Last and First Men (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Olaf Stapledon
- First Published: 1930
- Type of Work: Science fiction
- Time of Work: c. 1900 to c. two billion years
- Setting: Earth, Mars, Venus, and Neptune
- Principal Characters: Human Nature, The Narrator
- Genres: Long fiction, Science fiction
- Subjects: History, Philosophy or philosophers, Extrasensory perception or powers, Future, Other worlds, 1910’s, Human race, Fantasy, Planets, Earth, Space and time, Superman or superbeings, Intellect, Evolution
- Locales: Earth, Mars, Venus, Neptune
The Novel
Last and First Men is an imitation history of mankind written from the point of view of a new species of humanity two billion years in the future. Though Olaf Stapledon presents some episodes in detail, most of the novel is very general, showing the broad sweep of a possible human history without attention to particular characters. The narrator’s subject is human nature. The accounts of eighteen different human species add up to an exploration of potentials inherent in human nature and assertions about which of those potentials ought most to be valued. The...
[The entire page is 1923 words long]
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