The Coming Race is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871. It has also been published as Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Some readers have believed the account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called “Vril”, at least in part; some theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, William Scott-Elliot, and Rudolf Steiner, accepted the book as based on occult truth, in part. One 1960 book, The Morning of the Magicians by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, suggested that a secret Vril Society existed in Weimar Berlin. The Coming Race centres on a young, independent, unnamed, wealthy traveller (the narrator), who finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who resemble angels. The hero discovers that these beings, who call themselves Vril-ya, have great telepathic and other parapsychological abilities, such as being able to transmit information, get rid of pain, and put others to sleep. The narrator soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization called the Ana who fled underground thousands of years ago to escape a massive flood. Their society is a technologically-supported Utopia, chief among their tools being an “all-permeating fluid” called “Vril”, an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the Vril include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are immense, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to destroy entire cities if necessary. Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration. In 1947, a German rocket engineer Willy Ley published an article titled “Pseudoscience in Naziland” in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. He wrote that the high popularity of irrational convictions in Germany at that time explained how Nazism could have fallen on such fertile ground. Among various pseudoscientific groups he mentions one that looked for the Vril: “The next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group which I think called itself ‘Wahrheitsgesellschaft’ – Society for Truth – and which was more or less localised in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for Vril.” The existence of a Vril Society was alleged in 1960 by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels. In their book The Morning of the Magicians, they claimed that the Vril-Society was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin that was a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society. They also thought that it was in close contact with the English group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
First Appearance The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1871, also Vril, the Power of the Coming Race)
First Publisher ○
Appearance List The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1871, also Vril, the Power of the Coming Race), Helena Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888), The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria by William Scott-Elliot (1896), L’Effrayante Aventure by Jules Lermina (1910), “Pseudoscience in Naziland” in Astounding Science Fiction (May 1947), Lost Continents by L Sprague de Camp (1954), Le Matin des Magiciens (“The Morning of the Magicians”, 1960)
Description The Coming Race is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871. It has also been published as Vril, the Power of the Coming Race. Some readers have believed the account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called “Vril”, at least in part; some theosophists, notably Helena Blavatsky, William Scott-Elliot, and Rudolf Steiner, accepted the book as based on occult truth, in part. One 1960 book, The Morning of the Magicians by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, suggested that a secret Vril Society existed in Weimar Berlin. The Coming Race centres on a young, independent, unnamed, wealthy traveller (the narrator), who finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who resemble angels. The hero discovers that these beings, who call themselves Vril-ya, have great telepathic and other parapsychological abilities, such as being able to transmit information, get rid of pain, and put others to sleep. The narrator soon discovers that the Vril-ya are descendants of an antediluvian civilization called the Ana who fled underground thousands of years ago to escape a massive flood. Their society is a technologically-supported Utopia, chief among their tools being an “all-permeating fluid” called “Vril”, an extraordinary force that can be controlled at will. The powers of the Vril include the ability to heal, change, and destroy beings and things; the destructive powers in particular are immense, allowing a few young Vril-ya children to destroy entire cities if necessary. Vril can be changed into the mightiest agency over all types of matter, both animate and inanimate. It can destroy like lightning or replenish life, heal, or cure. It is used to rend ways through solid matter. Its light is said to be steadier, softer and healthier than that from any flammable material. It can also be used as a power source for animating mechanisms. Vril can be harnessed by use of the Vril staff or mental concentration. In 1947, a German rocket engineer Willy Ley published an article titled “Pseudoscience in Naziland” in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction. He wrote that the high popularity of irrational convictions in Germany at that time explained how Nazism could have fallen on such fertile ground. Among various pseudoscientific groups he mentions one that looked for the Vril: “The next group was literally founded upon a novel. That group which I think called itself ‘Wahrheitsgesellschaft’ – Society for Truth – and which was more or less localised in Berlin, devoted its spare time looking for Vril.” The existence of a Vril Society was alleged in 1960 by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels. In their book The Morning of the Magicians, they claimed that the Vril-Society was a secret community of occultists in pre-Nazi Berlin that was a sort of inner circle of the Thule Society. They also thought that it was in close contact with the English group known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
