Olaf Stapledon - The Complete Sci-Fi Works of Olaf Stapledon

Olaf Stapledon

Published by

Books

- Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -

musaicumbooks@okpublishing.info

2021 OK Publishing

EAN 4064066380328

Novels Novels Table of Contents

Last and First Men

Last Men in London

Odd John

Star Maker

Darkness and the Light

Sirius

Death into Life

A Man Divided

Short Stories

The Flames

The Seed and the Flower

The Road to the Aide Post

A Modern Magician

East is West

A World of Sounds

Arms Out of Hand

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction By One of the Last Men

THE CHRONICLE

I Balkan Europe

1. THE EUROPEAN WAR AND AFTER

2. THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR

3. EUROPE AFTER THE ANGLO-FRENCH WAR

4. THE RUSSO-GERMAN WAR

II Europe’s Downfall

1. EUROPE AND AMERICA

2. THE ORIGINS OF A MYSTERY

3. EUROPE MURDERED

III America and China

1. THE RIVALS

2. THE CONFLICT

3. ON AN ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC

IV An Americanized Planet

1. THE FOUNDATION OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE

2. THE DOMINANCE OF SCIENCE

3. MATERIAL ACHIEVEMENT

4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIRST WORLD STATE

5. DOWNFALL

V The Fall of the First Men

1. THE FIRST DARK AGE

2. THE RISE OF PATAGONIA

3. THE CULT OF YOUTH

4. THE CATASTROPHE

VI Transition

1. THE FIRST MEN AT BAY

2. THE SECOND DARK AGE

VII The Rise of the Second Men

1. THE APPEARANCE OF A NEW SPECIES

2. THE INTERCOURSE OF THREE SPECIES

3. THE ZENITH OF THE SECOND MEN

VIII The Martians

1. THE FIRST MARTIAN INVASION

2. LIFE ON MARS

3. THE MARTIAN MIND

4. DELUSIONS OF THE MARTIANS

IX Earth and Mars

1. THE SECOND MEN AT BAY

2. THE RUIN OF TWO WORLDS

3. THE THIRD DARK AGE

X The Third Men in the Wilderness

1. THE THIRD HUMAN SPECIES

2. DIGRESSIONS OF THE THIRD MEN

3. THE VITAL ART

4. CONFLICTING POLICIES

XI Man Remakes Himself

1. THE FIRST OF THE GREAT BRAINS

2. THE TRAGEDY OF THE FOURTH MEN

3. THE FIFTH MEN

4. THE CULTURE OF THE FIFTH MEN

XII The Last Terrestrials

1. THE CULT OF EVANESCENCE

2. EXPLORATION OF TIME

3. VOYAGING IN SPACE

4. PREPARING A NEW WORLD

XIII Humanity on Venus

1. TAKING ROOT AGAIN

2. THE FLYING MEN

3. A MINOR ASTRONOMICAL EVENT

XIV Neptune

1. BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

2. DA CAPO

3. SLOW CONQUEST

XV The Last Men

1. INTRODUCTION TO THE LAST HUMAN SPECIES

2. CHILDHOOD AND MATURITY

3. A RACIAL AWAKENING

4. COSMOLOGY

XVI The Last of Man

1. SENTENCE OF DEATH

2. BEHAVIOUR OF THE CONDEMNED

3. EPILOGUE

Table of Contents

This is a work of fiction. I have tried to invent a story which may seem a possible, or at least not wholly impossible, account of the future of man; and I have tried to make that story relevant to the change that is taking place today in man’s outlook.

To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities. Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarize ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds. To romance of the far future, then, is to attempt to see the human race in its cosmic setting, and to mould our hearts to entertain new values.

But if such imaginative construction of possible futures is to be at all potent, our imagination must be strictly disciplined. We must endeavour not to go beyond the bounds of possibility set by the particular state of culture within which we live. The merely fantastic has only minor power. Not that we should seek actually to prophesy what will as a matter of fact occur; for in our present state such prophecy is certainly futile, save in the simplest matters. We are not set up as historians attempting to look ahead instead of backwards. We can only select a certain thread out of the tangle of many equally valid possibilities. But we must select with a purpose. The activity that we are undertaking is not science, but art; and the effect that it should have on the reader is the effect that art should have.

Yet our aim is not merely to create aesthetically admirable fiction. We must achieve neither mere history, nor mere fiction, but myth. A true myth is one which, within the universe of a certain culture (living or dead), expresses richly, and often perhaps tragically, the highest admirations possible within that culture. A false myth is one which either violently transgresses the limits of credibility set by its own cultural matrix, or expresses admirations less developed than those of its culture’s best vision. This book can no more claim to be true myth than true prophecy. But it is an essay in myth creation.

The kind of future which is here imagined, should not, I think, seem wholly fantastic, or at any rate not so fantastic as to be without significance, to modern western individuals who are familiar with the outlines of contemporary thought. Had I chosen matter in which there was nothing whatever of the fantastic, its very plausibility would have rendered it implausible. For one thing at least is almost certain about the future, namely, that very much of it will be such as we should call incredible. In one important respect, indeed, I may perhaps seem to have strayed into barren extravagance. I have supposed an inhabitant of the remote future to be communicating with us of today. I have pretended that he has the power of partially controlling the operations of minds now living, and that this book is the product of such influence. Yet even this fiction is perhaps not wholly excluded by our thought. I might, of course, easily have omitted it without more than superficial alteration of the theme. But its introduction was more than a convenience. Only by some such radical and bewildering device could I embody the possibility that there may be more in time’s nature than is revealed to us. Indeed, only by some such trick could I do justice to the conviction that our whole present mentality is but a confused and halting first experiment.

If ever this book should happen to be discovered by some future individual, for instance by a member of the next generation sorting out the rubbish of his predecessors, it will certainly raise a smile; for very much is bound to happen of which no hint is yet discoverable. And indeed even in our generation circumstances may well change so unexpectedly and so radically that this book may very soon look ridiculous. But no matter. We of today must conceive our relation to the rest of the universe as best we can; and even if our images must seem fantastic to future men, they may none the less serve their purpose today.

Some readers, taking my story to be an attempt at prophecy, may deem it unwarrantably pessimistic. But it is not prophecy; it is myth, or an essay in myth. We all desire the future to turn out more happily than I have figured it. In particular we desire our present civilization to advance steadily toward some kind of Utopia. The thought that it may decay and collapse, and that all its spiritual treasure may be lost irrevocably, is repugnant to us. Yet this must be faced as at least a possibility. And this kind of tragedy, the tragedy of a race, must, I think, be admitted in any adequate myth.