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. 355 pp. U.S. ed. as by W[illiam] Olaf Stapledon. New York: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1931. 371 pp. 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. 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One of Stapledon’s visions of the far, far future where the human race has been replaced by more advanced species.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 a criticism of the First Men and World War I and after and the relatively near future and the Second Men, who live communally. 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.