Scan barcode
A review by lbrex
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
5.0
It's not possible to do this massively-scaled and flat-out bonkers novel justice in a short review. Olaf Stapledon has a feverishly fertile imagination. He doesn't shy away from writing a novel, enabled through a form of historical telepathy, that tells the future of the seventeen later species evolved from humanity until the final demise of humans around 5 trillion years in the future. The book begins as a somewhat sly set of predictions about the state of humanity after World War I and imagines the apocalyptic destruction of the twentieth-century world order over next 10 million years after 1930, the book's year of publication.
The later evolutionary development of humanity shows us surprising dead ends and odd evolutionary developments, such as the grafting of genes from sentient Martian clouds into the human genome as well as the necessity of transporting humanity to Neptune after solar changes make life on earth impossible. The entire narrative is told with an eye towards what Stapledon's narrator calls "cosmic beauty," a sense that humanity's destiny, when viewed by some sort of grander higher power, is tragic and beautiful. The ending, which allows for significant meditation on the demise of the human species, is strangely touching, despite the oddities that readers have witnessed for 300 pages.
I recommend this book enthusiastically but I also recognize that it is not for everyone. In fact, some of you might be bored by it, but I was ultimately struck with a unique form of wonder (though the novel is not without its problematic representations). Apparently Stapledon had socialist tendencies and went on to inspire Arthur C. Clarke, so there's certainly a lot to explore here. If you like science fiction, utopian literature, or simply odd books, this one to put on your list!
The later evolutionary development of humanity shows us surprising dead ends and odd evolutionary developments, such as the grafting of genes from sentient Martian clouds into the human genome as well as the necessity of transporting humanity to Neptune after solar changes make life on earth impossible. The entire narrative is told with an eye towards what Stapledon's narrator calls "cosmic beauty," a sense that humanity's destiny, when viewed by some sort of grander higher power, is tragic and beautiful. The ending, which allows for significant meditation on the demise of the human species, is strangely touching, despite the oddities that readers have witnessed for 300 pages.
I recommend this book enthusiastically but I also recognize that it is not for everyone. In fact, some of you might be bored by it, but I was ultimately struck with a unique form of wonder (though the novel is not without its problematic representations). Apparently Stapledon had socialist tendencies and went on to inspire Arthur C. Clarke, so there's certainly a lot to explore here. If you like science fiction, utopian literature, or simply odd books, this one to put on your list!