Vril

This is nonfiction commentary. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Vril, Zanoni, the Last Days of Pompeii, Paul Clifford, the Last of the Barons. Source: Wikipedia. Free updates online. Not illustrated. Excerpt: Vril is a substance described in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel The Coming Race, which was later reprinted as Vril: The Power of the Coming Race. The novel is an early example of science fiction. However, many early readers believed that its account of a superior subterranean master race and the energy-form called "Vril" was accurate, to the extent that some theosophists accepted the book as truth. Furthermore, since 1960 there has been a conspiracy theory about a secret Vril Society. The Coming Race was originally published anonymously in late 1871 but Bulwer-Lytton was known to be the author. Samuel Butler's Erewhon was also published anonymously, in March 1872, and Butler suspected that its initial success was due to it being taken by many as a sequel by Bulwer-Lytton to The Coming Race; when it was revealed in the 25 May 1872 edition of the Athenaeum that Butler was the author, sales dropped by 90 percent because he was at the time an unknown. The novel centers on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels and call themselves Vril-ya. There is a clear feminist factor in the plot. "Gyei" are the females and "Ana" the males. "The females are of taller stature and ampler proportions than males, devoid of softness and timidity of expression...(Chapter V): Gyei are usually superior to Ana in physical strength, attain to loftier stature, and amid their rounded proportions are embedded sinews and muscles as hardy as those of the other sex...they arrogate to themselves a superiority in all tho...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=858114