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A review by hagbard_celine
Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
4.0
A real mind-bender along several axes.
1) A story that very consciously encompasses trillions of other stories.
2) Explicitly touches on several hundred specific and compelling stories, many of them enormously compelling (even in the span of a paragraph or sentence).
3) The fundamental current of racial essentialism that runs through everything, which is shocking in its forthrightness.
4) Eugenics before Nazism. I'm not sure this book could be written anymore, just for this.
5) A fairly sophisticated speculative account of scientific advancement that pre-dates: the atom bomb, DNA's discovery, penicillin, etc
6) The familiarity of many of the small stories, such that you repeatedly find yourself thinking "I've read that book!" after this sentence or that.
I bet the Dougal Dixon read this book. "Man After Man" and "Earth After Man" are very reminiscent of this. Also, incredibly fucked up.
1) A story that very consciously encompasses trillions of other stories.
2) Explicitly touches on several hundred specific and compelling stories, many of them enormously compelling (even in the span of a paragraph or sentence).
3) The fundamental current of racial essentialism that runs through everything, which is shocking in its forthrightness.
4) Eugenics before Nazism. I'm not sure this book could be written anymore, just for this.
5) A fairly sophisticated speculative account of scientific advancement that pre-dates: the atom bomb, DNA's discovery, penicillin, etc
6) The familiarity of many of the small stories, such that you repeatedly find yourself thinking "I've read that book!" after this sentence or that.
I bet the Dougal Dixon read this book. "Man After Man" and "Earth After Man" are very reminiscent of this. Also, incredibly fucked up.