The novel that invented the idea of a hidden world beneath our own. When a young American explorer descends into a vast chasm beneath a German mine, he discovers the Vril-ya, an ancient subterranean race who have evolved beyond humanity, wielding a cosmic energy called vril for telepathy, flight, and power that makes our greatest inventions look like toys. Their civilization is a vision of utopian perfection: rational, peaceful, equal. But as our narrator grows closer to these strange beings, he begins to wonder whether their gentle society masks something far more troubling. The Vril-ya hint that their race is destined to replace surface humanity, that we are merely a stepping stone in evolution's long climb. Part adventure narrative, part philosophical meditation, The Coming Race asks what happens when we discover we are no longer the pinnacle of creation. Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 masterpiece invented the subterranean civilization, influenced generations of science fiction, and gave the world a word for the dangerous promise of unchecked power.
