John Cleves Symmes

Symzonia: a Voyage of Discovery (1820) John Cleves Symmes Reprint edition

In 1818 US Army veteran John Cleeve Symmes proposed a theory that "the earth is hollow, with openings at the poles, and inhabited within; containing a number of concentric spheres, one within the other..." As part of a campaign of lectures, newspaper articles and open letters intended to win over the public and enlist congressional support for an expedition to the North Pole, Symmes published a pseudononymous account of a voyage to the interior world. Symzonia describes the expedition of one Captain Adam Seaborn, who sails into the interior via the northern polar opening and encounters an advanced civilization. What follows is a utopian social satire where Seaborn is tasked with representing the warlike, greedy, and vice-ridden exterior world to the wise and peaceful Symzonians. Edgar Allan Poe is thought to have taken inspiration from Symzonia in writing his short story "MS Found in a Bottle" and his novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket."