Vril

The Coming Race

Cover of an 1871 edition
Author	Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction novel
Published	1871 by Blackwood and Sons
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
OCLC	695792054
Dewey Decimal	823.8
LC Class	HX811
Text	at

The Coming Race is an 1871 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, reprinted as Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Among its readers have been those who believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, William Scott-Elliot, and Rudolf Steiner, accepted the book as being (at least in part) based on occult truth. A book, The Morning of the Magicians (1960), suggested that a secret Vril Society existed in pre-Nazi Berlin. However, there is no evidence for the existence of such a society.

The Coming Race was published anonymously in late 1871, but Bulwer-Lytton was known to be the author. Samuel Butler's Erewhon was also published anonymously, in March 1872, and Butler suspected that its initial success was due to it being taken by many as a sequel by Bulwer-Lytton to The Coming Race. When it was revealed in the 25 May 1872 edition of the Athenaeum that Butler was the author, sales dropped by 90 percent because he was unknown at the time.

The novel centers on a young, independent, unnamed, wealthy traveler (the narrator), who visits a friend, a mining engineer. They explore a natural chasm in a mine which has been exposed by an exploratory shaft. The narrator reaches the bottom of the chasm safely, but the rope breaks and his friend is killed. The narrator finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels. He befriends the first being he meets, who guides him around a city that is reminiscent of ancient Egyptian architecture. The explorer meets his host's wife, two sons and daughter who learn to speak English by way of a makeshift dictionary during which the narrator unconsciously teaches them the language. His guide comes towards him, and he and his daughter, Zee, explain who they are and how they function.