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} }) </script> </div> </form> </fieldset> <article class="entryArticle content STeditorial"> <header class="entryHeader icon-theme"> <h1 class="entryTitle">Underground </h1> </header><p class='tagLine'>Entry updated 7 March 2022. Tagged: Theme.</p><div class="browsingBtns"> <span> <input class="button PNI previous" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?id=p&entry=underground'" value="Prev" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI next" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/next.php?&entry=underground'" value="Next" /> </span> <span> <input class="button PNI incoming" type="button" onclick="window.location.href='/incoming.php?entry=underground'" value="About This Entry" title="What links to the entry; contributor initials explained; how to cite; other information" /> </span> <span style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.open('/gallery.php?link=underground');"> <img alt="Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com" style="margin: 0; position: relative; top:-2px;" src="/images/icon-gal.gif"></img></span> </div><p style='float:right; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:10px; position: relative; top: 3px;'> <a href='/gallery.php?id=GreenbergS-InvisibleNY.jpg' target='_blank'> <img src='https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com/gal/thumbs/GreenbergS-InvisibleNY.jpg' alt='pic'></a></p> <p>Underground settings are far from being an exclusively sf theme, having a universal resonance for <i>Homo sapiens</i>, as Kim Stanley <a href="/entry/robinson_kim_stanley">Robinson</a> registers in <i>Forty Signs of Rain</i> (<b>2004</b>): "He descended the Metro escalator into the ground. A weird action for a hominid to take.... Following the shaman into the cave. We've never lost any of that". Mysterious regions underground have since the earliest days of <a href="/entry/proto_sf">Proto SF</a> offered a suitable location for <a href="/entry/lost_worlds">Lost Worlds</a>, <a href="/entry/labyrinths">Labyrinths</a> and the kind of free-form adventuring which <a href="/entry/genre_sf">Genre SF</a> transferred to other worlds as <a href="/entry/planetary_romance">Planetary Romance</a>. It might be suggested, however, that not until the late eighteenth century were underground realms imagined – by Early Romantics, more in Germany than elsewhere – as essential elements in the landscapes of what would become <a href="/entry/fantastika">Fantastika</a>. The enormously influential polymath Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who began his career as a mining engineer, conveyed to his huge audience from before the turn of the century a geological/geographical vision of the planet as radically one: his early detailed maps of mines dramatize his lifelong practice of mapping mountains etc as though they were inverse mines, and entire countries as though they were mirrored from below [for As Above, So Below see <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/encyclopedia_of_fantasy_the">Encyclopedia of Fantasy</a> under <b>links</b> below]. The <i>allure</i> of the underground arguably grows from – it is certainly contemporary with – this vision of the planet.</p> <p>Less romantically, underground regions of great <a href="/entry/cities">Cities</a> are often occupied in sf (both physically and as programmatic markers of <a href="/entry/politics">Political</a> oppression) by the lower orders of society, as in H G <a href="/entry/wells_h_g">Wells</a>'s <i>When the Sleeper Wakes</i> (<b>1899</b>; rev vt <i>The Sleeper Awakes</i> <b>1910</b>), or Fritz <a href="/entry/lang_fritz">Lang</a>'s <a href="/entry/metropolis">Metropolis</a> (<i>1926</i>). Less controversially, closed underground spaces are sometimes significant in terms of <a href="/entry/psychology">Psychology</a>; the agoraphobia of city-dwellers in Arthur C <a href="/entry/clarke_arthur_c">Clarke</a>'s <i>The City and the Stars</i> (November 1948 <a href="/entry/startling_stories">Startling</a> as "Against the Fall of Night"; <b>1953</b>; exp and much rev vt <b>1956</b>) is first conveyed by the constricted settings preferred for all their <a href="/entry/virtual_reality">Virtual Reality</a> adventures, typically underground.</p> <p>There is some overlap between underground fictions set in the vast internal spaces of a <a href="/entry/hollow_earth">Hollow Earth</a> (which see) and those which merely feature extensive cave-systems. Two of the most famous stories of the latter type are <a href="/entry/lytton_edward_bulwer">Lytton</a>'s <i>The Coming Race</i> (<b>1871</b>; vt <i>Vril: The Power of the Coming Race</i> <b>1972</b>) and Jules <a href="/entry/verne_jules">Verne</a>'s <i>Voyage au centre de la terre</i> (<b>1863</b>; exp <b>1867</b>; trans anon as <i>Journey to the Centre of the Earth</i> <b>1872</b>). A third example, not often thought of as being such, and especially prone to the psychoanalytic interpretation, is Lewis <a href="/entry/carroll_lewis">Carroll</a>'s <i>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</i> (<b>1865</b>). Distantly echoing the underground-dwelling Morlocks of H G <a href="/entry/wells_h_g">Wells</a>'s <i>The Time Machine</i> (<b>1895</b>), H P <a href="/entry/lovecraft_h_p">Lovecraft</a> imagines unpleasant products of <a href="/entry/devolution">Devolution</a> infesting underground warrens in, for example, "The Lurking Fear" (23 January-13 February 1923 <i>Home Brew</i>); further grisly troglodytes feature in John <a href="/entry/blackburn_john">Blackburn</a>'s <i>Children of the Night</i> (<b>1966</b>). Much more recently, Jeff <a href="/entry/long_jeff">Long</a>'s <i>The Descent</i> (<b>1999</b>) unashamedly exploits underground caves and their demonic inhabitants to evoke <a href="/entry/horror_in_sf">Horror</a> and <a href="/entry/paranoia">Paranoia</a>. Nonhuman <a href="/entry/monsters">Monsters</a> are also frequently found below Earth's surface: examples include the "deros" in Richard <a href="/entry/shaver_richard_s">Shaver</a>'s <b>Shaver Mystery</b> stories, fire-emitting beetles in Thomas <a href="/entry/page_thomas">Page</a>'s <i>The Hephaestus Plague</i> (<b>1973</b>), literal though far from unlikeable bogeymen in Raymond <a href="/entry/briggs_raymond">Briggs</a>'s <i>Fungus the Bogeyman</i> (graph <b>1977</b>), and fire-breathing dragons in <a href="/entry/reign_of_fire">Reign of Fire</a> (<i>2002</i>). The monster-filled <a href="/entry/aliens">Alien</a> cave-system of Piers <a href="/entry/anthony_piers">Anthony</a>'s <i>Chthon</i> (<b>1967</b>) is sufficiently complex to have developed its own emergent intelligence, a mini-<a href="/entry/gaia">Gaia</a>.</p> <p>Metaphor and literal fact reinforce one another when an "underground" movement actually resides beneath the ground, an early example being Milo <a href="/entry/hastings_milo">Hastings</a>'s embattled subterranean Berlin in <i>City of Endless Night</i> (June-November 1919 <i>True Story</i> as "Children of 'Kultur'"; rev <b>1920</b>); or when, at the climax of <a href="/entry/metropolis">Metropolis</a>, the buried working class erupts upward into the light. Similarly the underground "sietches" of Frank <a href="/entry/herbert_frank">Herbert</a>'s <i>Dune</i> (fixup <b>1965</b>), built as shelter from the harsh desert, become foci of resistance against human oppressors. Sf <a href="/entry/pariah_elite">Pariah Elites</a> may construct underground <a href="/entry/cities">City</a> refuges, as in A E <a href="/entry/van_vogt_a_e">van Vogt</a>'s <i>Slan</i> (September-December 1940 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; <b>1946</b>; rev <b>1951</b>), Henry <a href="/entry/kuttner_henry">Kuttner</a>'s <i>Mutant</i> (stories February 1945-September 1953 <a href="/entry/asf">Astounding</a>; fixup <b>1953</b>), and the human hive of Frank <a href="/entry/herbert_frank">Herbert</a>'s <i>Hellstrom's Hive</i> (November 1972-March 1973 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a> as "Project 40"; <b>1973</b>). Humanity at large has retreated into such underground cities owing to a decadent turning away from nature in E M <a href="/entry/forster_e_m">Forster</a>'s "The Machine Stops" (November 1909 <i>The Oxford and Cambridge Review</i>) and Michael <a href="/entry/frayn_michael">Frayn</a>'s <i>A Very Private Life</i> (<b>1968</b>); and owing to pressure of <a href="/entry/overpopulation">Overpopulation</a> in Isaac <a href="/entry/asimov_isaac">Asimov</a>'s <i>The Caves of Steel</i> (<b>1954</b>) and T J <a href="/entry/bass_t_j">Bass</a>'s <i>Half Past Human</i> (December 1969 <a href="/entry/galaxy">Galaxy</a> and November 1970 <a href="/entry/if">If</a>; fixup <b>1971</b>). Sewers, tunnels and other excavated spaces beneath more conventional <a href="/entry/cities">Cities</a> provide a shadowy, atmospheric otherworld which is both strange and very close at hand, as in Fritz <a href="/entry/leiber_fritz">Leiber</a>'s <i>The Swords of Lankhmar</i> (May 1961 <a href="/entry/fantastic">Fantastic</a> as "Scylla's Daughter"; exp <b>1968</b>) and numerous tales of <a href="/entry/london">London</a> (which see).</p> <p>Subterranean locations in sf often contain artefacts of mysterious <a href="/entry/forerunners">Forerunners</a>, as in – to select a few of very many examples – <a href="/entry/forbidden_planet">Forbidden Planet</a> (<i>1956</i>); Andre <a href="/entry/norton_andre">Norton</a>'s <b>Forerunner</b> series, beginning with <i>Storm Over Warlock</i> (<b>1960</b>); Frederik <a href="/entry/pohl_frederik">Pohl</a>'s "The Merchants of Venus" (July/August 1972 <a href="/entry/if">If</a>); and Piers <a href="/entry/anthony_piers">Anthony</a>'s <i>Kirlian Quest</i> (<b>1978</b>), along with other books of his <b>Cluster</b> series. The sub-lunar Ruins of Brian N <a href="/entry/ball_brian_n">Ball</a>'s <i>Sundog</i> (<b>1965</b>) appear to be such a trove but are in fact fraudulent; the same book exemplifies many hardened military sites with a massively armed, three-miles-deep "Asiatic fort".</p> <p>During the <a href="/entry/cold_war">Cold War</a> era, a favourite form of underground installation was the bomb shelter built in fear of nuclear <a href="/entry/holocaust">Holocaust</a> and/or the subsequent radioactive fallout. Some examples are: <i>Level 7</i> (<b>1959</b>) by Mordecai <a href="/entry/roshwald_mordecai">Roshwald</a>; <i>The Penultimate Truth</i> (<b>1964</b>) by Philip K <a href="/entry/dick_philip_k">Dick</a>; <i>Farnham's Freehold</i> (<b>1964</b>) by Robert A <a href="/entry/heinlein_robert_a">Heinlein</a>; <i>The Prodigal Sun</i> (<b>1964</b>) by Philip E <a href="/entry/high_philip_e">High</a>; and <i>Doomsday Clock</i> (<b>1975</b>) by Elizabeth S <a href="/entry/benoist_elizabeth_s">Benoist</a>. Megalomaniac plans for deep shelters as a base for repopulating the Earth feature in the climax of <a href="/entry/dr_strangelove">Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</a> (<i>1963</i>). The type of <a href="/entry/post-holocaust">Post-Holocaust</a> underground community that might ensue is imagined in <i>A</i> <a href="/entry/boy_and_his_dog_a">Boy and His Dog</a> (<i>1975</i>). Farther into the future, a post-holocaust shelter setting may become an effective <a href="/entry/pocket_universe">Pocket Universe</a> whose inhabitants have forgotten or deny that an outer world exists, as in <i>Dark Universe</i> (<b>1961</b>) by Daniel F <a href="/entry/galouye_daniel_f">Galouye</a>, <i>Kuldesak</i> (<b>1972</b>) by Richard <a href="/entry/cowper_richard">Cowper</a>, and <i>The Shadow of the Gloom-World</i> (<b>1977</b>) by Roger <a href="/entry/eldridge_roger">Eldridge</a>. Further underground settings of note include the laboratory complex of <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/andromeda_strain_the">Andromeda Strain</a> (<i>1971</i>), the Command System – a glorified bomb-shelter cum underground railway – of Iain M <a href="/entry/banks_iain_m">Banks</a>'s <i>Consider Phlebas</i> (<b>1987</b>), and the planet Trencher in John <a href="/entry/clute_john">Clute</a>'s <i>Appleseed</i> (<b>2001</b>), whose vast population lives deep below its war-devastated crust. Such subterranean palaces as the House Absolute in Gene <a href="/entry/wolfe_gene">Wolfe</a>'s <i>The Book of the New Sun</i> (<b>1980-1983</b> 4vols) and the Labyrinth of Robert <a href="/entry/silverberg_robert">Silverberg</a>'s <b>Majipoor</b> sequence, opening with <i>Lord Valentine's Castle</i> (November 1979-February 1980 <a href="/entry/fsf">F&SF</a>; <b>1980</b>) suggest a past need for defensive bunkers. A tiny enclave of humanity in a deep mine survives the millennia of intense meteor bombardment that destroys all life on Earth's surface in Neal <a href="/entry/stephenson_neal">Stephenson</a>'s <i>Seveneves</i> (<b>2015</b>).</p> <p>Many sf and sf/<a href="/entry/horror_in_sf">Horror</a> films are set underground, such as <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/mole_people_the">Mole People</a> (<i>1956</i>); <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/incredible_petrified_world_the">Incredible Petrified World</a> (<i>1957</i>), whose cave-system location is entered from deep <a href="/entry/under_the_sea">Under the Sea</a>; <a href="/entry/journey_to_the_center_of_the_earth">Journey to the Center of the Earth</a> (<i>1959</i>); <a href="/entry/death_line">Death Line</a> (<i>1972</i>; vt <i>Raw Meat</i> US); <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/last_dinosaur_the">Last Dinosaur</a> (<i>1977</i>); and <a href="/entry/eden_log">Eden Log</a> (<i>2007</i>). Underground scenes depicting the vast and awesome <a href="/entry/machines">Machines</a> of the bygone alien Krell are a visual highlight of <a href="/entry/forbidden_planet">Forbidden Planet</a> (<i>1956</i>). In television, there was <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/secret_empire_the">Secret Empire</a> (<i>1979</i>). A twenty-first-century example of blockbuster underground adventure – more <a href="/entry/technothriller">Technothriller</a> than sf – is the highly implausible movie <i>The</i> <a href="/entry/core_the">Core</a> (<i>2003</i>). [DRL/EFB]</p> <p><b>see also:</b> <a href="/entry/keep">Keep</a>.</p> <p><b>further reading</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li>F L Stevens. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Under+London+A+Chronicle+of+London+Underground&field-author=F+L+Stevens" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Under London: A Chronicle of London's Underground Life-Lines and Relics</a></em> (London: J M Dent and Sons, <b>1939</b>) [nonfiction: illus/hb/uncredited]</li> <li>Guy Costes and Joseph Altairac. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Les+Terres+Creuses+Bibliographie&field-author=Guy+Costes+and+Joseph+Altairac" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Les Terres Creuses: Bibliographie Géo-Antropologique Commentée des Mondes Souterrains Imaginaires et des Récits Spéléologiques Conjecturaux</a></em> (Paris: Encrage, <b>2008</b>) [nonfiction: annotated bibliography: illus/various: hb/Jeam Tag]</li> <li>David Ashford. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=London+Underground+A+Cultural+Geography&field-author=David+Ashford" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">London Underground: A Cultural Geography</a></em> (Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, <b>2013</b>) [nonfiction: hb/uncredited]</li> <li>Will Hunt. <em><a href="/sfeshop.php?field-keywords=Underground+A+Human+History+of+the+Worlds&field-author=Will+Hunt" class="link-amazon" target="_blank">Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath our Feet</a></em> (London: Simon and Schuster, <b>2019</b>) [nonfiction: hb/]</li> </ul> <p><b>links</b></p> <ul class="x"> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/"><em>The Encyclopedia of Fantasy</em></a>: <a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/as_above_so_below">As Above, So Below</a></li> <li><a target="_blank" href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/gallery.php?link=underground">Picture Gallery</a></li> </ul> <p><b>previous versions of this entry</b></p> <ul><li><a href='https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/underground' target='_blank'>Internet Archive</a></li></ul><br /><br /></article></div> <div class="sideBarsWrapper"> <div class="sideBarsColsWrapper clearfix"> <div class="column sideBar12 clearfix"> <div class="columnForm"><aside id="blogFeed" class="widget"> <div class="content STeditorial clearfix"> <h2>Recently visited entries<span style="background:url(/images/thingSFE2.png) !important"></span></h2><ul style='width: 50%; 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