LAST AND FIRST MEN BY WILLIAM OLAF STAPLEDON PDF

Last and First Men [William Olaf Stapledon] on *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a. Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a science fiction novel written in by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented. Last and First Men a story of the near and far future. Olaf Stapledon. This web edition published by [email protected] Last updated Monday, May 25, at .

A great book, certainly, but a deeply outdated one. Thank you for your feedback. I can not believe I have not heard more about this book as being one of the true “classics” of science fiction. Job done Olaf, bravo. It promotes a kind of humanism, a non-religious call-to-arms for love, as well as examining the long, winding and blood-stained road to achieving such a society. I repeatedly double-checked if this wasn’t in reference to something else, a symptom of the lack of belief that characterized my eyes at the time of reading.

Part of the point of buying older books and reading older predictions is seeing what the authors of the past thought would shape the world of the future. It’s an epic, sweeping history, in which millions of years sometimes flash by in an instant. Withoutabox Submit to Film Festivals.

It’s always very collected, dispassionate when exploring possibilities, when describing the search of so many people, the defeats they endure, their disappointments and their small victories. Last And First Men S. Last and First Men: Or that people not willlam liked the book will use my possibly emotional arguments against the very thing I hold so dear. I found it vastly stimulating to the imagination.

Follow the Author

I respect this book quite a lot. The Rise and Fall of D.

This is famously one of the classics of science fiction. So you can imagine the scope of it all. The whole thing is just so fascinating, because while on the su A supremely interesting book, without a doubt.

It’s more than anything I know, and categorizing it is a mistake. People change in all sorts of unexpected ways; during some periods, they have godlike intelligence, during others they aren’t even sentient any more. Not madly long, but so packed to the brim and beyond with detail – never too much!

In any case, it might change the way you look at the world, at life. A Story Retold, but there’s a difference. But don’t expect a rollicking adventure tale. A Story Between Jest and Earnest. Read this one for all the crazy science and absolutely fantastic visions of the future.

Written in the ‘s, this is a future history that tells the story of mankind over a span of 2 billion years yes billion with a B from until approximately the year 2,, It’s aloof and impersonal, not helped by my book having very small print. Rather, it’s written by someone with a tender yet firm, a questioning yet reassuring voice. At times this works against the suspension of disbelief, to the detriment of the reader’s pleasure. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Most of HG Wells reads like it could’ve been written last week, but Stapledon you have to imagine in a wool double-breasted suit, eating war time rations, and listening to the BBC on a wooden radio.

And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. Apart, that is, from the colonization of Venus and Neptune, which we now know to be impossible.

But for sheer weirdness, audacity, and scope, this one is still worth it. To ask other readers questions about Last and First Menplease sign up. In my mind, it is one of the most imaginative early SF classics ever written, just as important as the works of H.

Last and First Men – William Olaf Stapledon | Feedbooks

Mwn, there were times when I was not enjoying myself as much as I would have liked, despite being in almost constant awe of the writer’s imangination.

Clarke, who indicated that this book and its later successor Star Maker were the two most influential books he had ever read. The use of language is sublime, and Mr One of the most absorbing and thought-provoking novels I have ever had the grand pleasure to read. However, the 20th or even the 30th century is but a glimmer compared to this book’s virst – it asks to reader to enter a different ‘mode’ of reading, where a million years must be considered a small amount of time.

The very last part is perhaps the most beautiful and moving: This is truly an astounding novel, which ambition is to tell the story of mankind from mne near future to the end of our species, some two billion years into the future. The journey for which Stapledon is our guide is nothing less than the Evolution of Man, not from the past to willam present, but from the present to the far, far, far, far, very, very, very, almost nuttily far future.

Clarke, and countless SF writers ever since.

Last and First Men First edition sta;ledon. Truly transcendent of the ‘science fiction’ genre and in its own right a philosphical masterpiece. Unlike modern novels, the book reads like a future history without specific characters, touching down briefly to document key events, and pausing to reflect on their significance. First and Last Men reads like a history of humanity as a whole. For example, there are not many “characters” in the traditional sense.

Apr 21, Charles Lor rated it really liked it. I am in awe of this book and the mind that produced it.