Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future

1930 Stapledon, [William] Olaf (1886-1950). Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future. London: Methuen. U.S. ed. as by W[illiam] Olaf Stapledon. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931. Rpt. in his To the End of Time: The Best of Olaf Stapledon with editorial cuts and “Foreword to the Original American Edition” (3). Ed. Basil Davenport (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1953), 1-220; rpt. (Boston, MA: Gregg Press, 1975), 1-220; and in Last and First Men & Star Maker: Two Science-Fiction Novels (New York: Dover, 1968), 1-246, which includes “Foreword to the Original American Edition” (3) and “Preface to the English Edition (9). Excerpts rpt. in An Olaf Stapledon Reader. Ed. Robert Crossley (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 3-11; and in The Way to the End Times: Classic Tales of the Apocalypse. Ed. Robert Silverberg (New York: Three Rooms Press, 2016), 436-52, with an “Editor’s Introduction” on 434-35. Chapter IX: Earth and Mars in rpt. in The Book of Mars: An Anthology of Fact and Fiction. Ed. Stuart Clark (London: London: Head of Zeus/Apollo/Bloomsbury, 2022), 57-70. A radio play of the novel, “Far Future Calling,” written for the BBC in 1930-31 has been published in his Far Future Calling: Uncollected Science Fiction and Fantasies. Ed. Sam Moscowitz (Philadelphia, PA: Oswald Train, 1979), 174-207 with an “Introduction” by Harvey Satty (171-73). L, MoU-St, NcD, PSt

One of Stapledon’s visions of the far, far future where the human race has been replaced by more advanced species. It begins with an Introduction by One of the Last Men and then moves initially to World War I and after and the relatively near future. It then traces humanity through millions of years with both eutopian and dystopian periods to the end where a eutopian cosmic consciousness is developing and humans as such will disappear. Loosely related is 1932 Stapledon, Last Men in London.