Hollow earth
Subtitle: the long and curious history of imagining strange lands, fantastical creatures, advanced civilizations, and marvelous machines below the earth's surface
By: David Standish
Edition: 1st Da Capo Press ed
Publisher: Da Capo Books
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 303
Subjects: Science fiction -- History and criticism; Civilization in literature; Earth -- In literature
Description: "Beliefs in mysterious underworlds are as old as humanity. But the idea that the earth has a hollow interior was first proposed as a scientific theory in 1691 by Sir Edmond Halley (of comet fame), who also suggested that there might be life down there as well. Hollow Earth traces the many surprising, marvelous, and just plain weird permutations his ideas have taken over the centuries." "Both Edgar Allan Poe and (more famously) Jules Verne picked up the torch in the nineteenth century, the latter with his science fiction epic A Journey to the Center of the Earth. The notion of a hollow earth even inspired a religion at the turn of the twentieth century - Koreshanity, which held that we're all living on the inside." "Utopian novels and adventures abounded at this time, including L. Frank Baum's hollow earth addition to the Oz series and Edgar Rice Burrough's Pellucidar books chronicling a stone-age hollow earth. In the 1940s an enterprising science-fiction magazine editor convinced people that the true origins of flying saucers lay within the hollow earth, relics of an advanced alien civilization. And there are still devout hollow earthers today, some of whom claim there is a New Age utopia lurking beneath the earth's surface, with at least one entrance near Mt. Shasta in California." "Hollow Earth travels through centuries and cultures, exploring how each era's relationship to the idea of a hollow earth mirrored its hopes, fears, and values. Illustrated with everything from seventeenth-century maps to 1950s pulp art to movie posters and more, Hollow Earth is for anyone interested in the history of strange ideas that just won't go away."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 290-297) and index