Maybe you’ve found an old paperback with a crumbling spine in a used bookstore, or perhaps you stumbled across the name while digging through a list of "Grand Master" legacies. Either way, Up From Earth's Center is one of those titles that sticks in the back of your brain like a splinter. It sounds like a geology textbook, but it’s actually a bizarre, high-concept piece of speculative fiction that basically defied everything people expected from its author, Cecil Clement "C.C." MacApp.
It’s weird. Really weird.
If you talk to hard-core sci-fi collectors, they’ll tell you that MacApp was mostly known for his "Gree" stories—those space opera romps about a malevolent, all-consuming alien empire. But then, right at the tail end of the 1960s, he dropped this. It wasn't about spaceships or laser beams. It was about a literal descent into Hell. Well, a version of it, anyway. Most readers at the time were looking for more galactic warfare, and instead, they got a surrealist nightmare that felt more like Dante Alighieri had a fever dream after reading Astounding Science Fiction.
Why the Genre Label Fails This Book
Honestly, calling it "science fiction" feels like a bit of a stretch, even if that’s the shelf it lives on. It’s more of a dark fantasy or a "lost world" adventure that took a wrong turn into the metaphysical. The story follows Hogan Beube and his companions as they fall—literally—into an underworld that isn't just a cave system. It’s a shifting, terrifying reality.
Back in 1970, when Lancer Books first published it, the marketing was kind of all over the place. Was it a thriller? A religious allegory? A survivalist tale? It didn’t fit the mold. This is likely why it never became a household name like Dune or Foundation. It was too "out there" for the casual reader and maybe a bit too grim for the space-race enthusiasts.
The pacing is frantic. MacApp doesn't spend twenty pages describing the oxygen levels or the rock formations. He throws you into the deep end. One minute the characters are on the surface, and the next, they are navigating a subterranean world where the laws of physics seem to be more like suggestions. It’s the kind of book that makes your skin crawl because of the sheer claustrophobia of it all.
The Reality Behind Up From Earth's Center
To understand why this book exists, you have to look at C.C. MacApp himself. Born Bryce Walton (though he used the MacApp pseudonym for his most famous works), he was a prolific writer for the pulps. He knew how to churn out words, but Up From Earth's Center feels personal. It feels like he was trying to exorcise some demons.
The 1960s were ending. The optimism of the early space age was curdling into the grit of the 70s. You can see that shift in the prose. There is a nihilism in this book that you don't find in his earlier "Gree" stories. It’s a descent into the self as much as it is a descent into the ground.
Characters That Don't Act Like Heroes
Most sci-fi of that era featured the "Competent Man." You know the type: the guy who can fix a nuclear reactor with a paperclip and a piece of gum. Hogan Beube isn't really that guy. He’s capable, sure, but he’s also deeply flawed and frequently terrified.
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- Hogan Beube: The protagonist who finds himself leading a desperate trek through the bowels of the planet.
- The Companions: A mix of people who mostly serve to highlight how hopeless the situation is.
- The Entities: The things they encounter isn't your standard "little green men." They are monstrous, alien, and utterly indifferent to human life.
The dialogue is snappy, sometimes to a fault. It feels like a noir film set in a cavern. "We’re not going back," one character might say, and you believe it because MacApp describes the path behind them as literally vanishing. It’s a one-way trip. That sense of finality is what makes the book so heavy. It’s not a "hero’s journey" where the hero comes home with a trophy. It’s a struggle just to exist for another hour.
The Science (or Lack Thereof)
If you're looking for a scientifically accurate depiction of the Earth's mantle, look elsewhere. MacApp wasn't interested in the Mohorovičić discontinuity. He was interested in the psyche. The "Earth's Center" in the title is a metaphor.
Some critics have pointed out that the book shares a spiritual DNA with Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, but that’s a surface-level comparison. Verne was about wonder. MacApp is about dread. In Verne’s world, you find dinosaurs; in MacApp’s world, you find the remnants of lost souls and things that shouldn't have names. It’s much closer to the "Hollow Earth" theories that were popular in the early 20th century—the idea that there are vast, inhabited spaces beneath us—but stripped of any Victorian charm.
The Weird Legacy of MacApp’s Underworld
Why do we still talk about this book? Or rather, why should we?
It’s because of the ending. I won’t spoil it, but it’s one of those "wait, what?" moments that sticks with you for years. It challenges the reader's perception of what they’ve just read. Was it a physical journey? A hallucination? A transition into the afterlife?
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MacApp passed away in 1971, shortly after this was published. That adds a layer of poignancy to the whole thing. It was one of his final statements as a writer. While the "Gree" stories are fun, Up From Earth's Center is his most ambitious work because it dares to be unpleasant. It doesn't want to be your friend. It wants to unsettle you.
Collecting the Original Paperbacks
If you’re trying to find a copy today, it’s a bit of a hunt. The Lancer 1970 edition is the one most collectors hunt for. The cover art is peak 70s sci-fi: garish colors, weird silhouettes, and a font that screams "this book contains ideas that might be illegal."
Prices vary. You can sometimes snag a beat-up copy for ten bucks, but a mint condition Lancer can go for significantly more among genre completionists. There haven't been many reprints. This isn't 1984 or Brave New World. It’s a cult classic in the truest sense—it survives through word of mouth and the occasional mention in an academic paper about pulp evolution.
What Modern Readers Get Wrong
A big mistake people make when picking this up is expecting a fast-paced action movie. It has action, but it’s also quite dense. The prose is "pulp-plus." It’s better written than most of the garbage that was filling the newsstands at the time, but it still has that 1950s-style sentence structure that can feel a bit stiff to a modern ear.
You have to read it through the lens of its time. This was written during the Vietnam War. The world felt like it was falling apart. The idea of falling through the floor and finding a world even more chaotic and dangerous than the surface resonated with people. It’s a "sunken place" narrative before that term was popularized.
How to Approach the Text Today
If you’re going to dive into Up From Earth's Center, do yourself a favor: don't look up a plot summary. The confusion is part of the experience. The characters are confused, so you should be too.
- Read it in one or two sittings. The momentum is the book's greatest strength. If you put it down for a week, you lose that sense of sinking.
- Pay attention to the environment. MacApp spends a lot of time on the sensory details of the dark—the smells, the humidity, the way sound carries. It’s very atmospheric.
- Don’t expect a happy ending. This isn't a Disney movie. It’s a 1970s sci-fi novel. Everyone is probably doomed.
The book also serves as a fascinating bridge between the "Golden Age" of sci-fi and the "New Wave." It has the adventure beats of the Golden Age but the cynical, experimental heart of the New Wave. Writers like Harlan Ellison or Samuel R. Delany were pushing boundaries at the same time, and while MacApp wasn't as overtly "literary" as them, he was playing in the same sandbox.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Researchers
If you are a student of genre history or just a fan of weird fiction, there are a few things you should actually do to appreciate this work:
- Compare it to MacApp's "Gree" stories. Notice the tonal shift. It’s a masterclass in how an author’s worldview can change over a decade.
- Look for the Lancer edition. The tactile experience of the original pulp paper adds to the "grimy" feel of the story.
- Research the "Hollow Earth" trope. Seeing where MacApp subverts the tropes of Edgar Rice Burroughs (who wrote At the Earth's Core) shows you just how subversive Up From Earth's Center really was.
Ultimately, this isn't a book for everyone. It’s bleak, it’s confusing, and it’s deeply strange. But for those who are tired of the same old "hero saves the galaxy" tropes, it’s a refreshing—if harrowing—breath of stale, underground air. It remains a testament to a time when sci-fi was allowed to be truly weird, without worrying about whether it could be turned into a multi-film franchise.
To truly understand the impact of the work, look at how it treats the concept of "up." In the title, "up" implies an escape, a return to normalcy. But in the book, every step toward the surface is a reminder of how much has been lost. It’s a journey that changes the characters so fundamentally that by the time they see the sky again (if they do), they are no longer the people who left it. That is the real core of the story. It's about the psychological cost of survival in a world that doesn't want you to survive.
If you find a copy, buy it. Even if you don't like it, you'll have a piece of history that represents the dying gasp of a certain kind of imaginative storytelling. It’s a relic from a time when the center of the Earth was still a place of mystery, before we mapped every inch of the planet with satellites and sensors. It reminds us that there are still dark places in the world, and even darker places in the human mind.