From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our - Chris J. Young

48. Baron Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873). The Coming Race, or, The New
Utopia. London: G. Routledge, 1887.
A firm believer in scientific progress and evolution, Baron Bulwer-Lytton was convinced that a
more perfect human race was possible through social engineering. First published in 1871, The
Coming Race, or The New Utopia is told from the perspective of a nameless American who descends
into a mineshaft and discovers a subterranean world known as An. in this world disease, poverty,
and traditional forms of government do not exist. The people there, known as Vril-ya, are a tall,
winged, superior race with liberated women who are more intelligent than men. Robots do most of
the manual labour and the people possess an electromagnetic power, known as Vril, that can both
destroy or restore. The Coming Race satirizes middle-class American values, Darwinian evolutionary
theory, and the use of science and technology to wield power. While Vril-yan society is far from
perfect, it is a kind of utopia where the inhabitants are able to manipulate society to their own ends
at the power of the Vril.
49. H.G. Wells (1866–1946). The Time Machine. New York: Random House, 1931.
First published in 1895, Wells’s The Time Machine recounts the journey of the nameless Time
Traveller who visits the year 802,701 in a time machine of his own invention. On his travels he
meets the Eloi, a society of small, graceful, childlike adults, who live in small communities within
large and futuristic, yet slowly deteriorating, buildings, doing no work, and enjoying a lavish diet.
The Time Traveller soon encounters the Morlocks, an underground species that maintains the
above ground paradise through technology and industry, and feed on the Eloi like ranchers raising
livestock for food. Wells’s vision of a dystopian future warns against continued industrialization
and the exploitation of the working class. The Time Traveller continues further on into the future,
only to find that in the year 30,000,000 all life has disappeared from the surface of the earth,
leaving only a barren landscape. This illustrated edition included a new preface by H. G. Wells, and
numerous block illustrations by the type-designer, book designer, and illustrator W.A. Dwiggins.
The title page displays a rendering of the heavily mechanized time machine.
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