I can’t quite work out whether I’m completely terrified or just utterly bewildered. On perusing this particularly pleasant review of The Coming Race, Bulwer-Lytton’s frankly bonkers work of Victorian science fiction in which the protagonist finds a superhuman subterranean race, I was directed to what I can only describe as the most bizarre website I’ve ever come across. I quote:
You are invited to accompany us on this historic Voyage to Our Hollow Earth and personally visit that paradise within our earth via the North Polar Opening and meet the highly advanced, friendly people who live there.
Well, thanks very much. Do you think it’s bring your own bottle? What does one wear to meet highly advanced, friendly people? Most experiences of meeting highly advanced people on the plain old surface of the earth would lead me to believe that they will, in fact, be distinctly unfriendly.
Within Our Hollow Earth at the City of Jehu, expedition members could take an inner earth monorail train to visit the lost Garden of Eden located under America on the highest mountain plateau of the Inner Continent.
Sounds delightful, doesn’t it? I’ve always wondered what the Garden of Eden was like. Never thought I’d be reaching it by an inner earth monorail train, but then I’m still quite frightened of Oyster cards.
I’m so flabbergasted (not, apparently, flabberghasted) that I might even be lost for words. I think I’ll defer to Matthew Sweet:
Hesperus Press: ‘The Coming Race’ and the ‘Vril’ societies you mention in your foreword could now be seen as somewhat sinister aspirations to ‘racial supremacy’. Do you believe there was something in Victorian society which lent itself particularly readily to such elitism?
Matthew Sweet: No. Those elitisms are alive and well. For obvious historical reasons they’re no longer couched in racial or cultural terms — but you don’t have to look too far to find the mutant progeny of the Vril societies. Try browsing in the self-help section of a big bookshop – what are all those glassy-eyed motivational gurus offering you but the chance to join a healthy, wealthy elite with very straight teeth and noses? Ask those scientists who are working on switching off the “ageing gene” what kind of world they’re trying to create – or ask those people who run cryonics centres in California, stuffed with the frozen bodies of dead rich people. Have a look at all those dodgy anti-ageing products at the make-up counters in the department stores: they’re little tubs and tubes of Vril – and poor people certainly don’t buy them. There are plenty of people out there who fantasise about joining some kind of slightly superhuman elite.
Hesperus Press: Do you believe that the worth of science fiction is compromised when its predictions do not come true?
Matthew Sweet: There’s something inherently fascinating about yesterday’s tomorrows – and maybe science fiction only matures once time has robbed it of the expectation that it should be prophetic. Read ‘Day of the Triffids’ now, for instance, and it doesn’t seem like a dreadful dystopian vision – it’s a book that says: wouldn’t it be wonderful if some catastrophe forced Britain out of all the dreary conventions of social class and marriage and the nine-to-five? Wouldn’t it be great to motor through an empty London, smashing shop windows and helping yourself to tins of pineapple chunks? I watched ‘Children of Men’ on DVD last night. It’s a film about a world in which the population has become infertile, and in which Britain is gripped by a racist paranoia about immigrants. So everyone in Britain is telegraphing their Britishness in order not to be suspected of being an illegal immigrant. There’s a quick shot of a group of black and Asian Londoners standing outside a tower block – and all the men are wearing pin-stripe suits and bowler hats, like accountants in Monty Python sketches. That’s a pretty provocative image now – but what thoughts will it provoke in twenty years time?
I don’t know, Matthew. I’m not even sure if they have bowler hats in Our Hollow Earth.
Ellie
A terrifying website, which one almost wishes were part of an ARG (see? I’m hip to modern lingo) but expects probably isn’t.
My favourite part was this:
“If in the event we are unable to locate the North Polar Opening and enter into Inner Earth, we may continue south on the 141st Meridian from the geographic North Pole to the New Siberian Islands and spend a couple of days there checking out the exotic animal remains thought by Hollow Earth researchers to be of inner earth origin.”
So:
“If your vast personal investment* fails to turn up a visit to an imaginary world, thus overturning everything we knew about science and leading to your being forced to acknowledge everything you were afraid is true about reality, we will instead be spending a weekend sitting on a muddy hillock, all po-faced, picking over tortoise ribs. Cheese sandwiches will be provided (subject to availability)”
*in time and sanity – apparently participation in the trip is free, although they do give an address at which they can accept checks and money orders.
The whole thing beggars belief, doesn’t it? I mean, I’m no Christopher Columbus, but I think someone might have noticed if the earth was, in fact, a massive radioactive donut, as the top picture seems to be suggesting.
Still, a tiny part of me is sad that nobody will ever say this about me:
‘As soon as enough monies come in (s)he will be chartering the Russian Nuclear Icebreaker.’
I can but dream.
Ellie
Don’t put yourself down! I’m sure you will be chartering the Russian Nuclear Icebreaker (as soon as enough monies come in).
It sounds like a Soviet-engineered apocalyptic conversation-starter.