Customer Reviews

At The Earth's Core

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
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Having already created two highly memorable science fiction heroes in Tarzan and John Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs begins his third major series with David Innes. With friend Abner Perry, they dive their "mole", or burroughing machine, straight through the earth's surface where they discover the savage land of Pellucidar. Here, where dinosaurs still exist and mankind is enslaved by the reptilian Mahars, David and his friend are forced to face unknown perils and survive in a hostile environment (and of course, win the beautiful lady).

"At the Earth's Core" is another highly entertaining science fiction novel from ERB. Even though his format is formulaic, you're always assured of fast paced adventure in his novels. Not as groundbreaking as Tarzan or as strong as John Carter, The Pellucidar series is still a worthy addition to Burroughs body of work, and it gets an extra star for the nostalgia of being a personal childhood favorite.

A terrific adventure novel that will immerse you in a world with simple, descriptive language and rollicking action sequences, "At The Earth's Core" is an early Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, the first of several books that take place in the land of Pellucidar.
Yes, Pellucidar lies in the center of the earth. Jules Verne's take on what lies beneath differs greatly; this one less "sci-fi" and more fun...like "Jurassic Park" fun.
I think the audience most likely to be enthralled here, is the one comprised of pre-teenage boys...yet anyone who loves a a good story well told will become a fan as well.
This is a tough book to stop reading...it's one of those that you want to see "what happens next." So much so I've already ordered as many other Pellucidar books as I could find...
A synopsis is unnecessary...it's already been nicely done here at the Review site. Just know that, in a fashion that reminds me of "The Princess Bride", the "mushy" parts dovetail nicely with the "adventure" parts. The relationship between Innes and Dian is interesting, non-stereotypical, and surprisingly modern.
I was already a fan of ERB's Tarzan books.
It seems I've added another series to my "must read/own" list.
I'm afraid to read "A Princess of Mars" (the Mars series)...or perhaps I should say my bank account is.

DAVID INNES AND ABNER PERRY SET OUT TO TEST THE MECHANICAL MOLE, A SORT OF SUBMARINE FOR DRY LAND, AND END UP IN THE FABULOUS WORLD OF PELUCIDAR, A JURASSIC PARK ON A WORLDWIDE SCALE. DON'T JUDGE THE BOOK BY THE AWFUL MOVIE VERSION WITH DOUG MACLURE. THIS IS A FIRST RATE ACTION ADVENTURE WRITTEN BY THE ABSOLUTE MASTER OF OTHERWORLDLY ADVENTURES. REMEMBER, THIS ONE WAS WRITTEN BEFORE WORLD WAR 1. EVERYONE ELSE COPIED MR. BURROUGHS. THIS IS THE ORIGONAL! READ IT AND ENJOY ADVENTURE THAT, LIKE FINE WINW, ONLY GETS BETTER WITH AGE.

This is another one of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "scientific romances". Many early sci-fi writers wrote "Hollow Earth" stories, about civilizations in the center of the Earth. This is ERB's take on that. It is a totally implausible story, but it's darn entertaining. A young man and an old man travel to the center of the Earth by way of a digging machine. There they encounter prehistoric humans, dinosaurs and a race of intelligent reptiles. This being Burroughs, the young man naturally meets a beautiful cave girl and falls in love. It's an entertaining read, especially if you like pulp fiction.

For Edgar Rice Burroughs, life was relatively simple. Men fell into one of three categories: muscular heroes, ordinary types, and evil, greasy villains. Women existed primarily to act as universal lighting rods that attracted either the first or third category. Regardless of the universe that ERB wrote of, these constants held with predictable regularity. With the publication of AT THE EARTH'S CORE, he began yet another series that put the hero at odds with nature, evil doers, and beautiful, virtuous women. David Innes, the handsome hero, drills down to the center of the earth in a manner that brings to mind Jules Verne's tale, both of which posit a habitable, temperate core that supports a variety of lush, prehistoric life. Despite knowing that the earth's core was held to be molten, ERB did not hesitate to bend science for the sake of a good tale. ATEC possesses both the plusses of ERB at his best and the negatives at his worst. Like Tarzan, Innes is a likable, manly sort who feels at home regardless of whether home is a jungle or a tea room. The logic of how ERB gets his hero placed in an exotic locale is irrelevant and often purely unscientific. For his Martian (Barsoom) series, he merely had his hero, John Carter, gaze at the Red Planet to effect his transport there. For his inner world series (Pellucidar), Innes used a drill machine, a device that at least tries to be scientific. Once there, Innes has the necessary adventures with beasts, villains, and beautiful women, in this case Dian the Beautiful. The workings of the plot about how he finds her, loses her, and then finds her again are almost not to the point. Where ERB excels in his ability to place the reader, who is usually a 15 year old boy, in a realm that allows imagination to run riot. Events flow so smoothly that the youthful reader will probably overlook the negatives of ERB's prose style. In the world of ERB's muscular heroes, both hero and villain speak in the artificial, courtly dialogue that rings true only to the ears of the young. Coincidence runs rife to the point of ridicule. Beautiful women are haughty at first, but lusty later, and then only to the clean-limbed hero. His plots are often mirror images of one another. You can substitute the center of the earth for Mars, Venus, Africa, or wherever, and hero, villain, and lovely lady are interchangeable. Yet, despite all this, AT THE EARTH'S CORE is the kind of read that ought to be part of any kid's early mental universe. Reading Burroughs as a thirty year old requires a strong ability to suspend one's disbelief, but once having done so, the ride is usually worth the effort.

Edgar Rice Burroughs made a living creating far flung worlds inhabited by savage beasts, savage races, lovely damsels, muscular heroes, and brute villains. He refined this template in his vast repetoire of novels that spanned Africa, Pellucidar, Mars, Venus, the moon, and other equally exotic locales. In AT THE EARTH'S CORE, ERB began what was the first in a series of inner earth novels. I read ATEC in this Ace pocket edition. The cover illustration wonderfully captured the sense of exoticism contained within. To understand this novel, as well as anything else ERB wrote, one must grasp his sense of how human beings were created, why they were created, and when their inner core values could be revealed. At the time he wrote, the early 20th century, the controversy between the superiority of nature or nurture was swinging in favor of the former. Genetics reigned supreme. Environment was understood to be no more than a modification of what was irrevocably set in stone in one's DNA. ERB's heroes are invariably described in genetic superlatives: handsome, well-built, co-ordinated, and lithe. He rarely mentioned their mental development. The villains were the polar opposites: beastly, with sloping foreheads, and often communicated in grunts. Tarzan was ERB's foremost hero. In AT THE EARTH'S CORE, his hero is David Innes, one who is more modern than Tarzan but nevertheless possessed of inhuman strength wedded to intelligence and morality. It was not often that ERB wrote of a hero with such "normal" traits.

When one reads this book, one is often reminded that scientific accuracy was not a strong point of the author. Even when this book was published, it was pretty much settled that the earth's core was a mixture of solid rock and molten magma. But such knowledge never stopped him from spinning a good tale. Innes and his elder friend Abner Perry use a pointy earth drilling machine to plow straight down literally to the core of the earth. It is there that they find a world of beasts, proto-humans, humans, and reptillian sentients all struggling for supremacy in a land where time seems never to pass. Since there is no sun and light emanates from radioactivity in the surrounding rocks, time becomes frozen and hence a non-factor. ATEC is a standard tale of a daring man fighting for the heart and hand of a lovely woman, all the while a corking villain seeks to claim her in a manner that is brutish by our standards but quite normal by his. What makes this book work is ERB's uncanny ability to present strong characters amidst exotic locales. We become so entranced by the irresistable forward flow of the plot that we scarce notice the elephantine logical flaws and flubs that are uibiquitous. For those who like Tarzan and those like him, AT THE EARTH'S CORE is an engrossing read for anyone under seventeen. After that age, science kicks in the reader's mind but the memories of a far flung world remain even decades later.

Note: I made some Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books out to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews.

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A very short review is not necessarily a bad review. I hope you find something useful. So here it goes:

Treat yourself and get lost in an Edgar Rice Burroughs' book. This edition of "At the Earth's Core," a Tarzan-like adventure at the center of the earth, is remarkable for its wonderful cover, by Roy Krenkel, Jr.

Ah, what a world Burroughs created and beautifully illustrated by Krenkel. I bought the book for the illustration, and it was many years before I read the wonderful story.

For a 1930's adventure in Africa, read "Cry Wolf" (an Indiana Jones type of adventure in Ethiopia), by Wilbur Smith.
Cry Wolf

Another is "The Sapphirer Sea" (a modern adventure on Zanzibar), by Robinson The Sapphire Sea

"In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story," says our narrator in the opening line of "At the Earth's Core," the first book in the Pellucidar Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The narrator is young David Innes, who joins Professor Abner Perry in test driving a mechanical prospector drill that develops steering problems and takes the duo down, down, deep into the earth. Just about as they think they are about to die they pass through the earth's crust and into the core world of Pellucidar.

The world is inhabited by sloth-like "Dyryths" and the Sagoths, agile man-apes with tails. Captured by these latter creatures, Innes and Perry are taken before the Mahars, a race of sentient flying dinosaurs, what Abener identifies as "A rhamphorhynchus of the Middle Olitic." The Mahars are the overlords of Pellucidar, enslaving the Mezops, the human-like inhabitants of the inner world. Innes wants to bring the Mahars' reign of terror to an end, but he has another problem, to wit, a love triangle with Dian the Beautiful and Jubal the Ugly. At least the characters in Edgar Rice Burroughs novels pick up primitive and/or other wordly languages within the span of a chapter.

There is something nostalgic about these old ERB novels with their standard opening where the narrator asks us to treat the unbelievable story we are about to hear as true. "At the Earth's Core" was originally published in "All-Story" magazine from April 4 to April 25, 1914. It was ERB's tenth published novel at a point where he had written the first two Tarzan novels and the first three Mars books. The Pellucidar series was probably his third best series, coming ahead of the Carson of Venus books. The trade off here is that the adventure is fun but the dialogue wears thin quickly (how many times can the native of Pellucidar comment on our hero's ignorance of the ways of the inner world). Besides, David and Dian are are a second rate John Carter and Dejah Thoris (i.e., do not do the Pellucidar novels until you have enjoyed the Mars series).

This is one of the few non-Tarzan novels that made it to the big screen, albeit with some of the worst fake dinosaurs for the Mahars you have ever seen in a movie. But what matters is that the book is better, so stick with it. Besides, there are more adventures for David and Abner in the rest of the series and their friendship proves to be a lot more interesting than the romantic relationship between David and Dian.

I read this book for one of my book reports and I was spellbound the moment that the dinosaurs and creatures rolled in. It was way better than the film and it crammed your mind with suspense.

Although far less plausible and possessing characters of much less depth than Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, Burrough's At the Earth's Core, despite some embarrassingly preposterous elements, is an entertaining read due to its well-rendered, imaginative fantasy setting and fast-paced swashbuckling adventure. The story is never dull, and the hideous and hypnotic bat-winged Mayars make for memorable villains. The depiction of a human sacrifice to these monsters halfway through the novel is particularly unforgettable. There is also a multifarious array of attacking prehistoric monsters, without the claustrophobic feel of the 1970's film.

Also recommended is Basil Copper's treatment of the descent-into-the-earth theme in his creepy novel The Great White Space, now unfortunately out of print.