Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 science-fiction novel, introduced by Bob as the occult text beneath the modern conspiracy imaginary. Its plot — an American descends underground and finds a superior species of hominid wielding "Vril," an energy that can destroy cities and control minds — supplies, in Bob's reading, an "old occult idea" of a controllable prima materia (ether, chi, prana) and an "occult authoritarianism" in which "the magus uses their magical power to control both automatons and the masses." Bob follows Vril from Theosophy to "esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945"; Cameron pulls the same transposable, more-than-human mind toward Frankenstein and AI. The page holds the novel as a hinge between nineteenth-century occultism and the cul-de-sac of the transhuman.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the occult text under the conspiracy imaginary — the hollow-earth Vril fantasy that Bob traces to neo-Nazism and QAnon, and that Cameron re-reads beside Frankenstein as an early premonition of the transhuman
Bob summarizes The Coming Race — a subterranean superior hominid species wielding the mind-and-city-controlling energy "Vril."
"so The Coming Race is the last novel about an American who descends into a cave and discovers a hidden advanced civilization run by an alternative species of hominid."
Bob, reading the reference, credits the novel with popularizing the hollow-earth theory and feeding Nazi mysticism — Vril's line into esoteric neo-Nazism after 1945.
"The book popularized the hollow earth theory and may have inspired Nazi mysticism."
Bob extracts the novel's "occult authoritarianism" — the magus controlling automatons and masses alike — a theme he ties to McLuhan on Manichean poetry.
"There's also an old occult idea which one could call occult authoritarianism, where the magus uses their magical power to control both automatons and the masses."
Cameron sets the novel's transposable, disembodied mind beside Frankenstein — the early-nineteenth-century intuition that leads on to AI.
"when Mary Shelley sees this Frankenstein possibility in the early 19th century, in a way, you can see it leading on to AI."
Connections
Bulwer-Lytton's 1871 novel, whose subterranean "Vril" energy Bob traces forward into Theosophy, neo-Nazi mysticism, and modern conspiracy lore.
Cameron reads the novel's transposable, more-than-human mind — and its kinship with Frankenstein — as an early nineteenth-century glimpse of the AI cul-de-sac.