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Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

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Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles<br />

In Escape into Daylight (1976) by Ge<strong>of</strong>frey Household, Carrie and<br />

Mike are kidnapped and imprisoned in a dark, damp dungeon<br />

beneath a ruined abbey. The only way out is through twisted<br />

passages and an underground river.<br />

Trapped in Death Cave (1984) by Bill Wallace qualifies as Boys Club<br />

literature by virtue <strong>of</strong> being in the Weekly Reader "Just for Boys"<br />

series.<br />

They were in the big cavern. The trough that Brian had followed<br />

into the cave was filled with water. Like a river, it wound and<br />

twisted its way through the big room.<br />

James P. Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan (1984) mechanical<br />

"subterranean prospector" was inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' At<br />

the Earth's Core. The Subterranean Car we encountered in Fred<br />

Thorpe's In the World Below, able to drill through the earth<br />

completely, was a more powerful machine <strong>of</strong> excavation, however.<br />

The subterranean prospector is enough to navigate sewers connected<br />

to an underground river from there to an underground sea stretching<br />

from the Pacific Ocean to the Inland Empire where Chinese junks ply<br />

their illicit trade and enormous creatures from past ages yet survive.<br />

Note the cover. It's what any Boys Club would love to build in their<br />

No-Girls-Allowed Invention Shop.<br />

The Hour <strong>of</strong> the Gate (1984) by Alan Dean Foster scores low for plot, but above-average for<br />

style. Defending against monstrous insectoids, Jon-Tom and his otter companion embark on an<br />

underground river to the spider-silk city <strong>of</strong> the wary Weavers and their horrifically attractive<br />

arachnid queen.<br />

DRAFT 1122//66//22001122<br />

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