Real and imagined undergrounds in the late nineteenth century viewed as offering a prophetic look at life in today's technology-dominated world. The underground has always played a prominent role in human imaginings, both as a place of refuge and as a source of fear. The late nineteenth century saw a new fascination with the underground as Western societies tried to cope with the pervasive changes of a new social and technological order. In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams takes us inside that critical historical moment, giving equal coverage to actual and imaginary undergrounds. She looks at the real-life invasions of the underground that occurred as modern urban infrastructures of sewers and subways were laid, and at the simultaneous archaeological excavations that were unearthing both human history and the planet's deep past. She also examines the subterranean stories of Verne, Wells, Forster, Hugo, Bulwer-Lytton, and other writers who proposed alternative visions of the coming technological civilization. Williams argues that these imagined and real underground environments provide models of human life in a world dominated by human presence and offer a prophetic look at today's technology-dominated society. In a new essay written for this edition, Williams points out that her book traces the emergence in the nineteenth century of what we would now call an environmental consciousness—an awareness that there will be consequences when humans live in a sealed, finite environment. Today we are more aware than ever of our limited biosphere and how vulnerable it is. Notes on the Underground, now even more than when it first appeared, offers a guide to the human, cultural, and technical consequences of what Williams calls “the human empire on earth.”

Leonid Andreyev’s The Red Laugh is an experimental depiction of war and its psychological effects, both on those who participate in the fighting and on those who hear of its atrocities from afar. Translated into English for the first time since 1905, it is here paired with a fresh translation of Andreyev’s earlier story “The Abyss,” which caused scandal upon its first publication. This edition provides an illuminating introduction by translator Kirsten Lodge as well as a range of background materials that help set the novel in its historical, literary, and artistic contexts.

The author of the diary and the diary itself are, of course, imaginary. Nevertheless it is clear that such persons as the writer of these notes not only may, but positively must, exist in our society, when we consider the circumstances in the midst of which our society is formed. I have tried to expose to the view of the public more distinctly than is commonly done, one of the characters of the recent past. He is one of the representatives of a generation still living. In this fragment, entitled "Underground," this person introduces himself and his views, and, as it were, tries to explain the causes owing to which he has made his appearance and was bound to make his appearance in our midst. In the second fragment there are added the actual notes of this person concerning certain events in his life.

A collection of Dostoevsky's short stories, including Notes From The Underground which is considered to be one of the first works of existential literature.

Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky is best known for his psychological works of fiction. His characters and plots all carry psychosomatic troubles and problems that help make the stories more relatable to the reader. "Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories" combines some of Dostoyevsky's shorter works, though they certainly do not lack for depth. "Notes from Underground" is widely known as the first existential novel because of the raving, maniacal, and incoherent ramblings of its demented narrator. At the time, the Soviets despised the novel because of its critical nature toward a utopian society. This criticism was pointed at the government's attempts to create a Marxist society. Dostoyevsky believed that humans, even if they had perfection, would never be happy; this thought inspired many Western philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Friedrich Nietzsche. The other stories included in the collection all follow the same style: "The Double," "White Nights," "The Meek Ones," and "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" all follow loners in St. Petersburg as they slowly grow insane from isolation. These men fear rejection from their peers and contemporaries, so they distance themselves to the point of madness. However, these men are also ashamed of themselves for their inability to function within Russian society. The collection "Notes from Underground, The Double and Other Stories" is a must-read for anyone interested in psychological fiction or in the history of Russian literature.