Vril, The Power of the Coming Race

If you live in the UK, you may have tasted Bovril, a popular yeast and beef extract paste used as cooking stock. Obviously, part of the name comes from "bovine" or the Latin word for beef, which is "bos," but I didn't know that "vril" originated entirely from a work of science fiction--namely from t......more

Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, was one of the big guns of Victorian literature. His books were bestsellers and he garnered considerable critical acclaim as well. And yet today he is not merely mostly unread, he has become a byword by bad writing, with a literary competit......more

A travel guide to realms we can never visit, a vehicle for some truly unsubtle sort of satire. Very little in terms of characterization or actual story. There weren't a lot of science fiction stories way back when, I guess, but now that we have a lot to choose from, I can't say this one has aged too......more

Written in the 1870s its easy to see how this was such a big influence on science fiction, fantasy, hollow earth theorists, utopiaists, occultists and Eugenicists. Two men go exploring underground in a mining area, one dies in a fall and the other happens upon an underground civilization and it goes......more

Elements of this book were used to create a nazi cult to which most of the top nazis's were members. But thats not the authors fault, except that he wrote something way ahead of its time. I mean consider the fact that it was written in 1871 and at times i felt like i was watching an episode of start......more