Last and First Men

Almost two weeks ago now, I finished reading "Last and FIrst Men" by Olaf Stapledon for my first time on a friend's recommendation some years ago. This novel was fantastic and ambitious. Written in the thirties but spanning the next couple of billion years of mankind's future, it forms a stunning and thought-provoking story arc. I grabbed my copy from Amazon.

"Last and First Men" cover...interesting they presented pyramids

"Last and First Men" was often, in the first fifty pages or so, seemingly prescient. It was almost creepy at times, but not in any kind of fundamental way. It was neat to compare what the author envisioned would transpire for the human race following the mid-thirties with what had actually happened now that we have some hindsight over that period of time. It left me feeling like Stapledon was really sharp and mindful. Maybe he just made some lucky guesses, but it was really fun to read and to think about along the way.

The remainder three-fourths of the book was much more speculative, even for today, because it stretched forward so far into the future. Humankind actually experiences several near-extinction events throughout the book, which was striking to me. They would go from barbarism to advanced to nearly wiped out and then continue the cycle. I wonder what the potentiality of that must be. I sincerely do.

My main grievance with this novel is that it doesn't really have characters in it and those tend to be my favorite part of any fictional book. One could argue that the narrator, one of the last men, is a character but it is not a character that really develops during the book. It is communicating and performing historiography, but you don't really get to know the narrator. It's a minor complaint though, because to introduce characters into a book of this temporal scope would necessitate many, many more pages than the 200 included in my copy.

I wanted to share a quick quote while I'm here that I found interesting: "There befell, in fact, one of those disasters, half inevitable and half accidental, which periodically descended on the First Men, as though by the express will of some divinity who cared more for the excellence of his dramatic creation than for the sentient puppets which he had conceived for its enacting." Gorgeous and thought-provoking prose, similar to what I quoted above, can be found throughout this short book.

I enjoyed the heck out of "Last and First Men" though I must confess I may not reread it... I'll hold onto it, for sure, though...just in case I end up gifting it to someone or if the urge to revisit it strikes at some point in the future. Both happen. Anyone who is fond of ambitious science fiction, though, would do well to read this book as soon as they can.