The coming race /

Seed (Univ. of Liverpool, UK) offers a comprehensive and useful critical edition of Bulwer-Lytton's early science fiction novel (first published in 1848). The introduction gives readers a clear sense of the novel's importance in the mid-19th century and its connection to major issues of the day, such as Darwinism, philology, and the work of painter John Martin. Seed also traces influences on the novel from other contemporary writers, notably Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and looks at later novels The Coming Race influenced. The text of novel itself is well annotated with numerous notes that point out these influences and explain unfamiliar terms. The critical apparatus includes an extensive primary and secondary bibliography, and the concluding biography of the novelist helps readers situate this novel within Bulwer-Lytton's oeuvre. Because Seed defines and explains unfamiliar terms, the critical commentary is accessible to those who are not literary scholars. This latest number in "The Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction Series" illuminates the meaning and importance of this work both to writers who were Bulwer-Lytton's contemporaries and to science fiction and fantasy writers who followed him. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. P. J. Kurtz Minot State University

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's seminal 1871 SF novel, The Coming Race, edited with an introduction by British scholar David Seed, recounts the adventures of an Englishman in an underground world inhabited by a race of advanced beings. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved