Last and First Men and Star Maker

by Olaf Stapledon

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486219623
• ISBN13: 9780486219622
• Release Date: June 1968
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 438 Pages
• Weight: 1.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

This is my 5th copy!

Last and First Men has been my favorite book for almost 30 years. W.O.S. is my favorite author of all time. I find myself re-reading it every few years to marvel at the accuracy of his predictions. The chapter on the Americanization of the planet and the conflict with China is eerie in it's accuracy. This from a book written before WWII. I've loaned out several copies and they always wind up on extended journeys. I bought this paperback edition to give to my 17y.o. This book is a must for any serious SF fan!

A long good read

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.

Two classic future histories of immense scope

LAST & FIRST MENThis 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 MAKERAs 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 telepath

What real Science Fiction is all about.

Within these two works, Stapleton dares to speculate on some of the most fundamental and unanswerable questions to ever occur to the mind of man, whilst at the same time presenting two original, innovative and captivating tales which draw the reader on and upward, litterally taking ones breath away with their majesty. Last and First Men is the story of us, and how we could develop and evolve, a tale of our future, which, despite being over sixty years old, has dated very little, largely due to the sheer scale upon which it is set. Whilst initialy hard going, once the reader becomes use to the style, the content more than makes up for this and one is soon lost in man's struggle for survival, and for his own mind and what it could be come, a prevailing theme through out this and the sequel, Star Maker. Star Maker takes the ideas from Last and First Men one step further, following the development of the mind beyond mankind, though alien evolutions, up to the end of the uni! verse itself, a daunting concept. Both these tales are challenging ones, questioning what is known and what could be, and are possibly some of the most thought provoking works of Science Fiction, Cosmology and Philosophy you are likely to come across.

Philosophy and Science Fiction dancing like binary stars.

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.