Last and First Men
- 313
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Last and First Men” is a work of astonishing scope, a history of humanity that runs for two billion years through eighteen human species. Olaf Stapledon frames it as a text dictated from the far future by the last of them. Readers marvel at its vision, and some at how many later science-fiction ideas it already contains; some, though, find it a dry chronicle with no story or characters to hold on to.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. It was first published on 23 October 1930 by Methuen. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which contemporary humans are the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.8 across 52 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 26% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Science fiction average of 7.8. That is how 7.5 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 6.3 | 12 | 23% |
| Hardcover | 7.0 | 40 | 77% |
Frequently asked
How long is Last and First Men?
It has 313 pages — shorter than 78% of the ranked books in Science fiction.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Science fiction — and a score of 7.5, the closest to this book.
