[Gutenberg 33549] • Underground Man

Gabriel de Tarde was a well-known French sociologist and criminologist. Underground Man, published in 1905, was written to dramatize de Tarde's theory that man is the creature of his social environment. In the story, mankind is driven underground by the extinction of the sun; attitudes change dramatically as the migrants drill deeper and deeper. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, de Tarde ironically outlines man's struggle to build a Utopia; in the second, the sun turns red, the sea becomes ice, the air begins to fall in flakes of nitrogen and oxygen. Persuaded that power and heat can be obtained from the center of the earth, the survivors start digging enormous crypts. Here, under the earth, they build a genial and artistic community, with marvelous labor-saving machines that enable them to concentrate on creating works of art. The moral of de Tarde's tale is that in the proper environment man can do all things--even overcome his own basic nature.