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The Coming Race
 
 

The Coming Race (Paperback)

by Edward Bulwer Lytton (Author) "I AM a native of-, in the United States of America ..." (more)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 136 pages
  • Publisher: Arc Manor (11 May 2009)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1604506830
  • ISBN-13: 978-1604506839
  • Product Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

Product Description

Book Description

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race was one of the most remarkable and most influential books published in the 1870s. The protagonist, a wealthy American wanderer, accompanies an engineer into the recesses of a mine, and discovers the vast caverns of a well-lit, civilized land in which dwell the Vril-ya. Placid vegetarians and mystics, the Vril-ya are privy to the powerful force of Vril -- a mysterious source of energy that may be used to illuminate, or to destroy. The Vril-ya have built a world without fame and without envy, without poverty and without many of the other extremes that characterize human society. The women are taller and grander than the men, and control everything related to the reproduction of the race. There is little need to work -- and much of what does need to be done is for a novel reason consigned to children.

As the Vril-ya have evolved a society of calm and of contentment, so they have evolved physically. But as it turns out, they are destined one day to emerge from the earth and to destroy human civilization.

Bulwer-Lytton's novel is fascinating for the ideas it expresses about evolution, about gender, and about the ambitions of human society. But it is also an extraordinarily entertaining science fiction novel. Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, one of the great figures of late Victorian literature, may have been overvalued in his time -- but his extraordinarily engaging and readable work is certainly greatly undervalued today. As Brian Aldiss notes in his introduction to this new edition, this utopian science fiction novel first published in 1871 still retains tremendous interest. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Brian Aldiss is one of the world's leading authorities on science fiction, as well as one of the world's leading science fiction writers. Winner of many awards (including the Nebula Award and the British Science Fiction Best Novel Award), he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2000 was elected Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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I AM a native of-, in the United States of America. Read the first page
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Jules Verne meets H.G. Wells in Lytton's Dystopic Narrative, 2 Mar 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Coming Race (Paperback)
Written in 1871 The Coming Race was one of the last books ever written by the author, he died two years later. The story begins when an American civil engineer falls into an underground world. There he discovers a subterranean paradise inhabited by a race called the Vril-ya.These Vril-ya tell the narrator that they are descended from ancestors who escaped the 'upper world' as a result of a deluge which covered the earth. Their evolution has taken a certain course mainly because of the discovery of an energy source, similar to electricity.This energy, from which they also take their name, is called Vril. Lytton's narrative, published in the same year as The Descent of Man, is one of the first truly post-Darwinian novels. It incorporates many of the scientific ideas of the period, and the subsequent fears of degeneration and devolution. The narrator soon discovers that this subterranean paradise is not all that it seems. Lurking in an unlit region of this underground world are a race of primitive savages, who like Wells's Morlocks, represent the flipside of evolution. Without Vril the savages have not progressed, they live in darkness, eat meat and resemble animals. In contrast, the Vril-ya live perfect lives, they are physically beautiful and have developed the abvility to fly with the help of Vril. The narrator appears to have stumbled into a parasise where a race of angels live in perfect harmony, without conflict, without envy and where all men are considered equal. The one thing that this future paradise cannot overcome is boredom.Tthe narrator concludes that although mankind dreams of perfectibility it is a pleasure that we are not meant to enjoy, at least not in this lifetime. Worth a read, especially if you are interested in the history of Science Fiction.
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