The Coming Race

Author: Edward Bulwer-lytton

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the first Baron Lytton, financed his extravagant lifestyle by writing a string of best selling if often pot boiling novels. Titles like The Last Days of Pompeii and Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes, were highly successful and secured his reputation and his wealth. Though it has to be remembered that it was Bulwer-Lytton who began one novel with the immortal line: "It was a dark and stormy night", which has been parodied mercilessly ever since. His one work of science fiction, The Coming Race, is a combination hollow Earth/lost race story. A traveller happens upon a subterranean world where he encounters the descendants of an antediluvian race who call themselves Vril-Ya. They have a potent source of food, Vril, which gives them inordinate power, so much so that even a child could destroy a city with the power of its mind alone. Having now encountered humans from the surface, the Vril-Ya decide that they must conquer the surface world. Why it's on the list: The Coming Race had an extraordinary afterlife. The novel was so popular that vril became a common term for elixirs, leading to things like the Vril-Ya Bazaar at the Royal Albert Hall and the establishment of a Vril Society in Germany. Though the most lasting effect was in the naming of a beef extract that was called Bovril and that is still on sale today.