Customer Reviews

Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface

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David Standish has produced one of the most entertaining nonfiction works you're likely to find. It chronicles the history of the idea that the Earth is hollow from the time of Edmond Halley to the present. Standish redeems Halley's reputation, explaining that Halley proposed the idea to explain anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field. Things get weirder from there as Standish dives into the inexplicable belief of John Cleves Symmes that openings into the Earth exist at the poles. Probably the best chapter is the one on Cyrus Teed and Koreshanity, a religion that teaches that the Earth is hollow and we live on its inner surface. The book goes downhill after that, presenting nothing but summaries of sci-fi novels with a few conspiracy theories thrown in.

The book is too breezy. The style is fun, but Standish's personal asides and sarcastic humor, at first entertaining, become irritating by the end. The sketchy finale, in which Standish mentions some modern religious beliefs about the hollow Earth, collapses into an obnoxious joke.

When Standish steps away from his subject, he not only gets personal but commits errors; his characterization of all thought before the Enlightenment as "dreamy romanticism" is hardly accurate.

Besides containing too much of David Standish, Hollow Earth contains too little...well, hollow Earth. His tantalizing introduction mentions a number of societies and religions that have posited fascinating things under the Earth's surface, but he never discusses most of them. Starting with Halley was a mistake; Standish soon has nothing to do but summarize novels. Perhaps he starts too late because everything before Halley can be dismissed as "dreamy romanticism."

For those with a serious interest in science fiction, this book is a great introduction to the origins of the hollow Earth idea and gives decent, if opinionated, descriptions of its appearance in the genre. As an entertaining book, it's also quite good. If, however, you're looking for detailed info on religious legends of subterranean realms or modern conspiracy theories, look elsewhere.

David Standish's Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations and Marvelous Machines Beneath the Earth Surface is an amazing book.

When I first saw the cover, I didn't think I would be interested. Then I noticed the names that were thrown out with almost careless abandon. Jules Verne. Edgar Rice Burroughs. They weren't the names of scientists, although scientists are frequently and fairly referenced throughout the book, but I recognized those names at once.

Verne and Burroughs, at one time or another, have been my favorite authors. I loved Verne's far-fetched adventures. Journey to the Center of the Earth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are the ones of his that I read the most.

Burroughs, though, taught me an idealistic love because his heroes - John Carter and Carson Napier and David Innes - all fell in love with the most beautiful woman in two worlds. Not only did those women look great (especially the way Frank Frazetta drew them), but they were the bravest and fiercest women you could ever hope to meet.

So Standish drew me in with one of my favorite "conspiracy" theories - that there is another world inside the one we live on as well as promising new dissertations about two of my one-time favorite authors. In fact, the hollow earth theory is still so popular there are a number of websites on the Internet devoted to it. I find it particularly amusing that Adolf Hitler believed in the hollow earth idea so much that he sent troops and expeditionary forces to uncover the entrances. Most speculation was that the openings to the hollow world were at the north and south poles. That's what drove most of the exploration in those areas.

The book is one part scientific history, one part science fiction history, and one part sheer love of the whole hollow earth theory. Standish does an admirable job of keeping all these elements balanced. If the book and merely been a scientific history, I think I would've been put off. But he kept mixing it up with fact and fun. More than that, some of the theories the early signs is came up with about how the world worked are to die for.

I sat down with the book with the intention of reading a chapter or two the first time. Instead, I blazed through over 80 pages of it without stopping. Standish has a really good sense of how much pure information to dump on a reader before reaching critical mass. He changes up from presentation of facts to speculation on his part so smoothly that you don't notice the transition. Before you know it, you're thinking right along with him and totally understanding where he's headed.

Although the chapters are long, with all the illustrations and pictures involved they read quite quickly. I loved learning about the Royal Society's arguments over how the earth is constructed in the early days. And it was even more fascinating to see how many of the historically important people that we remember for other things also weighed in on the issue of whether or not the earth was hollow.

While reading the book, I was fascinated on a multitude of levels. I couldn't believe all the scientific conjecture that had gone into such a thing. But I grew up knowing (at least by current belief) that the earth is solid and that the center is a liquid mass of molten iron and nickel. However, another theory that's lately in the news suggests that there are more cave systems throughout the earth than had been previously believed.

Standish's book leans heavily on science and the early thoughts of the earth's composition, from core to exosphere - see, I'm learning, at the beginning of the book. Near to the end, he switches gears and relies heavily on science fiction thinking by popular authors. I found I knew more about the science fiction and the things that I did the early science part. I don't think I learned anything really new in the last part of the book, but I definitely enjoyed the first part and seeing how it all lives in the science fiction novels I loved while I was growing up.

The book is handsomely packaged in hardcover and oversized trade softcover, so you can have either edition for your home library. Scientists and science fiction fans would probably both agree this is a must have for the serious "hollow earth" bibliophile. Even for someone who is neither, Standish's book is such a pleasure to read that it should be read.

Discovery Channel or the History Channel should take this book up, use it for resource material, and make one of those specials that they do so well. Or potentially even a series. The subject matter is a hoot and Standish reveals so much of the science and history behind the search for the hollow earth that it wouldn't be hard to put such a project together.

His writing is so good that I'm tempted to pick up book, The Art of Money just to see what he did with that. That's the sign of the a good author.

In 1692, the famous English astronomer and physicist, Edmond Halley, penned a manuscript in which he speculated that the Earth's magnetism was generated by matter within our world, which is actually hollow. From that time until the present, people have speculated as to what might be within the hollow Earth...and who. This book chronicles the history of those speculations.

Overall, I found this to be a rather interesting read. The author does not treat his subject seriously, adding such statements as, "If this makes sense to you, you're ahead of me." I enjoyed reading about the various philosophical/religious groups that believed(?) in the hollow Earth, and the various authors that used it as a setting for various reasons. I enjoyed every minute of this fun book and highly recommend it!

This book contains discussions on two main subjects: 1) people who, over the last few centuries, truly believed in a hollow earth, for scientific, religious or other reasons, and 2) fictional stories about adventures beneath the earth's surface; over half the book is about this latter category. The author devotes much space in discussing the authors of and the personages in the various fictional stories and in summarizing the plots; he also includes his personal comments (literary criticism). The author also tries to relate these plots to the social and political climates during the times in which the stories were written. The final chapter deals with modern day, i.e., twentieth century, hollow earth beliefs by some people, as well as (science fiction) novels and movies whose adventurers chance upon a strange mysterious world within the bowels of the earth. The book is well-written and witty. It would likely appeal to sociology buffs as well as, perhaps, literary critics.

_Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface_ by journalist David Standish is a fascinating account of the various individuals who believed in or promoted the idea that the earth was indeed a hollow sphere. The idea that the earth may be hollow is very ancient and many ancient cultures believed in underground worlds. While modern science has shown this not to be the case, many have continued to believe in a hollow earth. This book traces that belief through history beginning with the astronomer and scientist Sir Edmund Halley (best known for his "Halley's comet") and onwards through the various adventurers and literary figures who maintained such a belief. Among other individuals covered in this book include Sir Edmund Halley, Cotton Mather, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, L. Fank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Adolph Hitler, Admiral Byrd, Superman, and Pat Boone. All these individuals are linked together through their belief or involvement with the idea of a hollow earth.

One of the earliest individuals to consider the idea of a hollow earth was the scientist and astronomer Sir Edmund Halley. Halley proposed the idea that three concentric spheres lay beneath the earth's surface, turning independently on a north-south axis, each smaller than the next. He explained his ideas to the famous London Royal Society which included among its members such famous scientists as Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Christopher Wren. Halley was so fascinated by his idea of a hollow earth that he had his last portrait made of him holding a picture of the concentric spheres which he believed made up the earth. Determining longitude proved problematic for scientists in the time of Halley, and thus he devoted himself to the study of magnetism. This study led to his formulation of a hollow earth model. It was this idea which placed Halley among the first individuals to ever consider the idea that the earth may be hollow.

Following his discussion of Sir Edmund Halley, the author next turns his attention to John Cleves Symmes. Symmes was a captain in the United States Army who had fought in the War of 1812 (his father had been a Revolutionary War veteran and had given him a copy of a book of Cook's voyages which had spurred his interests). Symmes maintained a lifelong fascination with discovery and adventure and maintained that the earth was indeed hollow and habitable from within. He contended that there were holes at the polar regions which opened up into the hollow earth. The author traces the origins of the hollow earth beliefs in the United States through Cotton Mather, the puritan divine perhaps best known for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials, but also a scholar and naturalist of some renown. Another influence on Symmes was Sir John Leslie, a Scottish mathematician and scientist who argued that the earth was indeed hollow. Symmes renewed interest in Arctic exploration (arguing that by finding the holes at the polar regions it would be possible to visit the inner earth) which had laid dormant since the days when explorers searched for a Northwest Passage. Symmes also was friends with John Audubon, the naturalist most famous for his paintings of birds. Symmes is perhaps most famous for his utopian hollow earth novel _Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery_, which paved the way for an entire genre of utopian (and dystopian) hollow earth adventure stories. Symmes repeatedly petitioned the government to fund an expedition to the poles, but to no avail. However, he did make a convert, Jeremiah Reynolds, an natural entrepreneur who did much to help Symmes promote his ideas.

The next section of this book focuses on the "polar Gothic", with emphasis on the lives of Reynolds and Edgar Allen Poe, who took up the hollow earth idea of Symmes. The author discusses Reynolds' various attempts to promote Symmes' ideas, his petitions to the government, and his explorations. Following this the author turns his attention to the famous writer Poe. As the author explains, Poe was a very troubled individual prone to both alcoholism and mental instability, yet he maintained an avid interest in the ideas of Symmes and Reynolds. Poe's polar interests are perhaps best seen in his story _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_, written about a journey to the South Pole which owes a debt to both Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Symmes' _Symzonia_.

Following his discussion of Poe, the author next turns his attention to Jules Verne. The hollow earth myth made its way from Poe to France through the poet Charles Baudelaire to Jules Verne. Verne wrote his famous novel _Journey to the Center of the Earth_ which not only details a journey to the inner earth but also a confrontation between two dinosaurs underneath the earth. The author goes into great detail about the kind of geological understanding which underpinned Verne's novel.

Following his discussion of Verne, the author next turns his attention to the bizarre ideas of Cyrus Teed and his cult-like movement, Koreshanity. Teed was much given to mystical experience and practiced alchemy. It was while engaged in these mystical speculations that Teed came up with the idea that the earth was really hollow and that we lived on the inner surface. This mystical revelation prompted Teed to develop his cult of Koreshanity which he established in a utopian community in Estero, Florida. Koreshanity was like many millennial cults, and the author goes into detail explaining the various schisms that grew from it and the scandals that ensued. Perhaps most interesting, Teed's followers attempted to prove that humanity lived on the inner surface of a hollow earth using "scientific" measurements made at sea level.

Following this discussion of Teed, the author next turns to the various hollow earth utopias, romances, and some of the children's literature that sprang out of this movement. Perhaps two of the more interesting novels to be written in this genre include _The Goddess of Atvatabar_ and _Etidorhpa_ ("Aphrodite" in reverse).

Next, the author details the fascinating worlds of the science fiction pulp writer Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs wrote various hollow earth stories occurring in the underground world of Pellucidar, featuring such characters as Tanar and Tarzan.

Finally, the author turns his attention to the various other occurrences of the hollow earth myth in popular culture. In particular, the author mentions the "Shaver Mystery", a hollow earth story devised by Richard S. Shaver (possibly mentally unbalanced) entitled "I Remember Lemuria!" and published by Ray Palmer in the magazine _Amazing Stories_. The author also discusses various instances of the hollow earth in film, including mention of Superman and the "mole people". The author even discusses the idea that flying saucers originate from the hollow earth and the possibility that the Nazis and Hitler escaped by traveling to the hollow earth. The author ends with some discussion of various instances of the hollow earth in contemporary literature, including the notion of "vril power", Indiana Jones, and a book by Rudy Rucker.

This book provides a fascinating and detailed account of the hollow earth myth and is sure to provide a source of entertainment for those who read it. It will be sure to be of interest to those who seek to understand the more bizarre aspects of human thought.

Hollow Earth digs deep to uncover the many myths, fallacious science, and fantastic stories that arise from the imagination of what might be below. David Standish chronicles man's fascination with the possibility of subterranean life and delivers all the stories: from the serious concentric magnetic circles of Sir Edmund Halley (of Comet fame) to modern day comic books and sci-fi movies. Standish delivers with a wry sense of humor.

Serious scientists, intrepid explorers, messianic marauders, and imaginative writers feed off one another's vision of why the Earth is hollow, how to get into it, and what the place looks like. Among the colorful characters are the famous - Halley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs. But even more interesting are the obscure promoters and charlatans. John Cleves Symmes is the ex-sailor who invents the way in ... through his 'holes' in the poles. Enter via the North Pole, ride the river through the Earth's center, and exit the South Pole. Easy! Let's grab a government sponsored ship and go!

Then a fin-de-siecle promoter of electro-magneto-spiritual energy, Cyrus Teed, provides pseudo scientific explanations of why the Earth is not convex, but concave. A lengthy chapter follows on Teed's philosophy of Koreshanity and subsequent establishment of his utopian community in the swamps of Florida. The Teed chapter runs a bit long and off-topic from the hollow earth theme, but Standish has found a treasure trove of laughs and he knows it. The photograph of two dozen Koreshians on a Florida beach measuring the Earth's concavity with heavy timbers (the Rectilineator) is laugh-out-loud material.

Sometimes, Standish enjoys his topic too much ... he replicates the quirky authors' work in exacting detail, and the 289 page books bogs down. Just skip ahead. Hollow Earth is a fun read, and highly recommended for American Studies majors.

At last it can be told: The Earth is hollow and, depending upon which vision appeals to you, it has limitless amounts of valuable goods, monsters ready to attack us surface dwellers, goddesses reaching to bring us peace, or flying saucers doing who knows what. The Earth being hollow or containing unknown realms below us is perhaps not all that strange; after all, millions of religious believers think there is some sort of infernal region down there. But there has been a scientific (but mostly pseudo-scientific) tinge to such beliefs, charted in _Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations, and Marvelous Machines Below the Earth's Surface_ (Da Capo Press) by David Standish. With all the important concepts that have changed the world, Standish presents a book which he says "traces the cultural history of an idea that was wrong and changed nothing." It is a story of curiosity manifested by science, but then changed in literature and philosophy in fantastic ways, a story that "weaves in and out of literature and what passes for real life, and veers into the charmingly delusional more than once." Surprisingly, one era after another has taken this wrong idea and transformed it, continuing its appeal.

Beyond the religious ideas of the underworld, the workings of our planet's interior got their first scientific evaluation by none other than Edmond Halley, he of Halley's Comet. Halley imagined there were globes within globes in the Earth, spinning to make magnetic variations. Halley went on to say that his inner spheres could be populated by "animate beings" we could hardly imagine, deriving light from some source unknown. Halley's scientific start included speculation that would be taken to extremes by "hollow earthers", beginning with an original American thinker named John Cleves Symmes, who in 1818 broadcast to the world (starting with St. Louis) his circular in which he declared that the Earth was hollow, and that it was open at the poles. He wrote a novel on these ideas which seems to have been a model for all hollow Earth stories afterwards, including genuine literature like Poe's _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_. Standish has summarized the hollow Earth ideas presented in fiction from Jules Verne's _A Journey to the Center of the Earth_ and beyond the first Superman film, 1951's _Superman and the Mole Men_. Some of it sounds like worthy utopian imaginings, but most of it sounds downright silly. Standish has generously read even _Through the Earth_ of 1898, "arguably the most boring hollow earth novel ever", and so we do not have to look at it ourselves. The number of such novels dropped off in the twentieth century because polar explanations revealed no Symmes's holes, but Edgar Rice Burroughs set several stories in his underground world Pellucidar. Richard Shaver wrote strange tales of robots and titans within the Earth, and these were adapted by Ray Palmer into the pulp magazine _Amazing Stories_, and caused a sensation. Poor Shaver, however, had a history of being hospitalized for paranoia, and believed that his stories were telling the truth. Fantasy novels are one thing, but basing one's life and religion on the fantasy is another. Possibly the most peculiar person in this book which is full of peculiar people is Cyrus Teed, who through his religious alter-ego Koresh was able to inform the late nineteenth century world that not only was the Earth hollow, we were living on the inside of the hollow shell, not the outside, and the Sun and stars are somehow in the center. "To know of the earth's concavity is to know God, while to believe in the earth's convexity is to deny him and all his works." The Koreshan Unity Foundation still gets the word out.

Hollow Earth notions prove to be a dreadfully wrong-headed idea whose time has never come but still comes repeatedly in various forms. It is a little disheartening to know that such a bad concept has continued to take hold of people's imaginations and pocketbooks; type "Hollow Earth" into a Google search, and you will get millions of hits, and few of them reflect the sort of high-minded but amusing view which Standish has taken in his valuable book. The flying saucer tinfoil-hat types have signed on, as have the New Agers, and, if Standish's examples here mean anything, so will all the subsequent fringe groups.

Fascinating account of literary explorations beneath the earth's surface. The Edgar Rice Burroughs chapter is revealing and impossible to put down.

Far from being an in depth look at the history of the hollow earth phenomenon, this book starts with a little history on the originators of the idea but quicky evolves (devolves) into a series of very lengthy book reviews on fiction novels that use the hollow earth idea as their subject. About two hundred pages of them. All in all, this was a light, quick read and a nice little intro to one of science's neat fringe ideas but the book just doesn't have enough substance to be a definitive history on the subject. The thing I found most lacking was a look at the current kook groups who still hold to this theory. The author seems surprised that such folks still exist and only devotes a few concluding pages with text lifted directly from official websites to show you that some people are still "that" crazy. This book is an english lit thesis disguised as a science paper.

HOLLOW EARTH: THE LONG AND CURIOUS HISTORY OF IMAGINING STRANGE LANDS, FANTASTICAL CREATURES, ADVANCED CIVLIZATIONS, AND MARVELOS MACHINES BELOW THE EARTH'S SURFACE is for any who have loved Jules Vern, H.G. Wells, and imaginative history. From Sir Edmond Halley's 17th century theory of a hollow earth to account for magnetic pole flux to Hitler's search for an opening in the planet to use as a possible hideout, chapters chart speculations and manias from ancient civilizations to modern times, providing a lively survey not just of evolving beliefs, but of how they fostered changes. The forty illustrations include maps and movie posters and provide vivid accompaniment to a fun title that promises to reach a wide audience - and not just science fiction buffs.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch