Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels [Paperback]

Olaf Stapledon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1968

The greatest future histories in science fiction. In Last and First Men the protagonist is "mankind" in an ultimate definition — intelligence. Star Maker, in a sense its sequel, is concerned with the history of intelligence in the entire cosmos.

Product Details

• Paperback: 438 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (June 1, 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486219623
• ISBN-13: 978-0486219622
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #451,185 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two classic future histories of immense scope, April 7, 2000

By 

Stefan Jones (Suburbs of Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels (Paperback)

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.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Philosophy and Science Fiction dancing like binary stars., July 29, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels (Paperback)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A long good read, August 5, 2005

By 

Jason Lollis "wack job" (Olympia, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels (Paperback)

Last and First Men: Another reviewer mentions that Stapledon's treatment of America is unfair, referencing Stapledon's later apology for his anti-Americanization views. However, in light of current modernization and McDonaldization of the world, I'm not entirely sure Stapledon is all that far off, and as it's a piece of fiction, I certainly don't think he has anything to apologize about. The story itself serves as an excellent treatise on both the fragility of human life as well as our constant push toward exploration and change. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in speculative thought on what it is to be human and involved in the experiment of life.

Star Maker: This book is dizzying in scope. Rushing the reader through ever expanding finite perspectives on the purpose of the Universe, Stapledon seems to follow a Spinozan line of ultimate ends (highly theistic), while abiding by a very relativistic view of life. I was left awed by the breadth of this story as well as the finitude it firmly ensconces the reader within.

I would not recommend this compilation to anyone looking for a quick read, good dialogue or anything resembling a traditional novel. I would definitely recommend this compilation to anyone without an aversion to Science-Fiction and interested in following one person's perspective on questions involving cognizant existence, the universe and everything.