Customer Reviews

The Hollow Earth: The Narrative of Mason Algiers Reynolds of Virginia

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you've read some Poe, especially "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," you'll enjoy this pastiche. It's especially fun if you're familiar with Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness," another book that makes homage to Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym." Rucker never disappoints-- he's crazy in a *good* way.

Poe, Lovecraftian critters, wild adventures from the American South to the Hollow Earth--it's all here. One of Rudy Rucker's best novels, back in print.

Essentially an update of the Vernian science fiction adventures of the 19th century, with a dose modern anthropology, post-modern sci-fi weirdness, and Rudy Rucker brand sexuality thrown in. Told from the perspective of a young man from the pre-war South, who becomes Poe's assistant and accompanies him on an adventure to increasingly strange and bizarre lands. Quite enjoyable for anyone who knows something of Poe's biography, and doesn't shirk away from the pervier elements of it.

Essentially a variant of Journey to the Center of the Earth blended with Huck Finn and Edgar A. Poe (as himself), with Rucker's usual somewhat adolescent take on relationships and sex, not to mention the bizarre. A pretty good story, just not one of Rucker's best.

Being a huge fan of Poe, I really enjoyed this book. This is the only book of Rucker I have read, so I cannot compare it to his other writings, but I thought the book was great. It provides a fantastic escape into another world!

Like the reviewer below, I've read almost all of Rucker's work, including his short-story output, which is excellent. Unlike him, I really enjoyed this book. Poe fans and lit majors will get a kick out of it, and casual readers of SF will enjoy it as well. Perhaps not as good as the Software/Wetware/Freeware novels, but very enjoyable, and on a par with White Light and Secret of Life.

In this enlightening book about the Hollow Earth theory, still considered a possibility by some people today, 15-year-old Mason Reynolds (the son of a slave-raping wiskey brewer in in early 1800's) and his slave Otha find themselves embarking on an amazing journey deep beneath the Earth's crust, after buying a prostitute, accidently murdering a boy, and fornicating with Edgar Allen Poe's 14-year-old wife. together with his friends, Mason survives a 6-month voyage around the Atlantic, a sexual encounter with a South American woman, a ship-sinking sea-monster, and finally a freezing skyborne trip to the south pole in a hot-air balloon. Then when all looks bleak and Mason gets to the edge of a freezing death at the south pole, he suddenly finds himself and his companions, rapidly penetrating the lower cavity of and into the hollow Earth! A cavity, which of course is more-than-once likened to parts of the female anatomy. Inside, our heroes discover an amazing world of frightening creatures, bizarre physics, and of course lots of very horney humans, all of which readily expand Mason's horizons in more ways than one... if you know what I mean. I highly recomend this book for anybody with an open mind and open legs. If you want to give your children a good example of a different theory of the shape of the earth, as well as a few new ideas about the use of their bodies in ways the law may not yet allow, this is the book for them!

Interesting in some spots but a bit drawn out. Some of the 'science' explanations are a bit tortured to fit into a pseudo-19th century phraseology... without being the least bit edifying. Structurally the book needs some help... with only a wisp of motivation the characters are swept along by events that don't really drive them plausibly to the actions they take. A few parts are captivatingly told but in the end this reading was a waste of time. Read some Mark Twain instead... or even some Jules Verne.

First, I have to say that I'm a long running fan of Rudy Rucker, and have read every book he's written, fiction and non-fiction. To this day, Software, Wetware, and Freeware reign as three of my favorite books. I read (though struggled would be a better word) through this book, forever keeping an open mind, hoping that it would get better, but could only come to the conclusion that this is a bad book. It's vaguely interesting at points, and Edgar Allan Poe being one of the main characters is kind of fun, but overall, it's a childish, boring, and uninteresting pile of trash. Seriously. If you see it, burn it. If you have already read this book, please don't let it deter you from his other works, such as "Software", "Wetware", "Freeware", and "Hacker and the ants". It pains me to think that Mr. Rucker wrote a book as bad as this.