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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Profound Classic for All Serious Readers,
By Erec Stebbins (e-stebbins@ski.mskcc.org) (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Last & First Men & Star Maker (Library Binding)
Plot A being of the distant future, a descendent of human beings, travels back in time to communicate with our current age (well, Olaf Stapledon's age - 1930). He wishes to tell the story of humanity from our age until his own. In the tale we learn of man's physical, spiritual, and philosophical alterations over literally billions of years to the age of the future communicator, who is one of the species that will constitute the final development and existence of mankind - the "Last Men." Pros One of the most imaginative tales in all of science fiction - or any fiction. Full of deep questions and fantastic events over a time scale that gives great meaning to the story of evolution and consciousness, touching questions of religion, science, and philosophy. It challenges the reader to view our species in a cosmic perspective, understanding both its insignificance and great significance. Cons Not a really novel. More like a history book. Because of the tremendous time scales covered, there are not lasting characters, and thus no character development. Instead, entire species become "characters" which are indeed developed, but through the format of discussion, not action or speech. This may be too much for some readers. The beginning is too focused on the final chapters of our own civilization, and here the author's close ties to it in fact bind him too much to his own prejudices and culture, making it the least believable and weakest portion, and most clearly the product of his own time (don't worry, it picks up after that). Review This history-scifi-philosophy -religious creation stands beside other science fiction novels of this century, last century, and more than likely the coming century, as the last men might stand beside ourselves - above and beyond them on many levels, and containing whole areas of thought rarely touched upon in other works, or only crudely intimated and imitated. It is a foundational classic in the genre (along with StarMaker), and should extend an influence on any reader toward thinking about our species and its place in the universe beyond the trite and comfortable images with which we tend to rock ourselves to sleep. Last and First Men is a story, told mainly as a history and partly as a myth (it is of course hard to distinguish the difference between these two even for 'real' history), about the progression of "humanity" through many different cultures, and more interestingly, many different species over a vast range of time (billions of years). It is a story not so much concerned with the material advances of humans as much science fiction is, but instead with the development of the mind and spirit of humanity as it seeks to understand and relate to the universe which contains it and has given it birth. It is with the ideas of mental/spiritual development, both of the individual and of culture, that the book derives its essence, as the themes of man's quest for fulfillment in these areas leads him to frustration, enlightenment, progress, and often disaster. As science fiction it is of the sort rarely seen today - deeply imaginative, on the whole rigorous in thought and logic, and almost wholly free of the strange tendency to focus on technology as a theme instead of as a component of much broader picture. The scope entertained and success of its attempt is almost unrivaled in any fiction. The great sense of time and man's smallness in relation to it and the universe is given great attention and comes out clearly to the reader. Olaf Stapledon's visions of the future are on the whole very believable, and he foresees, in a general manner, many things which did not exist in his time (the book was written in 1930), including: genetic engineering of animals and humans, deriving the power of self-destruction from harnessing the power in subatomic particles, the mad drive of industrial society toward constant material gain, and the strange flaws in human nature which undermine our attempts to act rationally toward our world and one another. The details of his visions, especially the political future of the First Men (us) is on a superficial level utterly wrong. However, the themes which he gives flesh to in order to make a story are in fact essentially correct. Since this is a book about theme, the reader should not worry so much about the accuracy of the details - what nation did what and why - but read on the level of the forces driving human nature and what sort of world this might ultimately give rise too. This is such a profound book that it deserves a category all its own with other profound books that, because of the effect they may have on the reader, transcend any genre. If you are the type to think critically on a grand scale, enjoy imagining the possibilities of our future, and are not afraid to entertain the idea that the best of what we are is perhaps only the crude beginning of what might be called a more noble life form, give this little book a read.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evolution's not on our side,
This review is from: Last & First Men & Star Maker (Library Binding)
There's a moment in Star Maker where the narrator is experiencing the sum history of the Universe and it goes on for pages and the entire history of mankind as established in Last and First Men takes an entire rather small paragraph. Sort of puts us in our place, wouldn't you say? The genius that coupled these two masterpieces together should be rewarded because one really can't be read without the other, they complement each other in a way that few books of today rarely do. Last and First Men is the slightly less interesting of the two if only because we're less interesting than the rest of the Universe and a good sized chunk of the beginning is Stapledon's prediction for this and the last century, most of which are horribly off. Skim past those chapters and get to the real meat of the "story". This isn't a typical novel, more like a history book but what a textbook, summing nothing less than the entire history of mankind. There's a depth to his imagination here that few other writers have even approached and while his extrapolations of humanity are probably not correct, they are certainly awe-inspiring to think about. He doesn't bother with technology and such, preferring to let us know about their spiritual and moral character, giving us something that we can relate to with these far future people. Still, as good as Last and First Men is, Star Maker surpasses it in every possible way. Having a bit more of a plot this time out (a man finds his consciousness flung across the Universe and together with others tries to find the Star Maker), we're propelled along worlds and ages that we can barely conceive. The narrative retains a bit more compassion and humanity to it while we can only sit there and watch as stars live and die, as planets evolve and collapse, as creatures beyond our imagination join a single telepathic mind as everyone tries in the last dying days of the Universe to find the bloke who saw fit to create all of this. And when the answers start coming fast and fierce, if you don't feel some sense of awe as Stapledon reveals a picture of the Universe of such scope and wonder, then frankly you must be dead. In a day where everyone is trying to be flashy and give people instant gratification, Stapledon wins by using clear and concise and sometimes poetic writing to bring across utterly fantastic ideas that still seem plausible because of their clarity. A masterpiece of science fiction, it's not easy reading but it's thought proking and wondrous, just like the best should be.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant Future History,
By
This review is from: Last & First Men & Star Maker (Library Binding)
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon 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. <I>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 . . .</I> 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. Hey, Amazon.com! Carry the Dover omnibus edition (includes Starmaker).
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