Books

Last and First Men / Last Men in London. Penguin 1972.

Star Maker: Penguin 1972. Olaf Stapledon.

Reviewed by David Buxton.

Both these books have happily been reprinted after being long out of print. Both books must be classified as science fiction, yet it is no ordinary science fiction; rather a brilliant treatise in fictional form on scientific and ethical possibilities with awe-inspiring imagination. The books purport to be histories of the future. The contain no plot, no characterisation, and no dialogue. The scope of the works is so large as to defy synopsis.

'Last and First Men' (1931) covers five billion years of human evolution. Stapledon a British philosopher, is not concerned with creating a piece of aesthetically admirable fiction. For all its flights of fancy, "Last and First Men" has strong philosophical undertones with Stapledon using an unusual medium to propagate his Marxist views. Some of Stapledon's prophecies concerning the period immediately after the First World War are very shaky (an Anglo-French war, a Russo-German war, a Euro-American war, followed by a Sino-American war). American capitalism eventually triumphs, establishes a world state and causes the downfall of world civilisation, leading to the end of the first species of man.

Stapledon hits his stride with a dispassionate account of the rise and fall of a further 17 distinct species of man struggling uncertainly toward full self-awareness. Finally man reaches the end, after migrating to Venus, and thence to Neptune, as the solar system culminates by natural causes. The Last Men (18th man), fully mature, god-like beings with a perfect social system, calmly accept their fate. Once they realise they cannot escape the ccatastrophe, they devote their last few millennia of life to two enormous projects: "disseminating among the stars the seeds of a new humanity" (in the indestructible form of 'electro-magnetic wave systems) and contemplating via telepathic time travel, the entire history OF the human race as a beautiful but tragic work of art.

This may seem rather breath-taking until we open "the sequel 'Star Maker' (1937) which coven SOME 500 billion years. Stapledon's approach is cinematic — he dazzles us with an overwhelming vision, then pulls back his zoom lens. What we have been seeing is only a tiny detail in a still more dazzling scale. And so the process continues.

'Star Maker' covers not the human species or the solar system, but with entire galaxies and eventually the cosmos itself. The end of 18 species of man is insignificant when compared to the complete physical quiescence of the cosmos.

Some people find these book masterpieces. Everyone else finds them unreadable.