Last and First Men (SF Masterworks)

Rating:
Summary: Stapledon's First Masterwork
Review: "Last and First Men" is a very good book even today. It was first published in 1930, and it is far from a conventional novel. This book has many similarities to his later book "Star Maker" in style and scope, but in my opinion it does not hold up as well. Though certainly very good, I found certain themes to be more repetitive in this book, which detracted a bit from my enjoyment. The book covers the history of man, from the 30's through the last race of man far in the future as told by one of the last men, through a psychic link with a present day author. The book covers such themes as genetic engineering, the waste of natural resources, alien invasion of Earth, as well as the terraforming and invasion of Venus by Man and many others.

This book was rated 3rd on the Arkham Survey in 1949 as one of the `Basic SF Titles'. It also was tied for 30th on the 1975 Locus All-Time poll for Novels; 43rd on the 1987 Locus All-Time pool of SF Novels, and tied for 43rd on the 1998 Locus All-Time Poll for Novels written prior to 1990. This particular edition includes a Foreword by Gregory Benford and an Afterword by Doris Lessing. This is the 11th of the SF Masterworks paperbacks released by Victor Gollancz Books.

Rating:
Summary: Ouch.
Review: "The First and Last Men" 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: vanity writing
Review: >If your idea of a novel is a book about people's relationships, it may not be for you.

My idea of a novel is a book for and about individual human beings. This idea of mine is not unique to me, but is inherent in the four-hundred year-old conception of the novel, from Cervante's "Don Quixote" to Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". A book that is not a for and about individual human beings needs to be called something other than a "novel".

>The history of mankind from 1930 to a few billion years hence is pre-written by a philosopher ...

Mr. Stapledon's biography: He did earn a DEGREE in philosophy, but he lived off an inheritance and, aside from a short stint as a public grade school teacher among a variety of odd jobs before he came into his inheritance, he did not teach. Except for a few obscure early journal articles, he did not publish philosophy. He gave occasional ad hoc public lectures about socialism under the auspices of a socialist society and otherwise occupied himself writing science-fiction novels which sold very modestly. It is rather a stretch to call him a philosopher.

>...and fantasist possessed of a great and unquiet mind, inhuman but not inhumane as someone has well put it.

As someone else has pointed out, not only novelists but also historians concern themselves with individual human beings. An author who really WAS "inhuman", that is, not human, might not, I suppose, in the way that an entomologist does not customarily concern himself with individual ants, but such a non-human meta-entomologist would neither likely be as obsessed with nations as Mr. Stapledon is here. Especially he would not ANTHROPOMORPHIZE nations.

Rating:
Summary: self-indulgent sprawl
Review: >This is a book for people who like to read books about history, who like accounts over long timeframes, who like Truley [sic] Epic stories. The kind of people who buy computer games with thick plots, or who want to know more about the background history and politics of a fantasy world.

It's probably not fortuitous that Stapledon is starting to achieve a bit of popularity well after science-fiction has largely been superceded in the mass market by fantasy (although fantasy still hides behind the moniker "science-fiction and fantasy"). There is no possible literary justification for Stapledon's sprawl, but if you're the sort of person who spends his free time learning to speak "elvish" or Klingon, then you may enjoy immersing yourself in his self-indulgence. I didn't.

P. S.: Amazon's biographical blurb above is not quite accurate:

>After spending eighteen months working in a shipping office in Liverpool and Port Said, he lectured extramurally for Liverpool University in English Literature and industrial history.

Actually, after (and before) leaving the Blue Funnel Line and while teaching at Manchester Grammar School, Stapledon lectured evenings in the Liverpool area for the Workers Educational Association, NOT for Liverpool University.

Rating:
Summary: A First Man Writes...
Review: 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 1930-2002 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.

Rating:
Summary: Very Epic........sometimes too much so
Review: Last and First Men is not so much a story as a history of mankind from 1914 to about a billion years in the future, a board overview of about 17 species of Humans over that time period. It doesn't have indiviual characters as mankind itself as the protagonist.

This is not a book for people who want a traditional story. This is a book for people who like to read books about history, who like accounts over long timeframes, who like Truley Epic stories. The kind of people who buy computer games with thick plots, or who want to know more about the background history and politics of a fantasy world. Stapleton traces the rise and fall of a number of civilizations, the reasons, the dark ages between them, with the evolution of the various men. He puts a lot of thought into how each civilization works and what leads to it's fall, usually some fatal flaw that is never compensated for, all withen some kind of philsophical/spiritual context. As Stapleton himself says, he is constructing a "Myth".

Admittly, it has it's flaws. The first 50 pages or so seem rather strange in the context of the history of the 20th century since 1930, when Stapleton published this book. There are no Atomic/Nuclear Weapons(though there is something that may be called a fusion weapon ), coal-powered airplanes are described at one point, the Nazis don't exist and mentions of the "League of Nations" in 2300 AD just seems bizarre. A number of Human species are completely glossed over, so out of the 17, we really only learn about half that many. Stapleton is a Philospher and it shows, going on diatribes at times that occasionally gets a little thick for the normal reader.

I liked this book and found it facinating, though I also am interested in the whole of human history, including the hypotheicals of the future. Not everyone will, due to the lack of characters, but hopefully people will give it a chance.

Rating:
Summary: Looking Forward
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Not just science fiction...more like philosophy.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The long view
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Science fiction / philosophy / spirituality
Review: 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.