History Literature / LastAndFirstMen

----

** Often dips into eugenics territory, especially for the evolution of the First Men (several races are viciously stereotyped) or when breeding for intelligence or sanity. Justified in that, at the time of writing, eugenics was considered a genuine science and [[ValuesDissonance definitely not evil]].

* ModernStasis: Happens to many cultures which manage to get past MedievalStasis, because in the StapledonVerse nuclear energy is very difficult and dangerous to achieve, usually requiring super-intellect to attain without self-destruction. Generally this leads to a [[OneWorldOrder World State]], which endures for some millennia before collapsing due to civil war, plague or more exotic problems.

* MarsNeedsWater[=/=]PlanetLooters: The Martians colonize earth during the reign of the Second Men seeking our plants, water, and diamonds.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: {{Invoked}} by many later men and especially the Martians.

* AlternateHistory: The immediate future concerns regional conflicts (World War II never occurs as OTL) and the mutilation of Europe at the hands of the United States.

* HumanSubspecies: The TropeMaker, which details the history of over a dozen of humanity's descendants (also note that in several cases these are distinct species, and in the case of Neptunian evolution genera, families or even orders descended from the human lineage0.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Almost every detail of planetology and physics, and many details of natural history, which Stapledon included in the story have been superseded by discoveries in the eight decades and more since he wrote it. The work is still awesome.

->''This book has two authors, one contemporary with its readers, the other an inhabitant of an age which they would call the distant future. The brain that concieves and writes these sentence lives in the time of Einstein. Yet I, the true inspirer of this book, I, who have begotten it upon that brain, I, who influence that primitive being's conception, inhabit an age, which, for Einstein, lies in the very remote future.''\\

* InsufferableGenius: The "true inspirer" of the book would count. Given that it's coming from one of the Last Men attempting to reach out to the First Men, the narration can come across at times as patronizing and condesending. This becomes especially evident later on, when said "true inspirer" resorts more and more to analogies and metaphors to recount the future histories of the later species of Man out of the perception that it would be nigh incomprehensible to "limited" minds like the First Men.

* LookOnMyWorksYeMightyAndDespair: Grand marvels are described, the ruins and relics of which occassionally stumbled upon by Man's descendants.

** The Third Men deliberately create the Fourth Men, who are essentially brains so big that they require whole towers to house them and the associated life support apparatus. The Fourth Men have huge extensible eyes and hands as well.
** The Fourth Men create the Fifth Men, who are basically larger Second Men with better materials and designs, enabling their big brains to function with far less difficulties.

** For the First Men, traditional religion is superceded during the OneWorldOrder period by a dogmatic rationalism that over time becomes a scientific cult dedicated to Gordelpus, ironically cribbing Christian elements in the process.

** The Eighth Men intend to terraform Mercury to survive the diminuation of the Sun which will render their homeworld of Venus uninhabitable, but discover too late that the incursion of another star is going to cause the Sun to flare, wiping out both Mercury and Venus. (The Earth has already been rendered uninhabitable by the crash of the Moon, and Mars hasn't been habitable for a long time). They wind up quick-and-dirty terraforming Neptune, on which they are personally unable to live, planting the tragically-doomed Ninth Men there.

* BrainInAJar: The Fourth Men are ''literally'' this. The 'jar' in question is a large tower, with their brains occupying the upper compartments and power and lfie support systems in the lower ones.

** The experience of the Sixth Men when they create the [[WingedHumanoid Seventh Men]] in fulfillment of a long mystical obsession with flight. (Though note, we don't know [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse what actually happened to the Sixth Men]]).

* CreatingLifeIsBad: The experience of several races, notably

* HumanSubspecies: The TropeMaker, which details the history of over a dozen of humanity's descendants! (also note that in several cases these are distinct species, and in the case of Neptunian evolution genera, families or even orders descended from the human lineage.

* ModernStasis: Happens to many cultures which manage to get past MedievalStasis, because in the StapledonVerse nuclear energy is very difficult and dangerous to achieve, usually requiring super-intellect to attain without self-destruction. Generally this leads to a [[OneWorldOrder World State]], which endures for some millennia before collapsing to civil war, plague or more exotic problems.

* ScienceMarchesOn: Almost every detail of planetology and physics, and many details of natural history, which Stapledon included in the story have been superseded by discoveries in the eight decades and more since he wrote it The work is still awesome.

** The Third Men when they create the [[BrainMonsters Fourth Men]] and the Fourth Men first [[spoiler:make themselves their masters]] and then [[spoiler:annihilate them]].

* CrystalDragonJesus: In addition to the Gordelphus cult of the First Men, their later Patagonian civilization eventually has one in the form of a youthful prodigy who preaches a creed celebrating vitality and wisdom to a culture defined by its aged. [[spoiler:This latter-day prophet's words were among those preseved in the stone tablets the Second Men discover countless generations later, who also take them to heart.]]

* OminousMessageFromTheFuture: The whole novel is this, both on the relatively small scale (there are going to be some really horrible World Wars to come), the moderate scale (our own civilization is doomed inn a matter of millennia), and the longest term human scale (the Sun will fatally flare in 2 billion years). The Last Man narrator is part of a project which [[spoiler:hopes to alter history in ways that will make it more likely that something of humanity will survive this last event]].

** The experience of the Sixth Men when they create the [[WingedHumanoid Seventh Men}] in fulfillment of a long mystical obsession with flight.

* BrainInAJar: The Fourth Men are ''literally'' this.

* [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse What Happened To The Species?]]: Stapledon never explains what happened to the Sixth Men, who endured 250 million years on Venus, and whose last and greatest culture created the [[WingedHumanoid Seventh Men]]. They are obviously gone 100 million years later, when the Seventh Men create the Eighth Men (else the Eighth Men couldn't have conquered the land areas), but Stapledon never says what happened to them.

* [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse What Happened To The Species?]]: Stapledon never explains what happened to the Sixth Men, who endured 250 million years on Venus, and whose last and greatest culture created the [[WingedHumanoid Seventh Men]]. They are obviously gone 100 million years later, when the Seventh Men create the Eighth Men (else the Eighth Men couldn't have conquered the land areas), but Stapledon never says what happened to them.

* {{Terraform}}: To escape a doomed Earth, mankind has to enrich Venus's atmosphere with oxygen. Too bad this means killing the whole native population.

* SolarSail: The Martians, being creatures whose body is composed of trillions of nanoscopic (not microscopic) viruses that communicate on a central nervous system of radiation, are able to conform their bodies into thin solid sheets that can traverse interplanetary distances. This is how they reach an Earth inhabited by the Second Men to begin their crusade to 'liberate' terrestrial diamonds which they believe are being handled sacrilegiously by the planet's dominate species, which the Martians also mistakenly think are the humans' radio devices.

!! Tropes covered in this book include:

* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: The Second, Fifth, and Eighteenth Men. The First Men were shown to be approaching this only to crumble just short of it.

* HomeworldEvacuation: The Fifth Men migrate to Venus when the Moon (destabilized millions of years earlier in the Martian/Second Men war) starts to crash into the Earth. And the eighth men design the ninth to colonize Neptune when the sun expands to cover the Inner System. But eventually the sun goes nova too quickly for the Eighteenth Men to devise a means of escaping to another system, though they do manage to send out "seeds" of life that might eventually evolve into new humans.

* HumanSubspecies: The TropeMaker, which details the history of over a dozen of humanity's descendants!

** Often dips into eugenics territory, especially for the evolution of the First Men (several races are viciously stereotyped) or when breeding for intelligence or sanity. Justified in that, at the time of writing, eugenics was considered a genuine science and definitely not evil.

* InsufferableGenius: The "true inspirer" of the book wound count. Given that it's coming from one of the Last Men attempting to reach out to the First Men, the narration can come across at times as patronizing and condesending. This becomes especially evident later on, when said "true inspirer" resorts more and more to analogies and metaphors to recount the future histories of the later species of Man out of the perception that it would be nigh incomprehensible to "limited" minds like the First Men.

* AdaptiveAbility - The Martians are described as doing this against the Second Men during their extremely long war. Every time the Martians come back, they are described as immune to what defeated them last.
* AlternateHistory - The immediate future concerns regional conflicts (World War II never occurs as OTL) and the mutilation of Europe at the hands of the United States.
* AmericaTakesOverTheWorld - The Americans' success was what led to the [[OneWorldOrder First World State]].
* BrainInAJar - The Fourth Men are ''literally'' this.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality - {{Invoked}} by many later men and especially the Martians.
* ColonyDrop - Due to changes in the laws of physics, the Moon starts spiraling in towards the Earth. Rather slow-mo, however, as it takes ''ten million years'' for the Moon to hit, giving the Fifth men time to genetically engineer the Sixth Men to live on a newly terraformed Venus.
* CrystalDragonJesus - In addition to the Gordelphus cult of the First Men, their later Patagonian civilization eventually has one in the form of a youthful prodigy who preaches a creed celebrating vitality and wisdom to a culture defined by its aged. [[spoiler:This latter-day prophet's words were among those preseved in the stone tablets the Second Men discover countless generations later, who also take them to heart.]]
* CrystalSpiresAndTogas - The Second, Fifth, and Eighteenth Men. The First Men were shown to be approaching this only to crumble just short of it.
* CulturalPosturing - The Last Men aren't above "expressing" their enlightened superiority, ''especially'' when comparing themselves to the First Men.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance - Applies both for the author and the different species of Man. This is especially true to the Last Men, who treat ritual cannibalism as a sacred death practice.
* DirectLineToTheAuthor - The book is supposedly being narrated by one of the Last Men, who has taken over the mind of Stapledon so subtly that even Stapledon still believes it's a work of fiction.
* EternalRecurrence - Stressed over and over all throughout.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep - None of the characters mentioned or focused on are given any actual names, with the exception of a brilliant Chinese physicist [[spoiler:later known as Gordelpus]].
* ExoticExtendedMarriage - The Second Men have group marriages, and the Last Men have group mind marriages formed from one member of each of their ''ninety-six'' sexes.
* FlingALightIntoTheFuture - Several examples abound over the long timespan. One such attempt is a cavern where the First Men survivors [[spoiler:of Patagonian civilization's cataclysmic end]] tried to painstakingly preserve as much of their culture, sciences and worldview as they can into stone in the hopes of rekindling civilization among their descendants. [[spoiler:The cavern is eventually discovered by the Second Men, who by then had surpassed many of the First Men's achievements. Although they did take the records of their ancient predecessors' beliefs to heart.]]
* GreyAndGrayMorality - The First Men.
* GuiltFreeExterminationWar - After fifty thousand years of intermittent warfare between the Second Men and the Martians there is no hesitation to use a bioweapon that kills all the Martians and leads to the downfall of the Second Men.
* HeavyWorlder - Invoked by the Eighth Men when engineering the Ninth Men to live on Neptune, when that still seemed possible. Apart from the (today) obvious uninhabitability of Neptune, the Ninth Men are a relatively realistic example - they're scaled-down Eighth Men that take advantage of the SquareCubeLaw.
* HomeworldEvacuation - The Fifth Men migrate to Venus when the Moon (destabilized millions of years earlier in the Martian/Second Men war) starts to crash into the Earth. And the eighth men design the ninth to colonize Neptune when the sun expands to cover the Inner System. But eventually the sun goes nova too quickly for the Eighteenth Men to devise a means of escaping to another system, though they do manage to send out "seeds" of life that might eventually evolve into new humans.
* HostileTerraforming - The Fifth Men escape a dying earth by terraforming Venus. Halfway through the process they discover that Venus is inhabited and oxygen is lethal to the natives; they keep at it anyway, reasoning that the Venusians are ultimately doomed (for other reasons) regardless.
* HumanSubspecies - The TropeMaker, which details the history of over a dozen of humanity's descendants!
* HumansThroughAlienEyes - The narration has shades of this, given that it's coming from the most distant descendant of mankind as we know it.
* ImAHumanitarian - It's revealed that the Last Men honor their dead by consuming their bodies with great ceremony--just to emphasize how different their culture is from ours.
* IntangibleTimeTravel - See the introduction to the book. The Last Men can do this, as can other species, starting with the Fifth. It is the best and most reliable method of historical research.
* InsufferableGenius - The "true inspirer" of the book wound count. Given that it's coming from one of the Last Men attempting to reach out to the First Men, the narration can come across at times as patronizing and condesending. This becomes especially evident later on, when said "true inspirer" resorts more and more to analogies and metaphors to recount the future histories of the later species of Man out of the perception that it would be nigh incomprehensible to "limited" minds like the First Men.
* InteractiveNarrator - The "true inspirer" of this work would technically qualify.
* LookOnMyWorksYeMightyAndDespair - Grand marvels are described, the ruins and relics of which occassionally stumbled upon by Man's descendants.
* MarsNeedsWater[=/=]PlanetLooters - The Martians colonize earth during the reign of the Second Men seeking our plants, water, and diamonds.
* NotSoDifferent - Eventually, even the narrator, hailing from the Last Men, acknowledges how ironically similar they are to the First despite the immense differences.
* NowYouTellMe - The Fifth Men are never able to figure out why the Moon is spiraling towards the Earth, or how to reverse it. It is suggested that their guilt over the inability to save Earth was part of why they died out on Venus. Many many years later their successors figure out why it happened (their powerful mental abilities actually had an unknown side-effect in the physical world, causing the moon to slow down and fall towards the Earth). Of course by that time it's an academic point.
* OneWorldOrder - The Americanized World State. It lasts for millennia; yet its downfall [[spoiler:''rapidly'' leads to a new dark age.]]
** It's also mentioned as happening ''numerous'' times over the eons.
* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions - {{Played with}}. Patterns of faith/rationalism conflict recur over the course of Man's future history.

* RagnarokProofing - Structures and artifacts made by a species of Man at their zenith (or sometimes its end) tend to stay sturdy long enough for their descendants to recognize the relics as such.
* SolarSail - The Martians, being creatures whose body is composed of trillions of nanoscopic (not microscopic) viruses that communicate on a central nervous system of radiation, are able to conform their bodies into thin solid sheets that can traverse interplanetary distances. This is how they reach an Earth inhabited by the Second Men to begin their crusade to 'liberate' terrestrial diamonds which they believe are being handled sacrilegiously by the planet's dominate species, which the Martians also mistakenly think are the humans' radio devices.
* SpeciesLoyalty - Fealty to the "race" of humanity is described as the only enlightened and valid form of patriotism, which carries over into the later descendants of Man.
* StandardSciFiHistory - {{Subverted}} to a degree. Yes progress brings Man to ever greater heights...but not before experiencing ever darker lows.
* StarfishAliens - the Martians, a kind of sentient, electromagnetic gas-cloud. They spend a long time assuming that the radio transmitters of the Second Men are in fact Earth's dominant life-form.
* {{Terraform}} - To escape a doomed Earth, mankind has to enrich Venus's atmosphere with oxygen. Too bad this means killing the whole native population.
* UnitedNationsIsASuperpower - Or rather, the ''League of Nations'' in the First Men sections, which over time evolved into an actual global government before splintering into American and Chinese halves. [[spoiler:The Americans were the ones who founded the First World State.]]
* VenusIsWet - Venus is an ocean world with fierce storms.
* WeAreAsMayflies - Most of the other species of Man, but especially the Last Men, who usually live about 250,000 years and do not die of old age.
* WingedHumanoid - The Sixth Men--descendants of humans who had fled to Venus following Earth's destruction--became obsessed with flight, and, taking advantage of Venus's lighter gravity, ended up genetically engineering their own winged successors, the Seventh Men. Like bats, the Seventh Men's wings were part of their arms and hands, rather than being separate limbs, but they kept two fingers (thumb and index) reserved for use as actual fingers.
* WouldBeRudeToSayGenocide - Type B: as the author puts it, humans are terribly sorry they have to kill all Venusians in the terraforming process, but there's no other solution. Stapledon was heavily criticized for this.
* WriterOnBoard - Mr. Stapledon had some gripes with Americans, which shows in the earlier segments. He acknowledges and apologizes for this, however, in the prelude.

* ScienceMarchesOn: As to be expected, since the book was written in 1930. Probably the most egregious example is when the Eighth Men decide to create the Ninth Men on ''Neptune.''