Last and First Men

After 20 years of reading about Last and First Men I have found it at last. If your idea of a novel is a book about people's relationships, it may not be for you. That particular element of novels bores me to death and this is more my idea of a compelling read. The history of mankind from 1930 to a few billion years hence is pre-written by a philosopher and fantasist possessed of a great and unquiet mind, inhuman but not inhumane as someone has well put it. On no account skip the opening chapters, whatever anyone tells you. The fact that S got the world's history 1930-2003 completely wrong is not the point -- the rest of it will almost certainly prove to be all wrong too, if we think like that. What these first chapters do is to get us into the author's weird exalted and passionless mindset. He is not so much on another planet as in an alternative universe. It is entirely to the book's advantage that he has no grasp of Realpolitik and even that he has no detectable sense of humour -- when I was beginning to feel the latter as a lack I came to the only bit where he ascribes humour to any of his characters, a race of monkeys depicted in general unsympathetically and not least for their possession of this deplorable characteristic. That put me in my place I can tell you. From start to finish I got no sense of either pity or cruelty as he chronicles the the periodic near-annihilations that overtake the various successive human races, and while his account of the systematic extermination of the intelligent life on Venus filled me with a wrenching sense of tragedy that I did not feel for any of the mankinds the author himself seemed as unmoved as ever. If Wuthering Heights was written by an eagle, who or what wrote Last and First Men? Of other human proclivities I can report that sex is methodically accorded its place in a thorough and businesslike manner reminiscent of Peter Simple's great sexologist Professor Heinz Kiosk (assisted by Dr Melisande Fischbein). Of anything I would recognise as love or affection or friendship I can find not a trace. Non hic mortalem uexantia sidera sortem Aeternosue tulit sollicitare deos. -- 'here he has not gone so far as to trouble the eternal gods or the stars that blight our human lot.' That comes in Star Maker. Here the 18th and last men are trapped in our solar system when final doom reaches out from the stars. Next -- Star Maker, which makes this book seem parochial.

Olaf Stapleton has made a novel, not just of science fiction, but of philosophy and the future of mankind. From the first man to the last, we follow mankind, how it develops, the problems it faces, not only in their changing environments, but also their social problems and the problems within mankind's mind. Sometimes Mr. Stapleton only hints at the details and problems as he takes us across history in leaps of thousands and, sometimes, millions of years. I take a point away for his use of 'telepathic' powers within the story and the fact that he seems to think that man needs millions of years to change cultures or even invent such things as rocket flight! But rememeber that this man's works effected later generations of thinkers, sci-fi writers and scientists.If you liked this book, you might wish to try getting 'Star Maker' by the same author.

Wow! Stapledon is an excellent sci fi writer and an excellent philosopher of the human condition. There are no ordinary characters in this story. The protagonist is humanity, and this is humanity's autobiography. Or perhaps the story is better understood as a family saga, with each succeeding race of humanity as a new character, from the First Men (that's us) through the Last Men in the way far future. Again and again, over a vast span of time, humanity waxes and wanes, flourishes and is nearly extinguished, sinks to barbarism and rediscovers a religion of selfless love. Humanity takes on new forms and moves to new planets. In the moments when humanity is capable of philosophical and spiritual reflection, it is plagued by recurring issues--in particular, by the tension between two of its greatest spiritual attainments: (1) a deep love for and identification with all life and the passionate desire for all life to continue and to be free of suffering, and (2) a dispassionate aesthetic appreciation of fate, a mystical awe at the beauty of the drama of the cosmos, including individual and racial suffering and extinction. The story is engaging, and I was awed by how clearly articulated and how deeply explored is this basic paradox of spirituality. Like two of my favorite authors, Nancy Mairs and Annie Dillard, Stapledon takes a clear and unflinching look at the pain and angst of life in this universe and manages to find hope and beauty. Just two small gripes: it gets a little too pedantic at the very end, and the editor should have deleted about 90% of the occurrences of the word "extravagant." If you like science fiction with deep ideas, or if you like spiritual or philosophical reflection and think you can at least tolerate the sci fi genre, I highly recommend this book. I also highly recommend Stapledon's "Sirius."

This one is something else again. My first copy cost five pence, second-hand; I was in my mid-teens and hadn't the faintest idea what I was getting into. Stapledon - who he? I read it from cover to cover that same evening, and the world changed. This book single-handedly spoiled my tolerance for about ninety-five per cent of science fiction. After watching humanity evolve through seventeen different species, three or four planets and aeons of time, I found that lasers and phasers and maidens from Mars just didn't cut it any more. The change of perspective was dizzying; the wealth of invention would dwarf an entire library of Isaac Asimov. The first few chapters may have been dated by events (the book's "future" starts in the 1930s, when it was written), but they still provide an interesting highlight on some of the author's attitudes. Once the narrative progresses beyond the first World State, though, it leaps from triumph to triumph, ever faster and more vertiginous, from the Martian invasion to the Great Brains to the Flying Men and their luminous suicide, from Earth to Venus and finally to Neptune, where the last species of humanity awaits its extinction with dignity. Stapledon wrote several other books of equal stature, including Sirius, Odd John, Last Men in London and the sublime Star Maker. Find them and grab them. In this age of Global Village parochialism and mindless heroics, we need perspectives like Stapledon's to keep our eyes open.

Last and First Men is probably the ultimate book of human evolution. First published in 1930, Olaf Stapledon writes a "history" of mankind's future over a period of two billion years.The book starts with an introduction by one of the Last Men. He has projected his mind two billion years into the past and taken control of the mind of one of the First Men, represented as Olaf Stapledon.Through the writer we get an account of mankind's progress, with his triumphs and achievements, his highs and lows. We alternately go through phases of enlightenment and barbarism, as the book describes eighteen different species of Man. The First Men (homo sapiens) are the most primitive.This book is written rather like a textbook. There are no actual characters, as you would find in a novel. Because the story goes over two billion years, it's a book you can read at a slow, relaxed pace. It took me over a month to read. This is not a book you can rush through. Sometimes you have to read carefully, to understand what the "possessed" writer is describing. Last and First Men makes you feel very small and insignicant. The first few chapters are badly dated, which Gregory Benford advises the reader to skip, but after the collapse of the First Men, the book begins to take off. It's like an incredibly long journey: full of twists and turns, unexpected diversions and unfamiliar scenery. This book has been an inspiration to such authors as Arthur C. Clarke and Kim Stanley Robinson.