Hollow World: Difference between revisions

{{quote|'''Old man:''' ''Years ago, I climbed the mountains, even though it was forbidden.''<br />

'''Kirk:''' ''Why is it forbidden?''<br />

 

So, mainstream scientists today believe that the Earth under our feet has a lot of molten rock and metal filling it and have gathered a lot of pretty solid evidence for it. The only complication is that we've never been able to send a human down more than several miles to actually study it up close, largely because [[No One Could Survive That]]. Which is why since times that are [[Older Than Radio]], early scientists, writers and more than a few crackpots have believed that there just might be something...or indeed, someone (say, [[Ultraterrestrials]])...down there, possibly powered by a suitably sized sun in the center.

A related belief is that of "Concave Hollow Earth": that Earth is actually a hollow bubble inside an infinite mass of rock.

 

 

{{examples}}

 

== Anime & Manga ==

* Dr. Suzuki in ''[[Transformers Cybertron]]'' believes the world is hollow, with a hole at the North Pole leading to the inside. She's wrong, but there is a big massive cavern full of ancient Decepticons.

* This is a main plot point in ''[[Spider Riders]]''. Hunter finds the Inner-World in the very first episode.

* ''[[wikipedia:Valérian and Laureline|Valerian and Laureline]]'' [a French comic]: The inhabitants of the "starless country" live inside a hollow planet. The core is their sun. And yes, somewhere a physicist is crying.

* There's a ''[[BPRD]]'' story ''called'' "Hollow Earth". It features mutant cavemen and what looks like Nazi submarines.

* In the [[Marvel Universe]], Saturn's moon Titan is this: barren on the outside, fully inhabited on the inside.

 

 

== Films ==

 

 

* In the semi-sequel to ''[[The Time Machine]]'', called ''The Time Ships'' (by [[Stephen Baxter]]), the time traveller returns to the future once again, but finds it changed. The Morlocks are now "good" in this future, and are also incredibly advanced, having engineered a [[Dyson Sphere|hollow sphere]] around the Sun slightly inside Earth's orbit. Morlocks live on the outside of this hollow sphere in the dark, while the Eloi live on the sunlit inside of it.

* Also by [[Stephen Baxter]], a short story called "[http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf907 Shell]" is set on a planet that has been ''folded in on itself'' in the fourth dimension. There is no sky -- people looking up see the other side of the planet curving over them, as if it's a shell. When one character uses a hot-air balloon to explore the other side, she witnesses the "shell" flatten out and then become curved normally, [[Alien Geometries|while the land she just left curves into a shell over the sky]].

* Nehwon in Fritz Leiber's ''[[Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser]]'' stories is a concave hollow world.

* The interior of Onyx in ''[[Halo]]: Ghosts of Onyx'' (part of Halo's [[Expanded Universe]]) has a portal to one of these.

* ''[[More Information Than You Require]]'' features a long section on the mole-manic societies dwelling within the hollow Earth, including a list of 700 mole-man names and countless allusions to many of the other works listed on this page.

* In the ''[[Tunnels]]'' series, the Earth's core is hollow and contains an Eden-like paradise called "The Garden of the Second Sun".

* ''Hollow Earth: The long and curious history of imagining strange lands, fantastical creatures, advanced civilizations, and marvelous machines below the Earth's surface'' by David Standish goes into detail on the fictions, theories, and wacky religions inspired by this trope, but even he doesn't bother listing all the stories based on this trope (it was, for example, quite popular in the 19th century to base utopian fiction inside a hollow earth).

* The Shellworld(s) in Iain M. Banks' ''[[The Culture|Matter]]'' is essentially a nesting-doll series of these, although all the inhabitants live on the "outside" of each shell. What's on the inside? Why, artificial stars, some of which roll across the sky and some of which are fixed.

* [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against The Day'' seems to have this. [[Mind Screw|It's unclear]].

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* The ''[[Babylon 5]]'' station could technically be considered a "world" of this sort.

** The planet that it orbits, Epsilon 3, confines an enourmous machine inside it, lots of hollow space and some inhabitants.

** ''[[Pathfinder]]'', as a nod to ''Pellucidar'', has a inverted vault in it's Underdark-analogue, complete with otherwise-extinct animals. it's more like a mini-world than an actual hollow planet, though; an ancient terrarium of Sufficiently Advanced...somethings.

** The ''World Builder's Guidebook'', a supplement for 2nd Edition D&D, discussed variant [[World Shapes]], including hollow worlds. Notably, it points out that the same blank globe-maps it provides for Earth-like spherical worlds are also perfectly usable for a hollow sphere.

** It's also been recently taken over by [[Stupid Jetpack Hitler|Nazis]]- to be precise, [[The Heartless|Manes]] formed at the end of [[WW 2]] when the real Nazis were crushed and almost all faith in their ideology crumbled.

* There is some mentions in the [[Warhammer 40000]] rulebook about hollow worlds.

* The [[World Of Synnibarr|Synnibarr]] roleplaying game's titular planet is hollow. According to the backstory, Earth's sun was becoming unstable, and because Earth itself was physically unsuitable, the planet's stellar engineers took Mars and expanded it, hollowed it out, and terraformed it until it was completely unrecognizable to serve as a new home for the evacuated human race. Overlaps with [[That's No Moon]], as a suitably huge power generator was installed in Synnibarr's core to power the artificial planetary heating and atmosphere systems as well as the engine designed to propel the planet to a new star system to take up orbit in. After dozens of catastrophes, wars, and invasions during the 40,000 year journey, the inner core of the planet was abandoned, with the planetary machinery almost completely inaccessible at the top of a thousand-mile high mountain ascending to the planet's geographical core.

 

* ''[[Terranigma]]'' has this at the beginning, and later the protagonist drops through a hole to find himself on the surface of Earth.

* The world of La Gias from ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' (only visited in the [[Gaiden Game]] ''[[Lord Of Elemental]]'', but referenced throughout the series) is like this. Its specifically in the center of the Earth, but its more of a magical dimension.

* Atrea, the world in ''[[Aion]]'' was hollow with the Tower of Eternity through the center as the [[Physical God|manifestation of the god Aion]] who provided the inside of the world with heat and light. However, after the [[Earthshattering Kaboom|Cataclysm]], the center of the tower and a good deal of the planet's equator were destroyed leaving an apple-core shaped world held together only by magic. Although the planet orbits a nearby star, only one half of the planet gets any light from the star.

* The world of ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' may or may not be spherical, but it's hollow alright, as your dwarves may discover [[Dug Too Deep|the hard way]]. Specifically, {{spoiler|it has a sort of "swiss cheese" layering of an unminable rock called slade which is covered in semi-molten rock and adamantine, depending on where.}}

* ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. It has a unique configuration in that, instead of two habitable surfaces opossed to each other, the Underworld IS the basic, solid planetary sphere, while the Overworld encases it. As proof, the Tower of Bab-Il rises from the Underworld and continues ''upwards'' through the Overworld. The Underworld is also considerably smaller, and, being located between the solid sphere and its shell, it lacks a Sun. The magma flowing through it is more than bright enough to do the job, though.

* ''[[Septerra Core]]'' takes place, as the name suggests, on seven massive continents or "Shells" whose orbit and level are controlled by a [[Master Computer|central core]] with [[Magical Computer|mythical wish granting powers]].

* While [[Word of God]] [[Shrug of God|remains silent about it]], most fans interpret [[World of Warcraft]]'s Elemental Plane to work in this manner.

** The Spin-Dig Galaxy level from ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'' appears to be located inside one of these.

 

 

== Webcomics ==

* In [[Homestuck]] {{spoiler|The Battlefield has a very thick crust with a hollow center housing THE TUMOR (Before being removed) in its center.}}

 

 

 

== Western Animation ==