The Hollow Earth & Return to the Hollow Earth — Rudy Rucker

"The Hollow Earth" is a classic work of American steampunk. In 1836, our seventeen-year-old narrator Mason Reynolds leaves his father's Virginia farm with the black Otha. He befriends the dissolute Edgar Allan Poe, and they fall through a thousand-mile-deep hole in the ice of Antarctica. Within the Hollow Earth, Mason woos and wins Seela, who lives upon a giant flower. At the earth's the core he finds a sky-surfing tribe known as the black gods -- and a cluster of giant, god-like sea cucumbers known as woomo. Mason, Seela, and Poe make their way out through the crust and back to Earth. But due to their time in the strong light of the woomo, their skins are black. And then they encounter Poe's double... "Return to the Hollow Earth" is Rucker's second steampunk novel featuring Mason Reynolds. In 1850, Mason and his wife Seela embark upon a perilous trip around Cape Horn to San Francisco. Their ship sinks, but they're saved by a tentacled, flying nautilus -- who carries them to meet Edgar Allan Poe. Poe leads them on a return voyage to the Hollow Earth, passing through the throat of a thousand-mile-deep maelstrom at the North Pole. Within the Hollow Earth, they learn that the god-like woomo sea cucumbers mean to send them them on a epic mission across space and time. The initial stage of this mission brings them to Santa Cruz, California -- in the year 2018. And then things get gnarly.