The Coming Race

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward (the name comes in various forms, including Edward Bulwer and Sir Edward Bulwer; most formally: Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, First Baron Lytton {from S.F. Ency "Lytton" entry}). The Coming Race (vt Vril: The Power of the Coming Race). 1871. Toronto: Broadview P, 2002. Anthologized by I. F. Clarke in British Future Fiction 1700-1914. 8 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001.

Underworld eutopia with a satiric edge cutting such targets as (jingoistic) American republicanism. The key element here is vril, which the S. F. Ency. correctly describes as "an electromagnetic form of energy of universal utility which fuels flying machines and automata, and even makes telepathy possible." EB-L is not interested enough in mundane technology to do much description — although there's an intriguing cremation (?) machine in Ch. 24 — but it is significant that the Narrator insists on automata servants (like robots "so 'ingenious and pliant to the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with reason”), "air-boats," music machines, and the like. In this very early work of S.F., EB-L gives us an underground world that he doesn't particularly show as mechanized but definitely tells us so. Cf. and contrast E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" (1909) and following works by others.

(The quote on robots is from the review of British Future Fiction by Alan Sandison, SFRA Review #254-555 (Sept-Dec. 2001): 45.

RDE, title, 2Sep19