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

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!