Last And First Men

Author: Olaf Stapledon

We all like sense of wonder, that feeling of being overawed by the scale of things we find in science fiction: Iain Banks's massive spaceships, Alistair Reynolds's journeys around the entire galaxy, Isaac Asimov's rise and fall of galactic civilisations. But no work of science fiction has envisaged the timescale covered by Olaf Stapledon's monumental novel. It encompasses billions of years, and witnesses the rise and fall not just of humanity, but of our successors, and their successors, and onwards to an almost unimaginable point in the very distant future. The First Men are basically us, and we follow their story as world governments rise and fall until, hundreds of thousands of years hence, humanity wipes itself out. But a few survivors go on to become the Second Men, who are on the point of creating superior beings when they too fall, and are replaced by the Third Men. Our descendants reach out to other planets, change their physical appearance, build artificial species, descend into barbarism, and so on, until we reach the Eighteenth Men, an artificial race with different genders and an ability to become a hive mind. The invention never flags, and the scale and reach of the novel is constantly breathtaking. Why it's on the list: It inspired Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis, James Blish and Brian Aldiss; H.P. Lovecraft considered it the greatest of all works of science fiction. There is no vision of the future to match it, and all our subsequent visions of the future owe something to it.

SF CORE Best Lists

SF ERA Best Lists

SF GENRE Best Lists

OTHER Best Lists

Last And First Men

Author: Olaf Stapledon

Similar Recommendations