Hidden World [Hardcover]

Stanton A. Coblentz (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Airmont (1935)
• ASIN: B000LRBGB4
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,977,608 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Other reviews are wrong, June 12, 2011

By 

Noneya Biznez "horsenbuggy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden world (Airmont) (Mass Market Paperback)

I just finished reading this book today. I am putting this review out here because none of the other reviewers seem to have read the same book.
1) It's set under the earth (not the moon), Nevada and parts of Utah, to be exact.
2) While there are two underground countries in the book, it's not about the conflict between capitalist and communist nations. We get a very detailed look into the society of one nation, while the other nation is generalized as their enemy. Towards the end of the book, we get about a half page description of the other nation that leads us to believe that the countries are more similar than they are different.

The main nation, Wu, is not clearly communist, capitalist, nor monarchist. Instead, it has features of all three types of government. There is a strict caste system from which it is illegal to escape (or ever change castes). The ruling class only marries within its own class, leading to inbred weaknesses that are illogically valued as symbols of "pure blood." This part strongly reminded me of the situation of European ruling families of the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly the hemophilia passed down from Queen Victoria. Taxation heavily burdens the lower class, also reminding me of old monarchist societies - the lower class pay for the upper to live a life of ease. Whispers of communism appear in that unemployment is illegal. If you do not have a job and contribute to society, you are breaking the law and will be punished. But then pre-industrial revolution capitalism appears because the government does not have the legal right to interfere with business. The government represents big business, not the people - representatives to government are appointed when a company's revenue is large enough.

However, the main theme that hits you over the head again and again (and one I agree with) is that war is bad. These two nations exist only to war with each other. They even institute a breeding policy to make sure that the huge numbers of men lost in the wars do not cause the population numbers to drop. The narrator (a man from our society) explains that his nation (the US) does everything it can to not go to war, sounding proud that up to the current time, they've even managed to stay out of the current world war. (Funny how policies change.)

There's other little differences designed to make you think about how narrow-minded we are as a society - our standards of fashion, beauty, etc. There's commentary on the press and how people will basically believe anything they read.

All in all, many of the issues addressed in this book are still valid today. It's just that the issues have been pointed out before, so nothing in this story is groundbreaking (pardon the pun) to modern readers. The author manages to create an interesting world. It's easy to follow and doesn't take long to read. I enjoyed it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've read Hidden World over and over, September 29, 2008

By 

Rex Gillham "rusty bucket" (Haughton, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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I first read Hidden World as a teenager, 40 years ago. Over the years I have read the science fiction story several times and it is still great. I think this book is my favorite SF story of all time.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly socially conscious and thoughtful, if uneven early SF pulp novel, September 18, 2009

By 

Muzzlehatch (the walls of Gormenghast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

My copy of this book is an Airmont paperback from 1964, retitled "The Hidden World" -- confusing because Coblentz also has a novel entitled "The Sunken World." Anyway, this is a pretty exciting and surprisingly modern (originally published in 1935) satiricial tale of the strife between two civilizations, one arch-captitalist and the other communist, seen from the point of view of a couple of American prospectors accidentally thrust into the underground world through an earthquake. The author sides with the leftist/Marxist society, interestingly enough.

This is a much more serious and socially conscious than most American SF of the period, though the satire is sometimes laid on too thickly and obviously and some of the writing is a bit leaden - characterization isn't Coblentz' strong point, at least on the basis of this (the only novel of his I've read. Stanton Coblentz (1896-1982) got his start as a science fiction writer in the later 20s at the dawn of the American pulp era and wrote a fairly large amount of fiction in the genre over a career extending to the early 1970s, though he considered himself primarily a poet and historian - which may help to explain the rather greater seriousness in theme of this novel compared to many of its genre contemporaries. His best-known work is probably "Into Plutonian Depths"; very little of his fiction seems to be commercially available today, alas, though this book can usually be found easily and cheaply.