The Coming Race: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Coming Race, credited to Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Coming Race, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Read by Maire Rhode. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803-1873) was an English novelist, poet, playright, and politician. Lord Lytton was a florid, popular writer of his day, who coined such phrases as "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword", and the infamous incipit "It was a dark and stormy night." The Coming Race drew heavily on his interest in the occult and contributed to the birth of the science fiction genre. Unquestionably, its story of a subterranean race of men waiting to reclaim the surface is one of the first science fiction novels. The novel centres on a young, independently wealthy traveler (the narrator), who accidentally finds his way into a subterranean world occupied by beings who seem to resemble angels, who call themselves Vril-ya. The hero soon discovers that they are descendants of an antediluvian civilisation who live in networks of subterranean caverns linked by tunnels. The narrator suggests that in time, the Vril-ya will run out of habitable spaces underground and will start claiming the surface of the earth, destroying mankind in the process, if necessary. (Summary compiled from Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Coming Race
• Author credits: Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 21
• Listed recording duration: 6:55:49

Catalogue topics

• science fiction
• sci-fi
• Vril-ya

Track guide

1. 01 - Chapters 01-02 — 13:19
2. 02 - Chapters 03-04 — 7:58
3. 03 - Chapters 05-06 — 26:49
4. 04 - Chapters 07-08 — 20:16
5. 05 - Chapter 09 — 27:16
6. 06 - Chapters 10-11 — 18:16
7. 07 - Chapter 12 — 21:32
8. 08 - Chapters 13-14 — 14:16
9. 09 - Chapter 15 — 27:03
10. 10 - Chapter 16 — 29:59
11. 11 - Chapter 17 — 32:10
12. 12 - Chapter 18 — 22:48
13. 13 - Chapters 19-20 — 14:11
14. 14 - Chapter 21 — 10:23
15. 15 - Chapter 22 — 16:44
16. 16 - Chapters 23-24 — 28:17
17. 17 - Chapter 25, Part 1 — 22:32
18. 18 - Chapter 25, Part 2 — 19:55
19. 19 - Chapter 26 — 18:19
20. 20 - Chapters 27-28 — 13:53
21. 21 - Chapter 29 — 9:57

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.