Vril, the Power of the Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Science Fiction in Bloomington, MN

Bulwer-Lytton is legend nowadays for the qualities of his prose: but we find his prose attractive, in its languid way; and certainly the man was a profound thinker.
"Vril" is a mysterious energy used by Lytton's subterranean race -- refugees from the deluge that submerged Atlantis -- to power their advanced civilization. Generations of occultists have mistaken this bit of business for something other than fiction; and still more generations of science fiction writers have recycled the novel's plot. Vril is a book of strong interest to anyone doing a scholarly study of the evolution of SF; it's also a novel well worth reading in its own right.