THIS BOOK IS MORE LIKE AN EXPERIENCE THAN A STORY. Written in 1930, it is a science fiction novel with the ambitious goal of
describing nearly two billion years
of human evolution! The premise is of someone from the far future (a member the
“Last Men”) gaining control of the mind of some unnamed person from our time
(the time of the “First Men”) and directing that individual to compose the
history of the human race that unfolds as we read it. Why the Last Men wish to do this is revealed in the final chapters,
but it is Stapledon’s vision of humanity as it rises and falls, and as
civilizations come and go through wars, environmental disasters, cosmic events,
senescence, ennui and evolution that is enthralling. Of course, his
great, long vision of the human project has few characters in it, the kind we
might expect in a novel, other than a handful that are fleshed out as examples of
the type of person inhabiting a brief moment within the author’s vast tableaux.
There are no individuals here, just a great choir of humanity. His novel reads like a historian’s overview, which might be off-putting to some readers, but his
rich language and detailed descriptions of the myriad epochs of humanity, including
different types of humans--for the Last Men are, in fact, the eighteenth
version of homo sapiens--is at times nothing less than masterful. It is written
with a profound love and respect for who and what we are, and what we might
become.
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| Olaf Stapledon |
Stapledon combines science, art, music, sociology,
psychology, philosophy and history to weave a tapestry of our human condition
that is truly unique, and I can’t begin to do the book justice here. He writes
with more than an element of prescience when he describes the rise and fall of
the First Men after a world-wide industrial civilization, one he calls an “Americanized”
world, whose final challenger to capitalism and business orthodoxy is China (which
eventually accedes to the globalized, corporate agenda of an oligarchic "First World State").
It is interesting, and somewhat disconcerting, to have the end of this first iteration of humanity caused as the result of a new energy source that acts to “stimulate the ultimate positive and negative charges which constitute the atoms…to annihilate each other.” (26) Discovered in a period following our own, during a phase of European war, it was deemed too dangerous at the time, and its secret buried until it was discovered, in another part of the world, after several thousand years which saw the rise of another major civilization. Of that original discovery, Stapledon's narrator ominously concludes: “Thus was this once noble people singled out by the gods to be cursed, and the minister of curses.” (32)
It is interesting, and somewhat disconcerting, to have the end of this first iteration of humanity caused as the result of a new energy source that acts to “stimulate the ultimate positive and negative charges which constitute the atoms…to annihilate each other.” (26) Discovered in a period following our own, during a phase of European war, it was deemed too dangerous at the time, and its secret buried until it was discovered, in another part of the world, after several thousand years which saw the rise of another major civilization. Of that original discovery, Stapledon's narrator ominously concludes: “Thus was this once noble people singled out by the gods to be cursed, and the minister of curses.” (32)
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was barely two decades
old when Stapledon began writing Last and First Men. The great theorem transformed the science of physics and helped focus research into the mysteries of the atom. And that terrifying quest made its way into his book. As well, World War I was a raw, dreadful and still-lived experience
for many in 1930, one that Stapledon was all too aware, for he had been a member of
the ambulance service during the war and witnessed firsthand the results of industrial-scale warfare. The horrors of poison gas, whose effects on
troops he would have seen during his time there, features prominently in the fall of the First World State, as does germ
warfare. The re-discovery and use of
atomic energy, millennia later, as another civilization flowers, would eventually cause a
world-wide conflagration that destroys most life on earth, leaving only a handful
of humans to survive through the “First Dark Age.” Following a ‘caretaker’
civilization that for millennia clings to the rim of the Siberian Peninsula and
gradually re-populates the Eurasian plains, and after a “Second Dark Age”
lasting millions of years, a new species
of humanity develops, the “Second Men” (and my personal fav!) Then there
are invading Martians and sixteen more versions of Homo Sapiens 2.0 until
the time in the far future where the narrator, our mind-controlling historian and time-traveler, resides.
It’s quite a ride! Stapleton paints his canvas with
broad brush strokes, but his book is also about ideas and philosophy, ethics
and morality and religion. So many societies, cultures, civilizations rise and
fall over the course of the novel that what you take away reading it is
that there is great potential for humanity—if only we have the time to recognize and develop it!
Oswald Spengler’s seminal work, The Decline of the West, was published
in 1922 and his theory on the cyclical nature of civilizations demonstrably
shaped Stapledon’s thinking. But, as concerned as he is about the various civilizations
and the shape and construction of their societies, Stapledon is equally concerned with
the shape and substance of humanity—of our beliefs and ethics, our philosophies,
our skills and accomplishments, our strengths and weaknesses, our nobility and our dark, baser selves. He is very concerned with sociability and altruism—themes
that reoccur throughout his book. He looks to an evolution of spirit where love
of others and of existence, itself, is primary. The Last Men are close to this
sense of universal consciousness or of some communal awareness of the cosmos
that is the culmination of the great struggle of human evolution, and that
seems, in the end, to be what consciousness or the mind is struggling toward.
Whether this is our goal or destiny, I don’t know. But Stapledon’s vision is truly breathtaking.
Where I would find fault is in his anthropocentrism.
I think there is the strong sense throughout the book suggesting nature is something
to be conquered and controlled—manipulated—by humanity, and much of the
non-human world is given short shrift, I feel, though perhaps over the ensuing
decades since his writing we have evolved somewhat in our thinking about our place in
the natural world? I’d like to think so. And I am not blaming Stapledon for
writing from his own time; his work has too much hope and wisdom in it to prompt
significant criticism here.
I’ll end with one quote that among so many others epitomizes his sweeping prose:
“In tracing man’s final advance to full humanity we
can observe only the broadest features of a whole astronomical era. But in fact
it is an era crowded with many thousands of long-lived generations. Myriads of individuals,
each one unique, live out their lives in rapt intercourse with one another,
contribute their heart’s pulses to the universal music, and presently vanish,
giving place to others. All this age-long sequence of private living, which is
the actual tissue of humanity’s flesh, I cannot describe. I can only trace, as
it were, the disembodied form of its growth.” (250-1)
The speaker, the Last Man, as he concludes his dictation to the
First Man says, “It is very good to have been man.” (294) I hope that this will
prove to be the case, someday.
Cheers.
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| "It was for the best, wasn't it?" |
Stapledon, Olaf. Last and First Men. 1930. Orion
Publishing Group. Gollancz. Great Britain. 2009
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