Last and First Men

Last and First Men is one of the most audacious and visionary works ever written in speculative fiction. Spanning more than two billion years of human history, this extraordinary chronicle traces the rise, fall, and transformation of humanity through eighteen successive species of men, each confronting its own triumphs, catastrophes, and moral dilemmas. Written as a future history narrated by the distant descendants of mankind, the book is less a conventional novel than a vast philosophical epic. Here, science fiction becomes a vehicle for profound reflection on evolution, intelligence, culture, war, love, and the ultimate fate of consciousness itself. Civilizations flourish and perish, planets are colonized and abandoned, and humanity is repeatedly forced to redefine what it means to be human. First published in 1930, Last and First Men anticipated many of the central themes of modern science fiction, influencing generations of writers and thinkers. Its speculative scope, combined with a deeply human concern for ethics and collective destiny, makes it a timeless masterpiece—at once unsettling, poetic, and profoundly moving.

Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950) was a British philosopher, novelist, and one of the most influential figures in early science fiction. Trained in philosophy at Oxford, Stapledon brought an unprecedented intellectual depth to speculative literature, using vast cosmic timelines to explore questions of evolution, ethics, consciousness, and humanity’s collective destiny. His most celebrated works, Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937), broke radically with traditional narrative forms, presenting future histories and cosmic visions on an epic scale. Long before space travel became a reality, Stapledon imagined interplanetary civilizations, post-human species, and the moral responsibilities of intelligent life in the universe. Though not widely popular during his lifetime, Stapledon’s ideas profoundly influenced later generations of writers, philosophers, and scientists. Today he is recognized as a pioneer of philosophical science fiction and a visionary thinker whose work continues to challenge and inspire readers nearly a century later.