Subways: Violent Underground Beasts
They’re subterranean beasts of burden that carry us from one hole we’ve dug to another. To ride one is what it must have felt like for Paul Atreides to ride the sandworm, although few on the J train might think of it like that. Ok, it’s not really like riding a sandworm. But if we were on Dune, would the ground rumble and shake like a subway platform every time a sandworm passed beneath?
Did they fear waking up some subterranean terror when they dug the underground tunnels in London? If you google it, you’ll find underground rail systems are fertile ground for the supernatural. Websites dedicated to listing the ghosts, weird creatures, spooks of all sorts are a dime a dozen. My favorite, though, is what I’ve read about “Quartermass and the Pit,” which involves the BBC’s first sci-fi and it’s take on an ancient Martian mind control machine uncovered during the war in a disused underground station. I have yet to see it, and if anyone wants to watch it, let me know.
But the beasts that brought us here, the subway train, has also tamed the underground for us. For most of human history, below the dirt has been the dominion of devils, the place no one wants to end up: Hell. Now it’s a convenient way to avoid traffic topside. And thanks to the stylized maps that go along with it, it’s an idealized parallel world. Major cities line up their bones on straight lines, points of interest connected by colored tangents and labeled with type chosen for clarity.
I was introduced to the hearts of London, Paris and New York this way. Local leviathans that tour you around and stop running around midnight. Not a bad way to go, all the violent shaking aside.
