From Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth to Rudy Rucker's The Hollow Earth, subterranean worlds have been a source of both fascination and fear for the literary imagination, and The Coming Race is no exception. An evolutionary fantasy first published in 1871, the story draws upon ideas of Darwinism to describe a near-future world characterized by female dominance, physical perfection, and vast technological progress. The novel was extremely popular in its time and is now considered seminal science fiction text by contemporary scholars. This Wesleyan edition includes scholarly notes and an introduction that places the work in an intellectual and literary context and describes Bulwer-Lytton's interest in the occult.