Last and First Men and Star Maker [Paperback]

Not quite. Mr. Stapledon did earn a degree in philosophy, but he lived off an inheritance and, aside from an occasional ad hoc lecture here and there, did not teach. Early on he contributed a few articles to philosophical journals, but he mostly occupied himself writing science-fiction novels which sold very
modestly.

I only read the first of the two included in this volume, "The First and Last Men", and my star-rating and review refer to this novel only. It has been praised for "containing enough material for hundreds of conventional science-fiction stories". I only wish there were at least one--conventional or other--science-fiction story in it. For this is a novel with no plot and no characters. We might call it a fictional history, but a history of England, for example, has largely to do with kings and queens and Cromwells--characters--, as a history of physics has largely to do with Newton, Einstein, and Bohr--characters. To a certain extent, the early part of the book tries to make up for this lack by anthropomorphizing nations-nations behave as if they were persons. (Of course, you can get away with saying anything you like about nations this way, zzzzzzzzzzz.)

Wherefore no characters? It appears that this novel espouses an extreme form of anti-individualism, such that it seems to me a sort of reductio ad absurdum inadvertent argument in FAVOR of individualism. (By the bye, the novel itself calls capitalist exploitation of the masses "individualism", whereas I call
capitalist exploitation of the masses "corporate collectivism", rather the opposite.)

"The First and Last Men" was originally published in 1930 (or 1931; I can't remember), but its fictional history starts immediately after World War I, which is to say, the first part of its fictional history ought NOT to be fictional. The extent to which it misreads its own time is surprising and mystifying.
Compare it to Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf", which accurately predicts the rise of Nazi-ism and a second world war, and was originally published in the mid-1920's. For that matter, compare it to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", which was originally published in 1932 and remains very much on target.

In short, it seems to me, judged by any reasonable standard, this novel is simply awful. I'm guessing it has avoided excoriation only because it is fairly obscure. Read Stanislaw Lem instead.

Philosophical treatises vary according to the philosopher, of course. Nietsche's "Beyond Good and Evil", "The Birth of Tragedy", and "The Case of Wagner" are all much more eccentric and seemingly glib than Satre's more rigorous "Being and Nothingness", "Search for a Method", and the essays in his "Between Marxism and Existentialism". Camus in "The Myth of Sisyphus" falls somewhere in between. (So much for proto and post existentialism.)

In any case, a philosophical novel typically involves a scene or a series of scenes such as that in "Brave New World" in which the Savage and his two friends are confronted by the World Controller. In other words, various characters sit around and argue. The novelist with a philosophical bent typically finds it necessary or convenient to make different characters espouse different contending points of view. Stapledon doesn't do this, and not because he is more subtle than Aldous Huxley-he is much less subtle in fact-but because his "novels" are not so much works of "philosophy" as tracts.

"The stength of the US empire is tied to fossil fuels, which are beginning to run out according to 'peak oil' researchers....If you want to explore the deepest ideas ever discussed in SF..."

Western economies have utterly depended on fossil fuels since the first industrial revolution in the early nineteenth century. This was hardly news in 1930 when "The First and Last Men" was published. As it happens, it has been predicted many times that they would shortly run out, and each time new sources have been discovered. Of course, there is only a finite amount on the planet, and they WILL eventually run out. You didn't have to be prescient in 1930 to foresee THAT. (In any case, the object of science-fiction, very much including science-fiction that takes place in the future, is not to predict, but to illuminate.) Are these among "the deepest ideas discussed in SF"? If you think so, I'll wager you've not read "Brave New World", a single work of Stanislaw Lem, or even "Planet of the Apes" (don't judge it by the awful movie).

Certainly, the author is more sophisticated and better educated than someone like Philip K. Dick and, for that matter, countless other science-fiction writers whose names are remembered only by hardcore devotees, but it seems to me we have two choices: Either we judge this work by how well it succeeds as 1) light entertainment or by how well it succeeds as 2) literature. Even its fiercest apologists admit it fails dismally as entertainment. If on the other hand, we're maintaining it succeeds as literature, then we need to compare it to literary works, not pulp science-fiction. Its proponents are unwilling to do that because it so obviously falls short.