The Coming Race

"The Coming Race" by Edward Bulwer Lytton is a science fiction story where an explorer falls into a hidden world within the Earth and finds the Vril-ya, an advanced society. This hidden civilization uses a powerful energy called "vril" for everything. The story starts when a young adventurer and an engineer find a deep hole in a mine. After seeing something scary, the engineer gets nervous. The adventurer convinces him to go down again, but the engineer dies in a fall, leaving the adventurer alone in this strange place. He is amazed by the land and its people. The book explores ideas about how humans might evolve, what a perfect society could be, and how nature and technology could mix, contrasting our world with the one below.