The Mohole Mystery

The Mohole Mystery
	First edition
Author	Hugh Walters
Cover artist	Leslie Wood
Language	English
Series	Chris Godfrey of U.N.E.X.A
Genre	Science fiction novel
Publisher	Faber
Publication date	1968
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	185
Preceded by	Spaceship to Saturn
Followed by	Nearly Neptune

The Mohole Mystery is a juvenile science fiction novel, the eleventh in Hugh Walters' Chris Godfrey of U.N.E.X.A. series. It was published in the UK by Faber in 1968, in the US by Criterion Books in 1969 under the title The Mohole Menace. It was also published in French as Pionniers des ténèbres, (literally "Pioneers of Darkness") by Éditions de l'Amitié in 1973 and as A ameaça de Mohole in Portuguese by Edições Dêagã.

Plot summary

A drilling project in Dudley in the West Midlands region of the United Kingdom hits a cavern 20 miles beneath the surface of the Earth and detects strange microbes. UNEXA send Russian Serge Smylov down to search for other forms of life in a rocket-propelled capsule but it is damaged when it hits the bottom of the cavern. Then strange creatures start attacking him...

The book, under its US title The Mohole Menace, is mentioned in A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.^[1]

Project Mohole

The real Project Mohole was an American project to sink a bore-hole through 15,000 ft of the Earth's crust into the Mohorovičić discontinuity or "Moho". The project came to be called the "No Hole", and was discontinued by the US Congress in 1966 due to ever-rising costs and the fact that they had only managed to drill to a depth of 601 ft.^[1]

References

^ ^a ^b Bryson, Bill (November 2005) [2003]. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Special Illustrated ed.). Doubleday, Canada. p. 270. ISBN 0-385-66198-3.