Uncommon Geology (hollow worlds, expanding earth, abiotic oil...)

Since my childhood, I've been interested in physics, astronomy, and cosmology, but I hadn't realized my fascination for earth sciences till just recently. Perhaps by mere chance reading about UFOlogy or more esoteric realms, I stumbled upon the idea of a Hollow Earth and it piqued my interest to the point that I started reading more and more not only about the recollections of Admiral Richard Byrd, Olaf Jansen, and so forth, but about the actual possibility of the Earth being hollow. It was then that I found Jan Lamprecht's marvelous work Hollow Planets, which is a book by an IT professional, just like me, on the feasibility of hollow worlds. Shortly after I found the Expanding Earth Theory, which is well substantiated by the age of the seafloor, for instance, and fits quite nicely with the hollow planets model. A masterful work on the matter would be Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences, which is Carey's second book and according to many the best on the topic. This in turn led me further into more technical geology and into the abiotic origins of the water that covers our planet and the abiotic origins of oil (petroleum), rather than the fossils model we've been sold thus far... A good work on the matter is Thomas Gold's The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels, which explains the theory but fails in adding his own hypothesis to the original Russian / Ukrainian theory. If you wish to add any books of interest, you are more than welcome, since I am becoming more and more of an avid reader on these topics and any guidance would be appreciated!

Well, you're probably familiar with the Shaver Mystery, which some people claim is the truth to this day. Have you heard the theories about the moon being hollow as well? If I may, there are two excellent fiction books on the subject by Jeff Long. The first being The Descent, and the second being Deeper. If I come across anything else, I'll post it.

I know very little about this stuff. But Arktos: The polar myth to some extent deals with hollow earth theories too.

John Uri Lloyd's Etidorhpa (1895) is the hollow-earth-novel-to-end-all-hollow-earth novels. This wikipedia article gives a decent overview. I first learned about it from Terence McKenna's Archaic Revival, where it is treated as a crypto-manifesto of mycological psychopharmacopeia.

That wikipedia article also mentions the other landmark works of hollow earth fiction: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, The Coming Race, and Pellucidar.

Well, I did not know about the Shaver Mystery and I found it most interesting. I have read about Lemuria / Mu / Pan / Pacifica before, mostly from David Hatcher Childress's research in the Pacific islands, but had not read about current inhabitants of the inter-Earth and their mischief exposed like he did. It somehow reminds me of the Bon cult mentioned by Blavatsky. I am familiar with the hollow moon, though, and the Vasin-Shcherbakov Theory of the moon being a spacecraft put in its place by an ancient and highly advanced alien race. It is known now that both the Earth and the moon resonate like bells when hit by a ballistic projectile, especially the latter. Also there is an anomaly on the dark side of the moon that some claim is the engine or some sort of antigravity propulsion system. If you ask me, there is too much speculation in this and I rather stay with the scientific facts; same goes to the fiction stories mentioned by others. If we (or at least I) want to make a strong case of this, we need to stick with the serious researchers and the more academic books or otherwise the whole building I am trying to build will fall like a tower of playing cards..... Thank you nonetheless for the interesting recommendations!

The idea of a hollow earth and subterranean lands in general have long fascinated me, though I am less interested in the possible science and more so in the legends. Two great books on this are Hollow Earth: The Long and Curious History of Imagining Strange Lands, Fantastical Creatures, Advanced Civilizations by David Standish and Subterranean Worlds: A Critical Anthology by Peter Fitting. If you look at my library under subterranean worlds, there are quite a few there too (though they are kind of mixed in with mythological underworlds). CAVERNS, CAULDRONS, AND CONCEALED CREATURES - A Study of Subterranean Mysteries in History, Folklore, and Myth and Subterranean Worlds: 100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost Races and Ufos from Inside the Earth are definitely NOT science, but interesting as well.

cindy

I've always been fond of Cyrus Reed Teed's theory of Cellular Cosmogony - which explains that the Earth is hollow, and we're living on the inside. (Not least because, in a twisty mathematical sense where inside and outside can be relative terms, it's kind of true.)

It doesn't tend to get brought up much in modern books except as a curiousity, but his original text explaining the theory is up on sacred-texts. (Supposedly, the Nazis of all people bought into the theory enough to send ships to the South Pacific to spy on Europe by looking across the inside of the Hollow Earth - but I supect that's apocryphal.)

ETA: There's also a whole collection of out-of-copyright hollow-earth texts at sacred-texts, in their Earth Mysteries collection. I can only vouch for a few of them, but I am tempted to put The Book of Earths on my own to-read list now.

Teed had a full-blown religious following at one point, but it's pretty well extinct now.

Yeah, it didn't last very long (which is why the Nazi thing is so strange.) Though if I ever make it to Florida, I'm going to make whoever I'm with stop at Koreshan State Park, the site of their attempted hollow-earth Utopia (possibly on the way home from Coral Castle :)

@ 7 > I wasnt too taken by Standish's book (see my review thereof), would you think I am likely to like Fitting's better?