The Coming Race

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton · audio summary, about 11 min

An American traveler accidentally falls into a vast subterranean world populated by the Vril-ya, an advanced human race who wield an all-powerful force called vril.

Key ideas

• The Vril-ya subterranean society has achieved total social equality, classless tranquility, and the elimination of war through vril, an all-powerful natural energy.
• Despite its utopian perfection, the static harmony of the Vril-ya suppresses competitive art, passionate literature, and personal ambition.
• Female Vril-ya, or Gy-ei, possess superior size, physical strength, and mastery of vril, exercising the exclusive privilege of courtship.
• The peaceful existence of the Vril-ya poses an existential evolutionary threat to surface humanity, whom they regard as barbarians destined for replacement.

This summary and its voice are made with AI from the public-domain book. They can be wrong.

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