Revisiting Last and First Men and Starmaker, Part 1

I’ve been on kick of re-reading “futures classics,” having gone through Future Shock and Panarchy (well, maybe that’s more systems, but it’s important to us and I re-read it). I’m reporting here on Olaf Stapledon’s  Last and First Man and Starmaker originally published in 1931 and 1937 respectively. The motivation emerged from a conversation in which Houston Professor Emeritus Oliver Markley spoke glowingly of then. These science fiction works, it seems to me, can be bluntly summarized as “an epic adventure for the imagination.” Thus, a two-part post is needed.

Last & First Men

He talks about the great achievement of “first men” (aka “us”) as developing the ideas of conduct which (1) delighting in the truth and (2) delighting in the people around us. He felt that unfortunately first man had a brain and nervous system never quite capable of achieving them. Human nature became incapable of dealing with the complex environment it creates, and thus eventually a series of world conflicts eventually lead to the downfall of first man.

But not before attempts at world civilization. Some three hundred plus years after the world conflicts he suggests the emergence of an American-led world unity. He characterizes it as a type of guild socialism coordinated by a World Industrial Council, with science taking a powerful position akin to a religion. The civilization lasts 4,000 and achieved tremendous material wealth, but neglected other aspects of what one might call civilization. He cited the sudden failure of the coal supply as precipitating the fall of this civilization and precipitating a dark age and decline into barbarism and a “swarm of tribes.” Civilization re-emerges driven by a cult of youth as a new religion that spreads across civilization – but at a much smaller 100 million people. Upon discovering the history of the first men, there ensued a conflict between those who wished to suppress the information about the lapse into darkness and those who wished to learn from it. Eventually, an atomic conflict almost wipes out humanity entirely, reaching a low of just 35 people who manage to survive at the North Pole, and thus comes a second dark age. It takes millions of years for the bulk of the human planet to become capable of sustaining human life.

A new race emerges tens of millions years from the beginning of the second dark age physically much different than First Man. These “second men” delighted in the people around them (referring back to the second of the two ideals first developed by first men). He refers to them as “noble savages.” The second men experienced what he suggests are the familiar cycles of progress and decline. World-wide communities would emerge only to fall apart and they cycle of development would resume once again.

He then brings in the first alien visit – he suggests it coming from Mars (we might indulge this one and say it come from “somewhere.” They are characterized as a group mind capable of telepathic communication. The measures required to defeat the invasion unfortunately devastate the earth as well and thus bring about another decline in the human population. The aliens came back periodically and each time brought about a decline in the human population with each recovery steadily weakening.  The end of the second men was as innocent child-like creatures living a simple life.

The third men were born of a geological accident—they were much smaller in stature and short-lived in comparison to second man. They were more in tune with sense-experience than abstract reasoning, being greatly addicted to play of all kinds. They too, follow the cycle of progress and decline, with one era of progress seeing a great flourishing of the arts. Third men were the first to set about a deliberate remaking of human nature, and one faction created a super-brain over the objections of another. The “great brains” become the fourth men. The downfall of fourth man owes to the running out of new lines of research with which to apply their great brainpower. The see their own flaws and seek to design a successor, and thus emerges fifth man, which this time includes elements of the alien race and their telepathy, complete with progress and decline cycles. A project capturing attention was the ability to directly inspect the past. It proved to be an addictive experience in which individuals gradually lost their sense of the present. An even bigger project was dealing with the discovery that the moon was forecast to crash into the earth. It eventually triggers the first off-world colonies, but this unfortunately led to conflict with a native species and their extermination. This in turn triggers guilt and a lost in self-confidence among the human victors. The planet is remade to as close as possible to earth, and human existence on this planet ends up eventually being longer than on earth.

The tough conditions on the new planet greatly reduce the size of the human population and produce a sixth man that is smaller and less intelligent.  More planets are explored and settled. And so it goes, cycles of progress and decline, death and re-birth, from sixth up to 18^th man.

“If one of the first men could enter the world of the last men, he would find many things familiar and much that would seem strangely distorted and perverse. But nearly everything that is most distinctive of the last human species would escape him.”

These potentially immortal beings are astronomically minded, but not without human interests. The average length of life is a quarter of a million terrestrial years, united by a telepathy. It can be characterized as having a racial mind that transcends groups and individual with philosophical insights into the true nature of space and time, the mind, and the cosmos.  There is no need for government and laws. The end comes from a solar collapse.

Thus, the story of humanity –rise and fall, repeat. An example of the “cycle theory” we teach in Social Change. Next, in Starmaker, we take up the question of the cosmos. Andy Hines