SF Masterworks Group discussion

'Last and First Men' is not so much a novel as a history of the future, written with breathtaking imagination. Over the course of 2,000 million years it describes the evolutionary rise and fall of eighteen distinct races of men, of which Homo sapiens is the first and most primative. Apart from Stapledon himself, in the equally ambitious 'Star Maker', no other science fiction writer has attempted, let alone achieved, a work on this scale.

Kind of hard work. Feels a little old, but then again, it is! For its time, it is amazingly visioned. Some great ideas come out of this book.

It is like a history book written by the Last Men, all about mankind's evolution. But how on earth mankind survived MILLIONS of years without nuclear power, and without the desire to travel into space, I don't know.

It has that over optimistic feel of 1930s sci-fi, but without any humour whatsoever.