The Coming Race

This is an interesting book with a oddly influential history. The writing straddles the divide between the classic guided walk-through of an Utopian society as seen in Utopia and The Divine Comedy and the modern plot based Utopian novels like A Brave New World or the more contemporaneous The Sleeper Awakes. This results in a somewhat uneven read but a compelling one none-the-less.

Today, Edward Bulwer-Lytton is synonymous with bad writing but that association does not fully describe his work. He was a florid writer but, though that is crime in the literary world, he was also a very popular writer during his lifetime. Today we read and enjoy a number of popular and prolific writers that will be forgotten by the general public in a hundred years because their writing style will no longer be in tune with the masses. Personally, I don't think he's a "Great works" author but I have read many worse than him.

The plot is simple- boy finds Utopian society, boy learns about the society, boy is incompatible with the Utopian society, boy escapes home and writes his memoirs. It is the society of the Vril-ya that gives it a different flavor, I should say a much more Romantic flavor, than 20th century Utopian tales. I enjoyed the discussion how the Vril-ya evolved as a people over thousands of years, a reflection of influence of Darwin's work on Bulwer-Lytton.

I think the big thinking point that I took away from this was that a peaceful and free universal society cannot be created overnight. Our attempts Utopian societies fail because we are very imperfect beings but we have to keep striving for a better way in order to evolve as a society towards something that can sustain these lofty goals.

Overall, I am glad I read this classic of science fiction even though it straddles the line of essay and novel.