Description: The concept that there is another world underneath our own at the center of the earth. The main concept being that the earth is hollow and there is a second sun in the center and people living upside down from us.

Background: The informant received this information during High School and heard about it during a creative writing world building workshop.

Transcript:

KS: I don’t know a whole ton about it other than it’s a concept that underneath the ground, the earth is actually just filled with water all the way through like a giant round underground ocean. There’s a whole sci-fi community around it, I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy theory in the strict sense like I don’t know if anyone actually believes in it, but it’s a concept people like to explore in sci-fi writing and art and stuff. Most things about it view it as having huge sea creatures the closer you go to the center, possibly like water dinosaurs and stuff, kind of like “journey to the center of the earth” except you have to take a submarine. There’s also a different version of it that I think is still called hollow earth that is like, it’s filled with air inside and possibly like a mini-sun in the middle and people live on the inside of the crust directly upside down from us .Almost always there are huge fantastical creatures though, no matter what you think fills the middle.

My thoughts:

While I do not think anyone actually believes this as a reality, it is a very interesting concept to think about. This a concept that makes for very interesting fiction so I think this is why it has garnered so much of a following in the sci-fi community. Sci-fi has always been a genre that centered around outlandish and impossible concepts so the idea of a hollow earth sounds like something that fits in a sci-fi setting. The many different variations are also especially fun to think about. The feeling of there being another world so near our own is something that is very exciting to think about.