If it was the Vril staffs and flight harnesses of the Vril-ya—their “science” that felt like magic—that captivated you in The Coming Race, you’ll love how The Shadow of the Torturer cloaks forgotten technologies in ritual and myth. Following Severian through the decaying Matachin Tower and the botanic gardens, you’ll get that same shiver of discovery as when the narrator first realizes what Vril can do—wonders presented with reverent awe and unsettling power.

You were drawn into the Vril-ya’s customs—guided by Taee, taught by the formidable Zee, and stunned by a society whose gender dynamics upend surface-world assumptions. In The Left Hand of Darkness, envoy Genly Ai is likewise immersed in Gethen’s culture, where ambisexuality and kemmer transform politics, friendship, and trust. As with the Vril-ya’s serene confidence in Vril, Le Guin’s Gethen reshapes what you think a civilization can be—patiently, intimately, and with profound human stakes.

If the Vril-ya’s courteous welcome—and their cool contemplation of eventually conquering the ‘Ana’ above—left you pondering the ethics of contact, The Sparrow will grip you. A Jesuit-led expedition lands on Rakhat with goodwill, only to find their assumptions unraveling. Like the narrator’s precarious position among the Vril-ya, Emilio Sandoz navigates grace, misunderstanding, and power imbalances that spiral into consequences as irreversible as a single misused Vril strike.

Zee’s effortless mastery of Vril—and the Vril-ya’s calm assurance that they could dominate the surface—echo in The Power, where women worldwide awaken to lethal bioelectric abilities. As the Vril-ya debate responsibility versus supremacy, Alderman’s characters—Roxy, Allie, Margot—wrestle with justice, fear, and temptation. You’ll recognize that same electric question the Vril raises: when strength tips the scales, what choices keep a civilization humane?

If you loved being led room by room through Vril-ya life—Aph-Lin’s intellectual household, Taee’s guided tours, the serene civic order—Herland offers that same ethnographic delight. Three explorers stumble upon an isolated all-female civilization and, like the narrator among the Vril-ya, learn its language, schools, childrearing, and governance in exacting detail. It’s the same pleasure of careful world exposition—minus Vril, but rich with social architecture and cultural surprise.