William Olaf Stapledon

Last Men in London William Olaf Stapledon

MEN and women of Earth! Brief Terrestrials, of that moment when the First Human Species hung in the crest of its attainment, wavelike, poised for downfall, I a member of the last Human Species, address you for a second time from an age two thousand million years after your day, from an age as remotely future to you as the Earth's beginning is remotely past. There is no plot, except the theme of man's struggle in this awkward age to master himself and to come to terms with the universe. In my earlier communication I told of the huge flux of events between your day and mine. I told of the rise and fall of many mankinds, of the spirit's long desolations and brief splendours. I told how, again and again, after age-long sleep, man woke to see dimly what he should be doing with himself; how he strove accordingly to master his world and his own nature; and how, each time, circumstances or his own ignorance and impotence flung him back into darkness. I told how he struggled with invaders, and how he was driven from planet to planet....