The Coming Race (original 1871; edition 2017)

by Edward Bulwer Lytton (Author)

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baswood's review

SUPER BOVRIL

Published anonymously in 1871 this novel follows in the traditions of a hollow earth theory already explored in [Niels Klim's Journey Under the ground] in 1741 and [Symzonia] in 1820. Like the previous two novels the protagonist describes a utopian society living someway below the earths surface, which is hollowed out and contains it's own atmosphere. Jules Verne also described a hollowed out earth in his Journey to the Centre of the earth (1864) but his hero's did not encounter any utopian societies. As in the previous two utopian novels the book is a first person account by a man who penetrates beneath the surface of the Earth and discovers a race of humanoids (the Vril-ya). Their life style, culture and society is one of harmony and ease compared with the life on the surface of the earth, but of course utopia is not for everyone and like the hero's of the previous books our man risks his life to get back to the civilization that he knows.

Bulwer-Lytton spends most of his energies describing the society of the Vril-ya. There are 29 chapters and the first five describe the circumstances of the narrators descent and reception by the Vril-ya and it is not until chapter 25 that the story starts up again with the narrator planning his escape. This is not an adventure novel, but a description of a utopian society and although the narrator is never entirely comfortable, for the most part he is on a voyage of discovery. He cannot of course help but compare his own society (he is an American by birth) with what he finds in the underground world. In this respect it is quite similar to Thomas More's Utopia from the early sixteenth century, but the difference here is the substance from which the race takes it's name: vril. It strikes the narrator as being like electricity, but in the form of an all permeating liquid that can do almost anything once properly handled and understood. It lights the underworld, it provides power, it can be harnessed as a death ray by almost anybody, it powers airboats, and individual wings for flight, it runs the automatons that do much of the menial work, it heals and cures, and gives the powers of mind reading and telepathy. This unique substance has enabled the Vril-ya to become masters of their environment and has taken away the need for striving and competition. There is no need for war, there is no crime and the city is run for the benefit of all, with the motto of

"A poor man's need is a rich man's shame"

However our narrator is not convinced:

"I longed for a change, even to winter, or storm, or darkness. I began to feel that, whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards a better, and higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals of the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the very happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire."

Generally speaking the females are better at controlling the Vril and they have developed into the most powerful sex, but choose to live in harmony with the males. The females make all the moves in choosing a mate, but once married they settle into domesticity and hang up their wings. Much of the energy in the society comes from a youth culture dominated by the females.

Bulwer-lytton paints the society as completely alien to the surface world with the threat once mentioned by the Vril-ya almost in passing that when the time is right they will go up to the surface. The narrator sees a coldness behind the harmony of the Vril-ya and is in no doubt that they see themselves as the master race. His unease even when he is shown kindness and friendship keeps the reader in suspense for what may happen. The majority of the book is however a description of an alien culture, and Bulwer-Lytton seems to be indulging his own interests when he spends a chapter on the development of their language. This may be fascinating to those readers interested in linguistics, but for others that want to get on with the story then it might feel a bit like a cul-de-sac. The story does eventually pick up and the uneasiness felt by the narrator is well justified, but of course we know that he lived to tell his tale. This short novel does have its longueurs, but it is well written and deserves its place in the canon of proto science fiction. It was quite popular in the nineteenth century and the word vril became associated with life giving elixirs. There was a Vril-ya Bazaar held at the Royal Albert Hall in 1891. 3.5 stars (I prefer Marmite) (

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baswood | Oct 5, 2019 |

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Elements of this book were used to create a nazi cult to which most of the top nazis's were members. But thats not the authors fault, except that he wrote something way ahead of its time. I mean consider the fact that it was written in 1871 and at times i felt like i was watching an episode of startrek. I'd break it down into 3 parts, the start is decent the middle drags a bit as the author goes into too much detail concerning languages and other boring stuff but the last third is great. The main character starts having delusions of grandeur which are quite funny, then finds himself in a deadly if also somewhat amusing state of peril. (

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wreade1872 | Nov 28, 2021 |

Well worth a read. The superior race, the real "terrestrials" who live underground are discovered by a man who is welcomed into their society and learns about their language, religions, social structure, politics, achievements, history, sex, and death. I found myself wondering what the Anas did regarding differing aspects of living and Bulwer-Lytton seemed to answer all my thoughts! I believe my reading of many H G Wells' stories before I read this helped as it followed the same sort of structure as a Wells story, and was set in the same time as most Wells' stories. I was very glad to have read this and glad it had a happy ending too - for the protagonist (though bleak for our humankind survival). (

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AChild | Jan 15, 2021 |

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baswood | Oct 5, 2019 |

This 19th century novella describes an encounter between the unnamed narrator and an underground civilisation he comes across when he becomes trapped down the bottom of a shaft in a mine, after his companion, who first discovered the shaft, falls and dies when the rope by which they're descending breaks. After this dramatic start, most of the rest of the book is taken up by the author/narrator's description of the culture and mores of the civilisation he discovers, the Vril-ya; so called because of their use of the force "vril", which combines electricity, magnetism, gravity, etc. in such a way that it can be used by any member of the Vril-ya race to do anything they please, whether creative or destructive. These chapters can drag rather, though they form an excellent exercise in creating an alien mindset, one that allows the author to explore contemporary issues such as evolution (the Vril-ya debate whether or not they're descended from frogs) and women's rights (female Vril-ya dominate intellectual life and courtship rituals in an antithesis of the reality of late Victorian society). While fascinating, this does not make for a great narrative in a novel; and only towards the end does drama return when the narrator is helped to escape death and flee back up to the surface to save his life, by a female Vril-ya who is in love with him.

Interestingly, the fictional substance "vril" caught the imagination of some sections of late Victorian society, especially the spiritualists, who believed that Bulwer-Lytton had derived it from some ancient tradition and thus some of them adopted it as part of their explanations for mysterious and occult phenomena; and more trivially, the word Bovril apparently derives from this fictional super-material! (

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john257hopper | Feb 18, 2016 |

This is sort of an early science fiction novel in which an advanced race of humans called the Vrilya are discovered dwelling underground. they have a limitless source of power and energy called vril. Women have a greater natural capacity than men for tapping into it, so they are the dominant ones in the social order. The men are better at engineering and problem-solving and they are employed in creating and maintaining all the vril-powered machinery that provides for everyone's needs. War,and evil and criminality have been eliminated and the role of the government has been reduced to coordinating great pageants and contests. However, this seeming eutopia is not without its problems. In eliminating all strife, inequality and differences, the race has also destroyed its motivation to do great deeds. There is no great art or literature and people are dying of boredom with only a rational sameness to entertain them and all their scientific toys. I would disagree with this outcome, however. Great art and literature is produced when the educated people in a society have the leisure to create it. The Vril have all their needs met by the all-powerful machines, so they should have endless leisure to create and experiment. It makes no sense that they would not take advantage of the time. Dance, plays, athletic games, poetry and pageants should be in abundance. This novel was published only a few years after Darwin's "Origin of Species" and people naturally wondered what the human race would evolve into. H. G. Wells, another futurist thinker, did not paint a very optimistic picture of mankind's future in his book "The Time Machine" where humans are reduced to the childlike Eloi and the demonic Moorlocks.

TrysB | Jul 28, 2012 |

In this novel, an itinerant American man discovers a secret civilization, much older than humanity, hidden beneath the surface of the Earth. I say "novel," but really it's an extended description; aside from the beginning and the end, there's very little incident. What is there, though, is a description of a strange and unusual civilization, that of the Vril-ya, in some ways superior to that of Victorian Britain, and in some ways an inversion of it. The most interesting part is definitely the way gender is constructed in Vril-ya society, where women do the intellectual work, as well as the romantic pursuit. The narrator (anonymous of course) is never able to come to terms with this; he's obviously attracted to the women for their forthrightness and flirtatiousness (and them to him!), but he wants them to stop doing it, and act like the meek and demure women he's used to. There's also a lot of evolutionary and imperial anxieties here; the Vril-ya contain massive destructive power within their very bodies, and he both wants the power for himself and fears that the Vril-ya will use it for themselves. Which they wouldn't, they have no reason to, but he just can't see that, either.

Where Bulwer does seem to identify with his narrator, though, is that the primary argument against having such a perfect civilization is that you wouldn't have drama, literature, or art anymore-- because without struggle, what would all that be about? The rest of the novel makes it hard to trust his conclusions, and his hangup comes across as a bit facile, and not the damning indictment it seems to want to be. I found this whole line of argument a little hard to parse, but intriguing.

On the other hand, the bits describing the etymology of the Vril-ya language are just boring.

Stevil2001 | Mar 25, 2011 |

This book has got to be the worst book I have ever read. Without a doubt, it's got to be one of the worst books in modern English literature. It's worth reprinting only to use it as a comparison in studying utopian literature, to see how the genre and its ideas developed. To read this book for pleasure? Flossing my teeth would be more fun than reading this monstrosity. (

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Epicurvegan | Dec 27, 2009 |

Lytton's Coming Race is brief, even if a little slow at points. As a seminal piece of 19th-century science fiction, the whole plot is just an excuse for fictional anthropology, since the protagonist/narrator is utterly unchanged by the experience. The utopian element reflects a little bit of Fourierist background (with one explicit reference to Robert Owen), mostly in the small scale of community and the valorizing of the industry of children.

The reader may weigh the extent to which Lytton was actually employing the subterranean civilization of Vril-ya as an alternative in order to criticize modern industrialized nations, democratic politics, and traditional gender mores. The protagonist is never fully persuaded of the superiority of the Vril-ya's social system, but the fact that the English author used a proud American narrator suggests that the fictional speaker's convictions don't necessarily match those of the writer.

What goes without question by the narrator is the physical and technological superiority of the Vril-ya. The book's title alludes to the idea that any full-scale contact between them and the humanity of the Earth's surface will only leave the Vril-ya as complete conquerors. But this scenario is left as an intimation of the future.

This novel was almost as influential on the hollow earth conspiracy meme (and eventually UFO culture) as the same author's Zanoni was for traditional Western occultism. The story seems even to have contributed to Aleister Crowley's Atlantis, where Lytton's Vril energy sets a precedent for Crowley's mysterious ZRO.

Read for it's own sake as a fictional entertainment, The Coming Race is a little exotic, but fairly dated and plodding. Taken as a node in the discourse of 19th-century social reform and occult science, however, it is abidingly curious and engaging.

paradoxosalpha | Jun 3, 2009 |

Yeah. Um, some good parts? Heavy on the description, which can be nice, and since I read Journey to the Interior of the Earth last month, it was fun to read more hollow-earth bits. Kinda whitey-centric, but what are you gonna do with that era? Narrator was from the States, which also was unsettling, since a lot of what I've been reading is UK and Europe-based. My Big Problem with the book was that I'm kinda of the belief (most likely heartily taken from pulp sf) that the chief (positive) attributes to humanity is our unbounded aptitude for both cruelty and imagination. The race in the title is all Utopian and whatnot. And they don't indulge in any of the arts, because people only paint and write in competition with others and to earn praise and money. The sciences, on the other hand. Totally only done in search for the truth. Because there is no competition in science or monetary gain or WHATEVER. (

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