Vril

Vril, the Power of the Coming Race is an 1871 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, originally printed as The Coming Race. Many readers believe that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" is accurate, to the extent that some theosophists accepted the book as truth. A 1960 popular book speculated on a secret Vril Society in pre-Nazi Berlin.

History

The Coming Race was originally 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 on 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.[1]

[edit] Plot summary
The novel centers on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya.

The hero soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. It is a technologically supported Utopia, chief among their tools being the "all-permeating fluid" called "Vril", a latent source of energy which his spiritually elevated hosts are able to master through training of their will, to a degree which depends upon their hereditary constitution, giving them access to an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the will include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are awesomely powerful, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to wipe out entire cities if necessary. It is also suggested that the Vril-ya are fully telepathic.

The narrator states that in time, the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and start claiming the surface of the Earth, destroying mankind in the process if necessary