Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels

Rating:
Summary: tedious, pretentious, pointless
Review: "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"? Except for the "religion of selfless love" bit, the late Sir Fred Hoyle has this sort of thing in at least two of his science fiction novels, "October the First is Too Late" and "Andromeda Breakthrough". It occurred to Professor Hoyle, however, to SUMMARIZE briefly the waxing and waning, to ruminate on it philosophically, and to incorporate it into actual NOVELS with actual STORIES. (Professor Hoyle's waning, by the bye, has mostly to do with irresponsible dissemination of technology and overpopulation.)

(I don't know where people come up with such stuff as "Olaf Stapledon, Oxford philosophy department head". Mr. Stapledon was never head of any department, never taught at Oxford or any college, and never taught philosphy anywhere. Before he came into his inheritence he worked a variety of odd jobs, including a short stint as a public grade school teacher. His "occasional ad hoc lectures" were public lectures about socialism given under the auspices of a socialist society, in other words, they were more a matter of politics than of education. That's it.)

Rating:
Summary: Can you say "B-O-R-I-N-G"?
Review: "If you can get past Stapledon's somewhat stilted prose (he was, after all, an Oxford philosophy professor by profession, so I cut him some slack here)...."

Not quite. Mr. Stapledon did earn a degree in philosophy, but he lived off an inheritance and, aside from an occasional ad hoc lecture here and there, did not teach. Early on he contributed a few articles to philosophical journals, but he mostly occupied himself writing science-fiction novels which sold very
modestly.

I only read the first of the two included in this volume, "The First and Last Men", and my star-rating and review refer to this novel only. It has been praised for "containing enough material for hundreds of conventional science-fiction stories". I only wish there were at least one--conventional or other--science-fiction story in it. For this is a novel with no plot and no characters. We might call it a fictional history, but a history of England, for example, has largely to do with kings and queens and Cromwells--characters--, as a history of physics has largely to do with Newton, Einstein, and Bohr--characters. To a certain extent, the early part of the book tries to make up for this lack by anthropomorphizing nations-nations behave as if they were persons. (Of course, you can get away with saying anything you like about nations this way, zzzzzzzzzzz.)

Wherefore no characters? It appears that this novel espouses an extreme form of anti-individualism, such that it seems to me a sort of reductio ad absurdum inadvertent argument in FAVOR of individualism. (By the bye, the novel itself calls capitalist exploitation of the masses "individualism", whereas I call
capitalist exploitation of the masses "corporate collectivism", rather the opposite.)

"The First and Last Men" was originally published in 1930 (or 1931; I can't remember), but its fictional history starts immediately after World War I, which is to say, the first part of its fictional history ought NOT to be fictional. The extent to which it misreads its own time is surprising and mystifying.
Compare it to Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf", which accurately predicts the rise of Nazi-ism and a second world war, and was originally published in the mid-1920's. For that matter, compare it to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", which was originally published in 1932 and remains very much on target.

In short, it seems to me, judged by any reasonable standard, this novel is simply awful. I'm guessing it has avoided excoriation only because it is fairly obscure. Read Stanislaw Lem instead.

Rating:
Summary: Continuing....
Review: I can only think that the reviewers who keep calling Stapledon's novels works of "philosophy" have never actually read any philosophy.

Philosophical treatises vary according to the philosopher, of course. Nietsche's "Beyond Good and Evil", "The Birth of Tragedy", and "The Case of Wagner" are all much more eccentric and seemingly glib than Satre's more rigorous "Being and Nothingness", "Search for a Method", and the essays in his "Between Marxism and Existentialism". Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus" falls somewhere in between. (So much for proto and post existentialism.)

In any case, a philosophical novel typically involves a scene or a series of scenes such as that in "Brave New World" in which the Savage and his two friends are confronted by the World Controller. In other words, various characters sit around and argue. The novelist with a philosophical bent typically finds it necessary or convenient to make different characters espouse different contending points of view. Stapledon doesn't do this, and not because he is more subtle than Aldous Huxley-he is much less subtle in fact-but because his "novels" are not so much works of "philosophy" as tracts.

Rating:
Summary: Philosophy and Science Fiction dancing like binary stars.
Review: I have never read a writer who was able to convey the vastness of the universe and the infinitely complex possibilities of sentient life forms over evolutionary stretches of time. The first of the two novels in this publication, Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon describes the spiritual, intellectual and biological evolution of the human species from our modern era to its last residence on Neptune. The slowly changing forces of our planets and the sun force humans to adapt and change, and Olaf Stapledon documents these adaptations and the adaptations humans impose on their environments. Illustrating the unimaginably long time required for this evolution is Stapledon's unique talent. The theme of the story is human's destiny - to achieve a collective conciousness. It is a fitting introduction for the next novel in this collection - Star Maker. In his novel Star Maker Olaf Stapledon builds a pyramid based on intricate descriptions of the galaxy's sentient beings and illustrates the spiritual journey of all sentient beings toward a unification into a galactic consciousness, with the ultimate goal of meeting the creator of the universe. He applies his clear knowledge of modern biological and cultural evolution and their interactions with their environments to illustrate this journey of countless species, societies and individuals toward this galactic destiny. Along the way are a few twists, which are too exciting in their intricacy to give away here! The end finds our universal being finally able to glimpse its creator. At the time of this writing I know little of Olaf Stapledon, except that he was a philospher as well as a science fiction writer. These two novels are the best science fiction I have ever read. They deal with current issues and ideas in sociology, anthropology, biological evolution, and philosophy in a vivid storytelling style. Although I know little of philosophy, his point of view is strongly deterministic. Although Olaf Stapledon is a product of his time, he was one of his time who was looking toward the future with an imaginatino more focused than any other I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Philosophy and Science Fiction dancing like binary stars.
Review: I have never read a writer who was able to convey the vastness of the universe and the infinitely complexpossibilities of sentient life forms over evolutionary stretches of time. The first of the two novels in this publication, Last and First Men, Olaf Stapledon describes the spiritual, intellectual and biological evolution of the human species from our modern era to its last residence on Neptune. The slowly changing forces of our planets and the sun force humans to adapt and change, and Olaf Stapledon documents these adaptations and the adaptations humans impose on their environments. Illustrating the unimaginably long time required for this evolution is Stapledon's unique talent. The theme of the story is human's destiny - to achieve a collective conciousness. It is a fitting introduction for the next novel in this collection - Star Maker. In his novel Star Maker Olaf Stapledon builds a pyramid based on intricate descriptions of the galaxy's sentient beings and illustrates the spiritual journey of all sentient beings toward a unification into a galactic consciousness, with the ultimate goal of meeting the creator of the universe. He applies his clear knowledge of modern biological and cultural evolution and their interactions with their environments to illustrate this journey of countless species, societies and individuals toward this galactic destiny. Along the way are a few twists, which are too exciting in their intricacy to give away here! The end finds our universal being finally able to glimpse its creator. At the time of this writing I know little of Olaf Stapledon, except that he was a philospher as well as a science fiction writer. These two novels are the best science fiction I have ever read. They deal with current issues and ideas in sociology, anthropology, biological evolution, and philosophy in a vivid storytelling style. Although I know little of philosophy, his point of view is strongly deterministic. Although Olaf Stapledon is a product of his time, he was one of his time who was looking toward the future with an imaginatino more focused than any other I have read.

Rating:
Summary: Its been a long time, but ...
Review: I read "Star Maker" many years ago when I was very young (16?) and remember being awed by Stapledon's content and message. Granted I was probably not of an age to truly appreciate (or not) and judge the book, I have fond memories of the book.
Now, not to send the continuing dialog on Stapledon's title of philosopher, off into the ozone, I feel I must add my two cents worth. I have a Ph.D. in the sciences. I consider myself a professional scientist, not because of my degree, but rather on my publication in the professional journals. I know many people who are highly educated in various fields, but do not consider "professional" what-evers, simply because they have not developed a peer reviewed basis of work. If Stapledon has in fact "published a few articles in professional philosophical journals" this is good enough for me. You may not consider him a great "philosophical writer", but to deny him the title of philosopher given his publication record is incorrect.
Forgive my rating of 5 stars. I had to base my opinion on something and that something is my past recollection of the book. I will order a new one today and possibly reconsider.

Rating:
Summary: Strange but cosmic vision
Review: If you can get past Stapledon's somewhat stilted prose (he was, after all, an Oxford philosophy professor by profession, so I cut him some slack here), there was probably no other sci-fi author who could convey such a sense of the vastness of the universe and of man's tiny little speck-like piece of it. For in Star-Maker, the cosmos is brimming with literally thousands of sentient civilizations, and humankind is only one insignificant cultural outpost in the midst of an infinitely bigger universe. I sort of liked this idea, because I would hate to think that humans, with all their shortcomings, are the only sentient species out there, not that the other species described in this book don't have their problems either. But I would like to think that there are other possiblities such as those that Stapledon describes in this novel, since it seems unlikely to me that the human race will evolve physically and and socially much further than its current state.

Rating:
Summary: I found this stimulating and sweeping
Review: It seems like a few of the reviews are very negative, but I would say that it is unfair. Arthur C Clarke described Last and First Men as fantastic.
As another reviewer pointed out, the first chapter describing the near future is not the best part of the book.


Rating:
Summary: Two classic future histories of immense scope
Review: LAST & FIRST MEN

This extremely strange book, published by an philisophically minded englishman around 1932, doesn't really qualify as a novel. There are only a few lines of dialogue, and most characters stick around for maybe a paragraph or two. Last and First Men is best thought of as a future history. Not the history of America or Western Civilization, but of the human species. Two billion years of it.

Fair Warning: Stapledon, an intellectural pacifist and survivor of the hideous spectacle of World War One, lets his prejudices and peculiarities show in the first five or so chapters of the book. He predicts a second (and further) world wars, but gets the details spectacularly wrong. America gets its knocks, but for reasons that are entirely unfair; Stapledon's beliefs about american society are bizarre and off-base. He later apologized and admitted that these early chapters were rather weak. So . . . if you get this book, you won't hurt your enjoyment of the story if you skip to the section entitled "The Americanized World" and go from there. Now that that's out of the way . . .

Last and First Men is written about the big picture. It follows Western civilization until it succumbs to an energy crisis and intellectual stagnation. A successor culture based in Patagonia arises, but an experiment with atomic power blasts it, and much of the land mass of the Earth, into oblivion. A few arctic explorers survive, but by the time humanity regains a technological civilization it has evolved into a sturdier, larger species . . . the "second men." These potentially superior creatures find themselves threatened by an invasion from Mars . . . and such martians they are! Mass-minded creatures composed of millions of airborne cells, they and humanity are simply too alien to comprehend each other. Stapledon spends chapters discussing the social, moral and spiritual nature of the Martian swarms, comparing their odd society with humanity's.

The Second Men fall, and are replaced through natural evolution by Third, who create the Fourth . . . and so on, through interplantary migration, cosmic disaster, terraforming, hideous wars, spiritual triumph and decadence, until the Seventeenth Men arise on Neptune and face the end of human history. This is one of the most deeply considered pieces of science fiction every written, and a must-read for any serious scholar of the genre. It is dated in spots, and oddly colored by pre-war Lefty english politics, but these minor flaws do not greatly detract from its scope and majesty.

STAR MAKER

As if Last and First Men were not enough, Stapledon takes on the history of an entire galactic civilization in Star Maker (published 1938). The book -- again, not so much a novel as a sort of narrative history -- begins with the narrator fleeing a domestic argument and walking to the top of a hill to gaze at the stars. He finds himself "astrally projecting" and soon discovers another world, populated by roughly humanoid creatures.

After telepathically joining with a sympathetic native, he explores the world and its troubled civilizations. After disaster and folly doom the planet, the narrator and his guide find themselves whisked to another troubled world, and another, and so on, each populated by stranger and stranger creatures with more and more esoteric mental and spiritual natures. Star Maker soon turns from the fate of individual worlds to the big picture; the two-billion year long history of humanity rates about two paragraphs.

In a series of dazzling chapters Stapledon describes the construction of artificial worlds, space travel by wandering space colonies, and spectacular interstellar wars. Strife and religious bigotry lead to genocide through artificially induced novas; lesser races fall prey to technologically advanced but spiritually misguided "pervert" races. After several millenia, a true galactic civilization arises and begins organizing itself into a Galactic Mind to root out the deepest questions of existence.

This final quest -- to confront the Prime Mover behind the existence of the universe and reality -- requires a rather long time; at one point further progess seems threatened by the heat death of the universe.

Mind-blowing stuff. Species form utopias -- some benign and non-interventionist, some insane -- and travel the galaxy in flying planets. Stars are surrounded by globes of artificial habitats (the inspiration for "Dyson Spheres").

Reading Star Maker is an exhausting and humbling experience. Stapledon rattles off ideas and concepts that didn't make it into mainstream SF until the last decade or so. It is mighty difficult to be impressed by normal science fiction after reading
this book.

Rating:
Summary: Science fiction / philosophy / spirituality
Review: LAST AND FIRST MEN: Wow! Excellent both as sci fi and as philosophy 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.

STAR MAKER: I couldn't get into it. The beginning reads like an astronomy textbook that is cleverly written but is still, after all, a textbook. The narrator's consciousness mysteriously zooms off the earth and out of the solar system, and he tells us what he sees. Then, when he encounters another planet with life, I felt like I was reading the author's sketches of a fictional universe in which to set a story. It's an interesting universe, but I needed more of a story to go with it. I gave up.