I happen to belong to a group that does group reads of a variety of SF books (see Group Reads Sci Fi on Library Thing), and we happen to have picked “Last and First Men” for our previous group read. I consider myself quite fortunate, because it is one of my favourite novels, and I need little excuse to reread this book. “Last and First Men” is philosophical treaty of the future history of the human race, extending over the next two thousand million years, and Stapledon covers a gamut of ideas in this time, which I will discuss in a moment.

To be honest, the first part of the book is not nearly as good as the rest of the book, and Stapledon anticipated as much when penning his prelude to the novel. The first part of the novel has Stapledon attempting to extrapolate from the start of the twentieth century, and some of these predictions dated quite quickly. Germany is a pacifist nation, we never achieve space flight. However, predictions that Russia’s communistic ideals are preserved by China, the world is purchased with American money, and saturated with American culture, seem to be far more accurate.

But it is also a prediction of a future that has not come yet, and it makes for extremely interesting even today – poison gas and biological agents killing entire nations, the creation of a world-wide religious movement based on energy, a world under the sway of the twin powers of America and China, becoming increasingly mechanized and less intelligent, and approaching world-wide disaster.

All of what I have mentioned is probably what you would expect from better examples of old SF – a mix of dated and prescient predictions, and some interesting ideas that still read well today. More difficult are Stapledon’s attempts to classify different countries and races with their own unique characteristics, and the generalisation of all minor characters (there are no major characters at all) as having the characteristics inherent of their country. I don’t think Stapledon was being racist at all, because he is far from flattering of his descriptions of America, Europe, and his home country of England, but it can be painfully dated reading at times

After the fall of the First Men, which makes for extremely interesting reading and is even more relevant today than in the 1930's, the book is far more relevant – Stapledon pulls out for a larger perspective of the world considered as a whole, and discusses a gamut of ideas about what events might occur in our future, and how they affect us socially and philosophically. Stapledon writes about organic giant brains as sentient super-computers, the repopulation of a near-dead Earth,, a society eking out an existence in a world depleted of metals and resources, the effects of a plethora of social policies on the general world-wide population, and a host of other ideas that I really should leave you the opportunity to discover should you find a copy of this book.

Stapledon never spends more than a chapter or two on each idea or concept, so if you aren’t terribly excited by a particular idea, a completely different idea will come up. Although it sounds like you would only get the most cursory of examinations of any subject, it’s all you really need to be able to consider the social or psychological ramifications of each. And although some of his ideas have been often dealt with in other novels, Stapledon attaches an interesting philosophical idea, a moral quandary, or a social idea or so forth makes it feel fresh and extremely interesting.

I also enjoy Stapledon’s writing style – it’s detached, clinical and impersonal, an anthropological study of our present and future, constantly cycling between the birth and death of civilisations. Technology is barely described, only so far as we need to understand the overarching story of the progression of humanity, and something of the mental outlook of varied races that exist along the stage.

The start of “Last and First Men” is somewhat dated, as much old SF tends to be, and does drag the book down somewhat. The rest of the book, with the rare mention of an old science term, does not feel dated at all. The plethora of ideas that Stapledon considers, quite a few of which are extremely original, and all of which are dealt with in an intelligent and challenging way, as well as his detached writing style, makes this a must-read book. ( )

I cried "uncle" on p59 of this book, which was part of a group read here on LT; it was written in 1930 or so, it's true, but nothing as ephemeral as passing time can excuse the line, "A century after the founding of the first world state a rumour began to be heard in China about the supreme secret of scientific religion, the awful mystery of Gordelpus, by means of which it should be possible to utilize the energy locked up in the opposition of proton and electron."

*buzz* you're out, Dr. Stapledon, and thanks for playing our game! This is supposedly a novel! That kind of snore-inducing prose is not even excusable in a textbook, though it is explainable there; in a novel, an entertainment, this tone is just about as far off the mark as any I can imagine. I can't fairly comment on the plot, since there isn't any that I can discern. The story unfolds as a being from our remote future lectures us on what we did wrong, with special emphasis on the horrors of America (oof, how very outmoded that sounds) and China as co-controllers of civilization.

Now I can't fault Dr. Stapledon for prescience, since he pegged the two dominant countries of the future so solidly, but there are no characters to make us care about the story and there are no passages of graceful prose to make us forgive the lack of characters. All in all, a waste of a lovely Sunday afternoon. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/909687.htm...

This is an epic story of the future of the human race, starting in the present day (ie about 1930) and ending millions of years from now just before the destruction of the solar system by cosmic catastrophe. I think of Stapledon's epic yet detached tone as a peculiarly English style of writing; I detect it also in Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, and especially Stephen Baxter who is in many ways Stapledon's heir.

The weakest part of Last and First Men for today's reader is, unfortunately, the first section, where he describes a destructive war between England and France (a peaceful and neutral Germany standing by), followed by a succession of European conflicts which seem improbable to us. (In his foreword he hints that this is really a moral parable, a plea for the success of the League of Nations.) Also his instinctive racialism (I think that is the right word) strikes a sour note today. Still there are a couple of interesting hits, such as the sinister political party which adopts the swastika as its symbol, or the much greater longevity of the communist one-party state in China as compared with Russia.

Then we get onto the meat: the repeated near-extinction of humanity, whether through its own folly or natural disaster, followed by its reinvention of itself; emigration from Earth to Venus and then Neptune, having repelled invasion from Mars in the meantime; huge changes in the human form and lifespan. He achieves very well the epic scale of a few decades in one chapter, centuries in the next, millennia in the next.

Having said that, this is very much a book of telling rather than showing; his excursions into narrative rather than descriptive prose range from the unconvincing to the embarrassing. (I am thinking particularly of the scene where the nude island maiden brings peace between China and America by having sex with the negotiators.)

Yet despite its weaknesses, this deserves to be on the classics list. I think Stapledon's influence, directly or indirectly, reverberates through the sf of the rest of the twentieth century. ( )

The awesome two billion year history of humans, as told by the Last to the First. Dated, but all the more interesting because it *is* dated. Strangely dispassionate and deservedly a classic. ( )

Certainly not the classic that "Starmaker" undoubtedly is, this early English science fiction epic is still remarkable.

It has dated, and severely in places. Stapledon, like most of the rest of the world, fails to predict an approaching world war, and so the first few chapters, that deal with man's struggle through that period, are difficult to read, mostly for their naivety. That said, Stapledon does accurately gauge the impact that technology would have on modern society.

From there, the book accelerates away from the present. Civilisation is crushed, killed and then reborn, continuously, again and again; the effect is satisfyingly chilling, in the way that it reminds the reader just how little one life, and one generation, can matter in the bigger scheme of things. And also, that there is no "scheme" to speak of. ( )