Vril: Harness the Infinite Ocean of Energy (Sunday Feature)
Broadcast Sunday 4 January 2009 21:30-22:15, Radio 3
Vril was the infinitely powerful energy source of the species of superhumans who populated a pioneering science fiction novel by Victorian author and politician Edward Bulwer Lytton, called The Coming Race. It was completely invented, and yet many people were desperate to believe it really existed, and had the power to transform their lives. Matthew Sweet goes on their trail to find out why.
Matthew begins at Knebworth, Lytton's vast, grandiloquent Gothic mansion, where he meets his great-great-great-grandson, and hears how his book was intended as a warning about technology, soulless materialism and utopian dreams. At London's Royal Albert Hall, he discovers how a quack electro-doctor, Herbert Tibbits, along with a handful of aristocrats, tried to promote the notion of electrical cures and the possibility of a "coming race" in a bizarre bazaar that was meant to recreate the "city of the Vril-ya".
Matthew visits the site of "England's House Of Mystery", where magicians mounted a stage version with similarly disastrous results and unearths an interview with the founder of the Baroness-rich "Vril-ya Club". He also hears a choir sing The Marching Song Of The Coming Race. And he heads for Whitehall to discover how, in the wake of the First World War, Vril came to be caught up with sinister ideas about improving the health of the race.
Along the way, Matthew and his contributors reflect on why so many English people have been so desperate to see the fantasy of regeneration transformed into fact. And, finally, he reveals why he began his journey with a meat-based drink to hand - one that owes its name to Lytton's idea, but which is still on sale today.
Producer: Phil Tinline
160/44; 50.6 MB; sound quality excellent
Rick...I don't know if it has ever been broadcast. I was just wondering if there might be either a reading, or an audio version, somewhere? Wagner lived in the last century, so that would be about the time of the novel.
Rick...just wondered if you have ever come across Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Rienzi-Last Of The Tribunes"? (Wagner composed an opera about him. The Overture is very famous, and a portion was used on the old "Lone Ranger" radio shows).
Hi Gil,
That I have not come across. How old is it and what country was it broadcast in? I will keep on the lookout for it.--------------------------------------------------Rick
Replies
Gil
Gil
That I have not come across. How old is it and what country was it broadcast in? I will keep on the lookout for it.--------------------------------------------------Rick