At the Earth's Core

At the Earth's Core is a science-fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs and first published in 1914. It blends invention and imagination to reveal a hidden world at Earth’s center where natural laws play by different rules.

An experimental drilling craft accidentally bores into this inner domain, unveiling a land of primeval beasts, cavernous seas, and a sun that never sets. In this perpetual daylight, the newcomers must navigate unfamiliar terrains and cultures while searching for a way home.

They soon collide with an oppressive order of reptilian overlords and their brutish enforcers, sparking a fight for survival and freedom. Along the way, alliances are forged, daring escapes are attempted, and the cost of courage is measured against the pull of an astonishing new world.

Propelled by cliffhangers and relentless momentum, the novel delivers a breathless pulp adventure packed with lost-world wonder and high stakes. It also launches the Pellucidar series, inviting readers deeper into one of Burroughs’s most enduring and imaginative settings.

"I was born in Connecticut about thirty years ago. My name is David Innes. My father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his property was to be mine when I had attained my majority—provided that I had devoted the two years intervening in close application to the great business I was to inherit. I did my best to fulfil the last wishes of my parent—not because of the inheritance, but because I loved and honored my father. For six months I toiled in the mines and in the counting-rooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business."