Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future
by
Olaf Stapledon
Ive been a fan of scifi for a long while now – I read practically everything but scifi is my greatest joy when written well and this one turned out to be a grandfather of them all!
This masterwork was first published in 1930 and that alone blew me away more and more as I read through it all.
I had never even heard of Olaf Stapledon or this book before I came across it in my favourite book store and had the good luck of not reading it for months but decided last minute to take it on a recent vacation with me, where I was able to give it due time – and believe me this is a book that needs it.
It is impossible for me to try and explain what transpires in this book because the sheer immensity and scale of the ambition of the author is surreal – more so when you see that the book is 316 pages long.
Basically, the book charts the future history of the whole human race over the course of the next 2 billion years (yes, with a huge “B”!) – and it does so with elan! The author does something I have not seen done in books much, because there is no outright protagonist, there is no character or hero to get behind, no villain to hate and no over-arching, obvious narrative. It is quite literally a history book – but one being narrated by some of the Last Men, i.e, the humans at the end of humanity.
The book posits the future history we undergo over unimaginable swathes of time where the world as we know it is destroyed and born anew and the unexpected ways in which our species and everything we know changes. It also posits that while we were able to over millions and millions of years, colonise different planets in our system – at times by intent and at times by necessity as the solar system changed (for example, due to the size and type changes of our local star) – we never quite figure out how to exit our solar system into the wider galaxy or beyond as most sci-fi likes to assume. The result is that we are limited to the Sol system, BUT that does not limit the wonders and horrors that our species experiences.
It is easy to say the number 2 billion – but this book is an exercise in perspective unlike anything I had ever considered before, not really. Sure we’ve all read fictions that speculated on such things and the most fun version being the passage of the world around the frozen Philip J. Fry on the pilot episode of sci-fi masterpiece Futurama, but those are often from a far distance and glimpses at best. Here Stapledon examines the progression of events in some detail and hypothesises every age and stage that goes by, the past getting lost on many occasions to the mists or ravages of time. The present that we are is no better known in the relatively shorter parts of this journey than the reality of our cave-dwelling ancestors or frankly even how little (if at all) we know of humanity before recorded history.
Reading this book was one of the most engaging experiences I’ve had but at the same time also the most challenging. As I said, it is a forced perspective that makes us face the reality of the universe. It makes you think about how small we are and how vast time and space can be; it made me focus on what matters and what doesn’t; it made me question the import we give to so many things and to whether some of the biggest issues and problems we have created in our society truly matter. It both held me in awe and terrified me with every page moving forward.
Not madly long, but so packed to the brim and beyond with detail – never too much! – this maddening, thundering whirlwind of a book traverses 18 races of men, travelling across the solar system and through time itself. There is more in sets of paragraphs here than I’ve seen in whole bibliographies of more celebrated authors.
This is a book that not only entertains, but teaches. It broadens the mind and I think should be essential reading for anyone willing to take this journey of 2 Billion years!
Filled with concepts and ideas that will resonate with anyone who has ever read a scifi book, this masterpiece is overflowing with science, religion, evolution, faith, humanity, philosophy, race, places, cultures, societies and life itself in ways I had never thought possible – much less in a package this compact!
A definite must in my view for anyone who claims to have even the slightest interest in science fiction and philosophy and definately anyone with an imagination that likes to be pushed to the limits.
One Happy Monk 
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