Chapter XXVI explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Utopian Society and Its Costs

  The narrator details the Vril-ya's perfect society—no war, no class conflict, no vice—but concludes it is oppressive and incompatible with human nature, leading to ennui and a longing for change.

• Gender Roles and Female Empowerment

  The narrator discusses the Gy-ei's physical and intellectual superiority, their right to choose partners, and their docility after marriage, contrasting with upper-world debates on women's rights.

• Religion and Morality Without Conflict

  The Vril-ya universally agree on a benevolent Deity and a future world, avoiding religious strife—a state the narrator says no surface community has achieved.

• Colonialism and Extermination

  The narrator fears that if the Vril-ya emerge, they would destroy and replace upper-world races, comparing it to Anglo-Saxon treatment of Red Indians and predicting a swift conquest of America.

Characters to notice

• The Narrator

  Falls into melancholy, longs for escape, and reflects on the incompatibility of Vril-ya society with human nature.

• Zee

  Reserved and silent at meals; the narrator's fears of her affection fade.

• Gy

  Described as physically stronger than the An, with resolute will and vril power; they choose their partners and become learned scholars.

• Tur

  Mentioned as the authority that would burn revolutionaries to cinders at the community's request.

• Koom-Posh

  Referenced as a form of popular government that the Vril-ya despise; the narrator imagines them confronting a Koom-Posh in America.

Key passages

• “I began to feel that, whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards a better, and higher, and calmer sphere of being, we, the mortals of the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the very happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire.”

  The narrator realizes that humans are not suited to sustain the happiness they idealize.

  Reflects the theme of utopian society and its costs.

• “Now, in this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark how it contrived to unite and to harmonise into one system nearly all the objects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placed before human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future.”

  The Vril-ya society embodies nearly every philosopher's vision of a perfect future.

  Highlights the utopian nature of the Vril-ya.

• “Among this people there can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, as I have said before, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and stronger than the An; and her will being also more resolute than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril force, she can bring to bear upon him, more potently than he on herself, the mystical agency which art can extract from the occult properties of nature.”

  Women's rights are unquestioned among the Vril-ya because Gy-ei are physically stronger and more willful, enabling them to wield vril more effectively.

  Explains the basis of female empowerment in Vril-ya society.

• “It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state of existence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and, realising the dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists, almost approaches to a poet's conception of some angelical order.”

  The Vril-ya's existence is far happier than surface life, fulfilling the dreams of philanthropists and poets.

  Summarizes the narrator's view of Vril-ya felicity.

• “And yet, if you would take a thousand of the best and most philosophical of human beings you could find in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as citizens in this beatified community, my belief is, that in less than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution by which they would militate against the good of the community, and be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.”

  Even the best humans would die of boredom or revolt in Vril-ya society, leading to their destruction.

  Emphasizes the incompatibility of human nature with utopia.