented and built a gigantic steel "mole" which is a machine meant to mine deep under ground, are test driving this machine when things go very, very wrong.  They go so wrong that they two end up about 500 miles below the surface of the earth where they discover that the earth is actually hollow.  You have to read the book to find out how this is possible, but the reader should remember that this work was a created work of fiction written in 1914 and the reader, like with most SiFi of that day and time, must put their credulity on hold and just enjoy the story.Anyway, this earth within the earth is inhabited by just about ever prehistoric creature you can imagine and it is also in habited my people, people who are almost people, lizards who are people and so on.  It you think John Carter of Mars and Tarzan of the Apes you get some idea of what is going on.  We have every kind of hostile critter from dinosaurs to saber-toothed tigers and mastodons and mammoths.  We also, of course, are given some very attractive cave girls for our hero David to deal with...one in particular in this particular work.Like many of these old stories the action is fast, fast and fast once it gets started.  The theme of rescuing the "damsel in distress" is worked over and over again and actually never gets old. Readers should note that by our standards of today there is quite a bit of sexism involved in these book and there is most certainly some very racist attitudes involved.  Again, it must be remember when these books were written.The Kindle format on this one is quite good and no problems were encountered.As an aside, if there is anyone interested, and I cannot imagine anyone who would not be, you can do a publication history search on these books and find some wonderful illustrations which have graced the covers of these books down through the years.  Frazetta is of course my favorite...hmmmm, wonder why?It should be noted that most of the SiFi we have available today has its roots buried in these books and other works by the old pulp writers of that era.  Any study of the genre must start here.Other books in this series include:PellucidarTanar Of PellucidarTARZAN AT THE EARTH'S COREBack To The Stone AgeSavage PellucidarDon BlankenshipThe Ozarks