
Last and First Men - hhs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men
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gerdesj
_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!"_

Libraries have their uses.

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doener
Full text online:

[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601101h.html](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601101h.html)

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maxerickson
It's not a novel in any sort of modern sense. The different sections are
barely even stories themselves, just dry descriptions of imagined worlds.

It's an interesting book for sure.

~~~
jessriedel
Honestly, that sounds great to me. I often feel as though a lot of SF forces
some sort of human-interest piece into what the author really wants to do,
which is world building. Skipping the love story sounds appealing, like
skipping the opening vinette that every journalist thinks is necessary before
daring to mention a statistic.

~~~
bowlich
I collect role-playing campaign settings for this very reason. I love just
reading through long geographies of made up worlds. Pouring over the maps.
Imagining the geopolitical landscapes or how the alternative histories or
technologies might function in that world.

I don't actually play role-playing games at all anymore. But it's an entire
genre of work (made up geographies, bestiaries, etc.) that isn't really served
outside of games very much.

~~~
n4r9
There's a niche for a completely new type of fiction on the Internet. Creating
a world through a wiki style website. Readers explore by searching for phrases
or following hyperlinks instead of going linearly from start to beginning.
I've spent hours at a time reading things like the star wars wiki, Depp diving
to solve my own questions like "where did the sith originally come from?" or
"can you have a black lightsaber?"

~~~
shard
For me, the SCP Foundation ([http://www.scp-wiki.net](http://www.scp-
wiki.net)) gives that kind of feel, with different cases linking to one
another. (SCP Foundation is a collective storytelling wiki about an
organization that deals with the strange, mysterious, and horrifying.)

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user2994cb
_Sirius_ I found deeply moving and quite different from his more cosmic
novels:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirius_\(novel\))

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pmoriarty
I tried reading Stapledon's _Last and First Men_ and _Starmaker_ multiple
times. Super, super, super boring. Reading _about_ them is much more
interesting, though.

He really had a wide-ranging vision that is evocative of the sort of thinking
that the _Long Now Foundation_ is interested in today. Pity he was such an
abysmally poor writer.

~~~
samatman
I suggest approaching those books the way one should approach the
_Silmarillion_.

Pretend you're reading a history book. There's a lot of detail, many stories,
which don't have to follow the novelist's imperative to make sense and have
narrative resolution.

It's still quite possible you won't enjoy yourself, there are no guarantees in
life. But this approach gives you your best chance.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Even the _Silmarillion_ appeals to readers’ emotions in conventional ways with
e.g. the love story of Beren and Lúthien. Not quite as dry as Stapledon.

~~~
RBerenguel
I'm reading The Silmarillion now (coincidentally, just yesterday finished
Beren and Lúthien, indeed moving) but found Starmaker much more "fun" than The
S, at least so far.

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8bitsrule
In a 2003 interview, Vernor Vinge points to what may be a reason for the
overall reaction to the book.

 _I also like grand sweep stories such as Olaf Stapledon wrote. I find a
collision there, since many of the things I like to talk about -- interstellar
empires or even interplanetary empires -- now appear likely to be post-human-
era events. That 's sad, since the present-day audience and I are not post-
human. It's very hard to write stories that realistically talk about such
futures._

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131203143751/http://www.strang...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131203143751/http://www.strangehorizons.com/2003/20030915/vinge.shtml)

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jacquesm
This is a book well worth reading even if it isn't one of your 'easy to
translate into a blockbuster movie with special effects and tailor made
cliffhangers'. It's more of a documentary on how a future historian might
describe his own history starting with us.

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ixtli
Stapledon is the grandfather of science fiction writing and is quite unjustly
overlooked!

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Communitivity
I agree with other comments in that it's not a usual novel. If you take a step
back and look at it then it could be a novel with the main character being the
human race and the story the growth arc of the human race from us to its final
incarnation of 1000 year lifespan superbeings.

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dang
Related from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093781)

