In 1836, Mason Algiers Reynolds leaves his family's Virginia farm with his father's slave, a dog, and a mule. Branded a murderer, he finds sanctuary with his hero, Edgar Allan Poe, and together they embark on an expedition to the South Pole. It is there where strange people, and stranger creatures abound, that their bizarre adventures truly begin.

Fifteen-year-old Mason, his slave companion, Atha, and Edgar Allan Poe travel from the pre-Civil War South to the center of the earth and back again, in this science-fantasy suggested for mature readers.

Rucker's novel of an adventure by Edgar Allan Poe purports to be a transcript of an 1849 unpublished manuscript in the University of Virginia Library.

In 1836, Mason Algiers Reynolds leaves his family's Virginia farm with his father's slave, a dog named Arf, and a mule named Dammit. Branded a murderer, he finds sanctuary with his hero, frustrated genius Edgar Allan Poe, and together they embark on an extraordinary expedition to the South Pole, and the entrance to the Hollow Earth. It is there, at the center of the world, where strange physics, strange people, and stranger creatures abound, that their bizarre adventures truly begin. 1st print edition Avon Books, 1990. 2nd print edition Monkeybrain Books, 2006. Transreal Press ebook version of 2nd edition, 2012.

"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...