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= Last_and_First_Men =
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Introduction
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'Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future' is a "future
history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author
Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it
describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two
billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is
the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle
inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled
text from the last human species.
Stapledon's conception of history follows a repetitive cycle with many
varied civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery
over millions of years, as the later civilisations rise to far greater
heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic
engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind: a
consciousness comprising many telepathically linked individuals.
In 1932, Stapledon followed 'Last and First Men' with the far less
acclaimed 'Last Men in London'. Another Stapledon novel, 'Star Maker'
(1937), could also be considered a sequel to 'Last and First Men'
(mentioning briefly man's evolution on Neptune), but is even more
ambitious in scope, being a history of the entire universe.
It is the 11th title in the SF Masterworks series.
Species of humans
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* First Men. (Chapters 1-6) The First Men are our own species.
Beginning in the early twenty-first century, several increasingly
devastating wars take place in Europe, which result in the United
States and China becoming the two dominant superpowers on Earth. In
the twenty-fourth century, the US and China go to war, and the war
concludes with the formation of the First World State. Two centuries
thereafter, all religions and secular science consolidate into a
religion based on the worship of motion whose god is Gordelpus, the
Prime Mover. Four millennia after the formation of the First World
State, humans deplete Earth's supply of fossil fuels, resulting in the
total collapse of civilization. 100,000 years later, the Patagonian
Civilization emerges. One feature of the Patagonian civilization was a
cult of youth. One day, a riot occurs at a mine, and the rioters
inadvertently cause a colossal subterranean explosion, rendering most
of the Earth's surface uninhabitable for millions of years save for
the poles and the northern coast of Siberia. The only survivors of the
disaster are thirty-five humans stationed at the North Pole, whose
descendants eventually split up into two separate species, the Second
Men and some sub-humans. The First Men do not become completely
extinct until shortly after the emergence of the Second Men.
* Second Men. (Chapters 7-9) The Second Men came into existence ten
million years after the fall of the First Men. "Their heads, indeed,
were large even for their bodies, and their necks massive. Their hands
were huge, but finely moulded ... their legs were stouter ... their
feet had lost their separate toes ... blonde hirsute appearance ...
Their eyes were large, and often jade green, their features firm as
carved granite, yet mobile and lucent. ... not till they were fifty
did they reach maturity. At about 190 their powers began to fail ..."
Unlike our species, egotism is virtually unknown to them. At the acme
of their highly advanced civilization, just as they are about to
create a superior human species through "artificial evolution", a
protracted war with the Martians finally ends with the Martians
extinct and the Second Men gone into eclipse.
*Third Men. (Chapter 10) "Scarcely more than half the stature of their
predecessors, these beings were proportionally slight and lithe. Their
skin was of a sunny brown, covered with a luminous halo of red-gold
hairs ... golden eyes ... faces were compact as a cat's muzzle, their
lips full, but subtle at the corners. Their ears, objects of personal
pride and of sexual admiration, were extremely variable both in
individuals and in races. ... But the most distinctive feature of the
Third Men was their great lean hands, on which were six versatile
fingers, six antennae of living steel." They were deeply interested in
music (to the point of developing a religion based on the worship of
music) and the design of living organisms. The Third Men eventually
split into two factions: one that sought to create a subspecies of
mediums, and one that focused on designing humans that consist almost
entirely of brain tissue.
*Fourth Men. (Chapter 11) Giant brains bred by one faction of the
Third Men. For a long time they help govern their creators, but
eventually their rule becomes oppressive and the Third Men rebel. The
Fourth Men prevail by recruiting as servants a subspecies of Third Men
prone to hypnotic suggestion (the ultimate product of the effort to
breed a mediumistic subspecies). The docile subspecies of the Third
Men exterminate the original subspecies, save for a few individuals to
be used as lab specimens. After the war, the Fourth Men eventually
reach the limits of their scientific abilities and discover that
emotions and body are also necessary for complete understanding of the
cosmos.
*Fifth Men. (Chapters 11-12) An artificial human species designed by
the Fourth Men. "On the average they were more than twice as tall as
the First Men, and much taller than the Second Men ... the delicate
sixth finger had been induced to divide its tip into two Lilliputian
fingers and a corresponding thumb. The contours of the limbs were
sharply visible, for the body bore no hair, save for a close, thick
skull-cap which, in the original stock, was of ruddy brown. The
well-marked eyebrows, when drawn down, shaded the sensitive eyes from
the sun." After clashing with and finally eliminating the Third and
Fourth Men, they develop a technology greater than Earth had ever
known before. When Earth ceases to be habitable, they terraform Venus,
committing genocide on its marine native race which tries to resist
them. The Fifth Men do not cope well after the migration and
eventually devolve and diverge into two species: the Sixth Men and a
seal-like subhuman species.
*Sixth Men. (Chapter 13) "Sadly reduced in stature and in brain, these
abject beings ... gained a precarious livelihood by grubbing roots
upon the forest-clad islands, trapping the innumerable birds, and
catching fish ... Not infrequently they devoured, or were devoured by,
their seal-like relatives." After tectonic changes provide them with a
promising land mass, they fluctuate like the First Men and repeat all
their mistakes.
*Seventh Men. Flying humans, "scarcely heavier than the largest of
terrestrial flying birds", are created by the Sixth Men. After 100
million years, a flightless pedestrian subspecies appears which
re-develops technology.
*Eighth Men. "These long-headed and substantial folk were designed to
be strictly pedestrian, physically and mentally." When Venus becomes
uninhabitable, about to be destroyed along with the entire inner Solar
System, they design the Ninth Men, who will live on Neptune.
*Ninth Men. (Chapter 14) "Inevitably it was a dwarf type, limited in
size by the necessity of resisting an excessive gravitation ... too
delicately organized to withstand the ferocity of natural forces on
Neptune ... civilization crumbled into savagery." After the Ninth
Men's civilization collapses, the Ninth Men themselves devolve into
various animal species.
*Tenth to Thirteenth Men. (Chapter 14) "Nowhere did the typical human
form survive." About three hundred million years after the
colonization of Neptune, a rabbit-like species evolves into the Tenth
Men. The Tenth Men are sapient but primitive. After a plague wipes out
the Tenth Men, several other primitive human species rise and fall.
*Fourteenth to Seventeenth Men. The Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and
Sixteenth Men are essentially Neptunian versions of the First, Second
and Fifth Men, respectively. The Fourteenth Men create great
civilisations and destroy them, frustrated with their own
imperfections. The Fifteenth improve upon that, creating a
spirituality based on "a devotion to the fulfilment of human
capacity". They eventually create the Sixteenth Men - the first
Neptunian artificial species. Thus the cycle of rise and collapse of
civilisations ends, and steady progress takes its place. The Sixteenth
Men achieve the highest level of civilisation possible "to the
individual human brain acting in physical isolation" and to avoid
stagnation create the Seventeenth Men, with an ability for "mental
fusion of many individuals" to succeed them; however, the Seventeenth
Men are "flawed" in some unspecified way, unimagined by the 16th due
to their lesser awareness, and last only a short period of time before
being replaced by the Eighteenth Men.
*Eighteenth Men. (Chapters 15-16) The most advanced humans of all,
essentially a perfected version of the 17th species. A race of
philosophers and artists with a very liberal sexual morality.
"Superficially we seem to be not one species but many." (One
interesting aspect of the Eighteenth Men is that they have a number of
different "sub-genders", variants on the basic male and female
pattern, with distinctive temperaments. The Eighteenth Men's
equivalent of the family unit includes one of each of these
sub-genders and is the basis of their society. The units have the
ability to act as a group mind, which eventually leads to the
establishment of a single group mind uniting the entire species.) This
species no longer dies naturally, but only by accident, suicide, or
being killed. Despite their hyper-advanced civilisation, they practice
ritual cannibalism. They are eventually extinguished on Neptune after
a supernova consumes the remains of the Solar System, faster than any
means of escape they can devise for their corporeal forms. This last
species of man devises a method of panspermia, a virus to broadcast
life to other worlds and ultimately cause the evolution of new
sentient species throughout the galaxy.
Sub-humans
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*Baboon-like Submen. (Chapter 7) "Bent so that as often as not they
used their arms as aids to locomotion, flat-headed and curiously
long-snouted, these creatures were by now more baboon-like than
human".
*Seal-like Submen. (Chapter 13) "The whole body was moulded to
stream-lines. The lung capacity was greatly developed. The spine had
elongated, and increased in flexibility. The legs were shrunken, grown
together, and flattened into a horizontal rudder. The arms also were
diminutive and fin-like, though they still retained the manipulative
forefinger and thumb. The head had shrunk into the body and looked
forward in the direction of swimming. Strong carnivorous teeth,
emphatic gregariousness, and a new, almost human, cunning in the
chase, combined to make these seal-men lords of the ocean".
*Period of Eclipse. (Chapter 14) "Man's consciousness was narrowed and
coarsened into brute-consciousness. By good luck the brute
precariously survived." Nature succeeds in colonising Neptune where
sapient life fails. Human-derived mammals of all shapes come to
dominate Neptune's ecosystem before adapting well enough for the
vestiges of opposable thumbs and intelligence to become assets again.
In popular culture
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Characters discuss the novel in H. G. Wells' 'Star Begotten'.
The novel appears in the computer game 'Deus Ex' as a reference when a
corporation in the game allegedly tries to develop the Second Men in
the series, but also in a much broader aspect as the game deals with
genetic engineering, the next phase of evolution and human
augmentations. Also similar to the book are the options presented to
the player as to where human kind will go next: a fall back into an
almost savage state of humanity, a keeping of the status quo or an
extreme progression with the danger of sacrificing basic rights.
Film adaptation
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Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson directed and scored a multimedia
'Last and First Men', "combining a film narrated by actress Tilda
Swinton and accompanying score played by the BBC Philharmonic" at the
2017 Manchester International Festival. The 16mm black-and-white film
is predominantly of memorial sculptures erected in the former SFR
Yugoslavia. Jóhann collaborated with José Enrique Macián on writing
the narration adapted from Stapledon's novel. This was next performed
at the Barbican Centre, London in December 2018, and later at Sydney
Opera House as part of the Vivid Festival, on 2 June 2019. In 2020, a
film of this work was released as Jóhann's debut and final directorial
work, with sound artist Yair Elazar Glotman completing the work after
Jóhann's death in February 2018. The film premiered at the 70th Berlin
International Film Festival, and later screened at other film
festivals around the world and released on VOD.
Influences on other writers
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Brian Aldiss, in his preface to the 1962 edition, acknowledges the
deep impression on him--and considerable influence on his own later
writing--of Stapledon's book, which he encountered in 1943 while a
British soldier fighting the Japanese in Burma, "An appropriately
unusual period of life at which to encounter a vision so far outside
ordinary experience."
Aldiss also mentions James Blish as another writer deeply influenced
by Stapledon.
C. S. Lewis, in his own preface to 'That Hideous Strength', notes: "I
believe that one of the central ideas of this tale came into my head
from conversations I had with a scientific colleague, some time before
I met a rather similar suggestion in the works of Mr. Olaf Stapledon.
If I am mistaken in this, Mr. Stapledon is so rich in invention that
he can afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his
philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow."
The reference to objecting to Stapledon's philosophy was no accident.
In particular, Lewis objected to Stapledon's idea, as expressed in the
present book, that mankind could escape from an outworn planet and
establish itself on another one; this Lewis regarded as no less than a
Satanic idea especially, but not only, because it necessitated the
genocide of the original inhabitants of the target planet. Professor
Weston, the chief villain of Lewis's 'Space Trilogy', is an outspoken
proponent of this idea (much to his grief, however), and in 'Out of
the Silent Planet', Lewis opposes to it his depiction of the virtuous
and stoic Martians/Malacandrians who, even though they possess the
technology to cross space and colonize Earth. choose to die with their
dying planet.
Arthur C. Clarke has said of Stapledon's 1930 book 'Last and First
Men' that "No other book had a greater influence on my life ... [It]
and its successor 'Star Maker' (1937) are the twin summits of
[Stapledon's] literary career."
H. P. Lovecraft held the book in very high regard (though he did not
say whether it influenced any of his own stories), saying in a 1936
letter to Fritz Leiber "no one ought to miss reading W. Olaf
Stapledon's 'Last and First Men' ... Probably you 'have' read it. If
not, make a bee line for library or bookstall!", and in another 1936
letter to Leiber "I'm glad to hear of your perusal of 'Last and First
Men'--a volume which to my mind forms the greatest of all achievements
in the field that Master Ackerman would denominate 'scientifiction'.
Its scope is dizzying--and despite a somewhat disproportionate
acceleration of the tempo toward the end, and a few scientific
inferences which might legitimately be challenged, it remains a thing
of unparalleled power. As you say, it has the truly basic quality of a
myth, and some of the episodes are of matchless poignancy and dramatic
intensity." Finally, in a 1937 letter to Arthur Widner he said "I
don't care for science fiction of the sort published in cheap
magazines. There's no vitality in it--merely dry theories tacked on to
shallow, unreal, insincere juvenile adventure stories. But I do like
the few real masterpieces in the field--certain of H. G. Wells's
novels, S. Fowler Wright's 'The World Below', & that marvellous
piece of imagination by W. Olaf Stapledon, 'Last & First Men'."
John Maynard Smith has said "A man called Olaf Stapledon was a
marvellous predictor who wrote science fiction books that I read when
I was 16 and that completely blew my mind; and Arthur C. Clarke put
his finger on quite a number of bright thoughts. He and I have
something in common: we both took out of the public library the same
science fiction book when we were boys of about 15 or 16, which was
Stapledon's 'Last and First Men'. We took it out of the same country
library in Porlock in Somerset. Whoever put that book on the shelves
had a lot to answer for!"
Sir Patrick Moore has said "The science fiction novel 'Last and First
Men' by Olaf Stapledon is immensely thought-provoking and I've read it
time and time again."
See also
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* 'Man After Man' (1990) by Dougal Dixon--a more recent book based on
the same premise
* 'All Tomorrows' (2008) by C. M. Kosemen--another more recent book
based on the same premise
* 1930 in science fiction
* Cannibalism in popular culture
* Far future in fiction
License
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Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men
