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Rudy Rucker, The Hollow Earth Transcript, 1989, Accession #11022, Special Collections Dept., University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.
This manuscript was given to the Library by Rudy Rucker of Los Gatos, California, on October 7, 1991.
This collection consists of a typed manuscript, numbered to page 387, dated June 14, 1989, of Rudy Rucker's The Hollow Earth: The Narrative of Mason Algiers Reynolds of Virginia . The manuscript includes autograph revisions by the author, and is inscribed on the title page, "This is the copy which I xeroxed to send to my agent & publisher. Presented with Affection to the Poe Collection at the University of Virginia. Rudy Rucker. August 24, 1991."
According to Rucker's letter to this Library, The Hollow Earth is a "Poe-style adventure" which features Poe as a main character. The tale was presented as Rucker's transcription of an 1849 manuscript identified as "catalog item *PS2964.S88S8 in the Edgar Allan Poe Collection of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia" (see "Editor's Note," page 380). In actuality, the item cataloged in the main Library under this call number is a book entitled Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery by John Cleves Symmes. Rucker also states in his letter that the books of particular importance to him during a 1985 visit were the volumes relating to Symmes' hollow world theories. The claim that the originial manuscript was found in the Library's collection was made "in a Poe-like spirit of playful hoaxery."