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Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] supergee, I recently read a defense of Edward Bulwer-Lytton by Jess Nevins, and Nevins' article convinced me to pick up a copy of Bulwer-Lytton's proto-science-fiction Hollow Earth novel, The Coming Race (1871). The point that caught my attention was Nevins' claim that "the mystical vocabulary and ideology of The Coming Race were adopted by Helena Blavatsky and incorporated into the philosophy of Theosophy." The reason I perked up is that Michael Levy argues in his introduction to the Wesleyan edition of A. Merritt's The Moon Pool (1919) that Merritt likely got many of the ideas for his own Hollow Earth novel from Blavatsky. Bulwer-Lytton to Blavatsky to Merritt, oh my! I was fascinated by the idea that these ideas had passed from a science fiction novel to a mystical religious work and back to a science fiction novel again over the course of fifty years. What better illustration of science fiction's close relationship with pseudo-science?



Well, I can't really draw the connections myself, so this will have to remain a subject for further research. It appears that Bulwer-Lytton himself was familiar with Rosicrucian ideas. His mystical novel of 1842, Zanoni, is subtitled, "A Rosicrucian Tale". Perhaps Bulwer-Lytton and Blavatsky were borrowing from the same source. However, the connection seems to be that Blavatsky too wrote of a hollow earth and a superior race within, and I'm seeing a lot of claims that Blavatsky was open about her debt to Bulwer-Lytton.

Just to take this a little farther, here is John S Moore in his own apologia for Bulwer-Lytton:

With the reaction against rationalism and a new cultural climate, Bulwer’s lifelong occult interests gained a new relevance. He was a living link between the original Romantic Movement, and the belief in the power of the imagination that characterised the aesthetic revolt. His conception of the ideal world and the soul prefigured the principles of the symbolists and decadents who made up romanticism's second wind. The symbolist movement was largely underpinned by occult philosophy. Mystery was intrinsic to the reaction against the supposed rationality of the high Victorians. Bulwer had a rich and genuine occult learning that earned him the respect of all the leading figures of the occult revival. He had made an intensive study of magical writers like Iamblichus, Psellus, and Cornelius Agrippa, and was not above claiming secret knowledge and initiation into the Rosicrucian brotherhood.


All this by way of a very long introduction to The Coming Race, which in the great tradition of literary science fiction was initially published anonymously in 1871, although apparently more because Bulwer-Lytton feared a political backlash to his satire rather than from the modern literateur's fear of sci-fi cooties. One of the things that makes The Coming Race interesting is that it is a classical Utopia, but melded with the romance (or adventure) story -- enough so that Bulwer-Lytton's editor apparently thought the romance spoiled the Utopia. It is the story of a young American (told as reminiscence in old age) who stumbles via a mine into a Hollow Earth inhabited by an extremely advanced race of humanoids. The bulk of the novel is an exploration of this advanced civilization, which the protagonist, Tish, comes to recognize as so superior to the humanity of the surface that it would easily displace and destroy it should it come out of its interior hidey-hole.

Typical of a Utopia, the superiority of the Vril-ya, as the people of the hollow earth are called, is displayed in terms of the hot social topics of the day. One of the primary features of homo superior is social equality of women, who are also physically superior to the men of the race. The discussion of the females is quite remarkable, and Tish's response to them is psychologically fascinating as well, as Bulwer-Lytton examines both the desirability of Women's Rights and his own fear of powerful women. Tish describes the brilliant, beautiful Zee as a sort of scientist-Amazon who is so intimidating to him that he cannot return her professed love. Instead he falls for a teen-aged girl who is short enough and naive enough not to trigger his insecurities.

The central feature of Vril-ya society is vril itself -- a kind of energy that is most remarkable to modern sensibilities because of its atomic qualities. Bulwer-Lytton incorporates contemporary scientific ideas, including the theories of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, into the concept of vril, but combines these with mystical or pseudo-scientific theories of mesmerism and von Reichenbach's Odic force. Vril is a force that is able to transform matter from one form to another via the sheer will of the user, and its destructive capabilities have led to the evolution of Vril-ya society along the lines of Heinlein's famous proverb that an armed society is a polite society. It has forced the Vril-ya to control their egos, because an unchecked ego would lead to the annihilation of all.

Darwinian evolution is the driving theory behind The Coming Race, as Bulwer-Lytton contemplates the possibility that there could be a strand of evolution leading to humans as capable of slaughtering homo sapiens as easily as homo sap slaughters the buffalo. Or as easily as the Europeans slaughtered the American Indians, because the novel is also pretty explicitly a consideration of the moral price of colonialism and empire. Sitting in the British Empire at the peak of its power, Bulwer-Lytton looks uneasily across the Atlantic and wonders how long it can last. From that vantage, he sees American hubris and perhaps recognizes his own nation in it. He can't help but tweak American exceptionalism, particularly the American belief in the inevitable rightness of democracy (a form of government that is considered barbaric by the Vril-ya), but the dread of the power of the Coming Race is a rebuke to all humanity.

I'm not generally a big fan of Utopias, but I think part of why I found The Coming Race so entertaining is that it discusses biological and technological ideas as well as social and political ones. It feels very much like a work of science fiction, with its flying carriages and vril power plants (run by the children, who indeed handle all the physical labor, with the help of vril) and alien flora and fauna. The elements of romance are perhaps -- to give Bulwer-Lytton's editor his due -- awkwardly melded with the Utopian discussion, but it does give the story some narrative tension to pull us along. The narrator, Tish, is a conflicted character, looking back on an exploit of his past that he has kept silent about until now because he does not want to alarm his fellow humans regarding their almost inevitable doom. This sense of doom is bracing in a Utopian work, and perhaps it explains why some commentators (like Moore, quoted above) categorize it as a dystopia instead. (Incorrectly, I think, because the advanced society described is actually quite desirable on its own terms.)

Abraham Merritt's The Moon Pool recomplicates all of this in any number of directions, piling pulp adventures on top of several additional layers of advanced humanoids and alien races and superscientific technology. Still, the core conceit remains the same: deep in the bowels of the Earth is hidden a threat to vulnerable humanity. Science and technology makes us more powerful than the savages, but it might make another race even more powerful than us. We might be the savages, the vermin. It's not too far from The Coming Race to Thomas Disch's jaunty ode to humanity's cosmic irrelevance, The Genocides.

Date: 2009-09-15 12:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crowleycrow.livejournal.com
But how does it connect with the mystic forces employed by the underground people (with powerful queen) in The Phantom Empire serial starring Gene Autry? Completeness!

Bulwer Lytton was successor to Byron (whom he idolized) as lover of Lady Carolin Lamb (the noe who called Byron "mad, bad, and dangerous to know," rapidly becoming all that most people know about him.)

Date: 2009-09-15 01:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
You know, I still have never watched The Phantom Empire, although my housemate has it on DVD. Bulwer Lytton's protagonist may be American, but he's no singing cowboy. Although now I'm thinking Autry should have been singing songs based on texts by Madame Blavatsky.

I had seen elsewhere that Bulwer Lytton (I guess the name is not hyphenated?) was a lover of Lamb's. It seems he had an unhappy love life in general, with an ex-wife who publicly humiliated him while he was in the government, as I recall. A fascinating life. I wonder how many of my Australian friends know that he was responsible for (or at least oversaw) the creation of Queensland as a separate province in 1858?

Date: 2009-09-17 04:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] reverendjim.livejournal.com
I doubt you get it in the States (and you're not missing anything) but Bovril takes its name from that. Not a lot of people know that. Fewer care.

Scientist-Amazons? Yes please!

Date: 2009-09-17 04:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Yes, I've read about the connection of Bovril to the book, which is actually kind of cool. I'm trying to think of other real world products that were named after something from a science fiction story, let alone a product that has remained on the market for so long.

And Scientist-Amazons sound like the very thing for the Pinnacle of Heterosexuality. (Although I suppose there a lesbians who would strongly disagree.)

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