Sunday, September 10, 2006

luminous entities in the hollow earth, 1888


Phosphor: an Ischian Mystery, written by Sherry J. Filmore, and published in Australia in 1888, is by some claimed to be "the weirdest Australian tale ever penned". In the book, an impoverished young man, buried alive after ingesting snake venom to test an antidote he has invented, escapes into a subterranean kingdom, inhabited by prehistoric creatures and anthropoids who are Latin-speaking and phosphorescent. The queen of the anthropoids, who has an attractive human body but the head of an ape, falls in love with the protagonist and intends to use him as breeding stock to enhance the gene pool of her tribe. Rather than agreeing with her plan, the protagonist kills the queen with a poisonous snake and is then speedily returned to Australia after a volcanic eruption.

No comments: