Last and First Men

Last and First Men (1930) is the ambitious and shockingly prescient debut novel from science fiction pioneer Olaf Stapledon. Since its publication, the narrative has influenced such titans of speculative fiction as C.S. Lewis, Arthur C. Clarke, and H.P. Lovecraft.

Best categorized as a “future history,” the novel chronicles the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years. Eighteen unique human species are described, their civilizations rising and falling in what Stapledon posits as predictable patterns of utopia and crisis, technological and moral advancement giving way to savagery that ascends again into greater heights in the next iteration. Amongst his predictions, Stapledon foresees ruinous European Wars in the 21st century, the depletion of fossil fuels, genetic engineering, and the supermind: a collective consciousness formed from a web of telepathically linked individuals. A work that is as ambitious as it is groundbreaking, Last and First Men is still widely regarded as a science fiction classic and has been adapted to film as recently as 2020.

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