Vril: The Power of the Coming Race
by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
From Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth to Rudy Rucker's Hollow World, the underworlds have been a source of both admiration and fear for the literary imagination, and The Approaching Race is no exception. The history of evolutionary fantasy, first published in 1871, draws on Darwinism's ideas to describe the world of the near future, characterized by female domination, physical perfection, and tremendous technological progress. The novel was extremely popular at the time and is now considered the basic science fiction text of modern scientists.
