In the nineteenth century, the underground underwent a process of imaginative transition. In an era of atmospheric volatility (the 1816 Year Without a Summer, the 1858 Great Stink, the 1884 eruption of Krakatos) it was increasingly imagined as an insular space where humanity could protect itself from the variabilities of a climate becoming chaotic. Interrogating representations of subterranean infrastructure made by speculative authors, engineers, scientists, and painters it becomes apparent that the imaginative network concerning underground climate is developed across the century, peaking in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race (1871), and Gabriel Tarde’s Fragment d’histoire future (1896). These works, both dealing explicitly with underground climate engineering, enact as antecedents to the core themes of the increasingly chaotic Anthropocene: either we upgrade the scope of scientific modernity, Prometheanly perfecting the planetary climate to suit our specific needs, or we start conserving nature by rewilding the planet, Soterianly freeing the environmental Other from humanity’s dire influence.
