Series
Last and First Men
Olaf Stapledon · 3 novels · 11 short stories · 1930–2026
Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930) traces two billion years of human evolution through eighteen successive species, framed as a text somehow dictated back to the author by the last of those species; civilizations rise and fall across the span, marked by genetic engineering and interplanetary colonization, before the final humans are wiped out by a supernova. Stapledon followed it with the more obscure Last Men in London (1932), which revisits similar far-future material from a narrower, more personal angle.
Summary by Loreful, from public sources
Reading order
The order the books came out.
Best read in the order they were published.
- Excerpts from Last and First Men(7 works)
- Excerpts from Last Men in London(3 works)
- Omnibus editions(1 edition)
Map
Last and First Men at the centre, 2 subseries around it, its books fanned around what holds them. Pick anything for its details, and zoom out for similar series in orbit — the reading order above lists the same books as text.
Stats
By decade
- 1930s5
- 1940s0
- 1950s0
- 1960s2
- 1970s1
- 1980s0
- 1990s1
- 2000s0
- 2010s0
- 2020s1
Shape
3 novels · 11 short stories
1 author · completed series
reads like:science fictionecological collapsebritish islesfar futurechallengingadult
Mood
Grim and calm: 100% of this series' placed works, the catalog's 5%.
this series · the catalog · one dot = one book3 of 10 works carry a tone
Edges of the map
- Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Futuredarkest · most intense
- Last Men in Londonbrightest · calmest