The Coming Race

Lord Lytton's infamous and foundational science fiction classic, sometimes known as 'Vril: The Power of the Coming Race,' is the story of a young, well-to-do American thrillseeker on his final adventure. Befriending a local mining engineer during his travels around the world, they descend together into a perilously steep pit discovered while expanding the mine, that is sure to bear them all manner of earthly riches. Instead, tragedy befalls his companion when they reach the bottom, and he is forced into the arms of a thriving ancient civilisation, secreted so deep in the bowels of the Earth that its people have lost the memory of the Sun. At first welcomed and succoured by the strangely luminescent beings, he soon learns of the Vril: a power they yield so ultimate that it can only mean the end of the human race.