A New Drawing of the Hollow Earth
The intrepid Chris Roberson and his Monkeybrain Books are going to put out a second edtion of my novel The Hollow Earth in a couple of months.
I spent the last few days rereading it and re-editing the text. I edited the original from a manuscript I found, you understand, the book is really by Mason Algiers Reynolds of Virginia. I wrote a new “Editor’s Note for the Second Edition” which includes a copy I made of an 1852 drawing by Mason Reynolds that I found a few years back, thanks to a tip from my eccentric and difficult friend Frank Shook.
In viewing the sketch, understand that it depicts a cross-section of Mason’s Hollow Earth, sliced from pole to pole. The lumpy outer shapes represent the Earth’s crust, partly overlaid with seas. Mason’s Earth has Holes at both poles, and there are several additional holes passing through its seas. The creatures within the Hollow Earth are not drawn to scale.
Running clockwise from the top, features to note are:
* The maelstrom at the North Hole.
* Mason’s dog Arf beneath it.
* A black god riding a lightstreamer.
* A gap where an ocean runs through Earth’s crust, with a tiny “fried-egg ship” floating up through it—this corresponds to the hole near Chesapeake Bay.
* A ballula or giant shellsquid.
* A second ocean gap, in the vicinity of the Bermuda triangle.
* A flowerperson (Seela?) on a giant flower.
* A harpy bird above the inner jungle.
* The South Hole.
* A second lightstreamer.
* Another “blue hole” gap within the sea which is meant to lie, I believe, near Tonga and Fiji.
* A pair of koladull or shrigs.
* A third lightstreamer, which leads in towards the center where it meets the fan of a woomo or giant sea cucumber.
The center also depicts six Umpteen Seas, another woomo, and the sphere of the Central Anomaly, with MirrorSeas visible within.
March 25th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
hey, you think the bermuda triangle is actually a hole sucking things into the hollow earth?
March 26th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
If the Earth is in fact hollow, then it could well be that there are a number of holes in the crust. One of these holes might be hidden beneath the Antarctic ice shield, and some of the others could be in the ocean. Due to the equilibrium of gravity on a hollow shell, the water wouldn’t “rush though” a hole. You’d just have a very deep blue/black hole in the ocean which, in principle you could swim through to get to the inside—and vice versa.
I’ve often thought there could be such a hole in the Bermuda Triangle area.
But if the hole in and of itself is not attractive, why would so many planes and ships founder there? Perhaps there is a flying saucer base inside the Hollow Earth, and as the saucers commute in and out, they generate fields that might cause human craft to crash. Or maybe the sacuerians shoot down our ships and planes for sport. Or abduct them for fiendish purposes…
If I were to write about this, I’d probably focus on a hole in the South Pacific rather than a hole in the Bermuda Triangle—the BT is kind of overused and played-out IMHO. I’d say check out the Great Astrolable reef near Fiji, or the Blue Hole in Palau, or the Marianas Trench off Tonga.
August 10th, 2007 at 8:03 am
Do you believe that the hole outside Belize City, is an example of a possible hole to the inside of the earth. Also are you familiar with the accounts of the US Admiral that claimed to have come in contact with a civilization living under the North pole? What is your stance on the idea of people living in these possible underground caves?
August 10th, 2007 at 9:14 am
Andrew, thinking of underground caves is too limited a notion of the Hollow Earth. The idea I like is that the planet is literally hollow—like a tennis ball.
A fact that’s not often understood in the literature is that the beings on the inside will be in a weightless environment; the shell’s gravitational forces cancel out inside a hollow shell of matter (proved by Newton about 1700, but ignored by cultists ever since).
For more on the the Hollow Earth, see the story “The Perfect Wave” that Marc Laidlaw and I wrote for Asimov’s SF magazine, to appear, I think in January, 2008.
By the way, Laidlaw has recently returned from an expedition investigating a rumored gateway to the Hollow Earth in Tibet, and I await his findings with bated breath.