The City under Ground

Claudia Cornwall was a Vancouver writer.

The City under Ground is a fantasy about life after The Bomb. It is the year 3000; our world was destroyed 1000 years before. The survivors of the catastrophe inhabit a society below what is now Montreal. They are technologically sophisticated. They generate electricity by tapping energy from the earth’s core, have built an elaborate network of trains and moving sidewalks to connect parts of the city, and have even discovered the miraculous Upsilon rays which destroy organisms instantaneously. People have lost their hair, live on synthetic food in the form of pills, and enjoy doses of synthetic sunshine. Understandably, they are deathly afraid of the outer world, of the radiation and contamination they suppose still exists. No one ventures to go there. Except our hero Luke, that is. We follow him to the surface and through various adventures. The world has recovered from nuclear devastation. There are forests and puma cats. There is even a tribe of people living on the surface. They are technologically backward, with an economy rather like that of the Middle Ages. Of course, when they are beset by The Ugly Death (a smallpox plague) Luke’s Upsilon ray gun comes in very handy.

The City under Ground is not strong on characterization. Its pleasures lie chiefly in the descriptions of the underground life. Both the natural caverns Luke and his friends explore and the endless man-made conduits are imaginatively drawn. It is also interesting to see our world through the eyes of someone to whom it is all new, although I am not sure how realistic is the premise that the world can recover from The Bomb.