Olaf Stapledon

1886–1950

William Olaf Stapledon was born near Liverpool in 1886 and spent his early childhood in Port Said, Egypt, where his father worked in shipping. He studied history at Oxford, and in the First World War he refused to fight and drove ambulances in France with the Friends' Ambulance Unit.

He took a doctorate in philosophy and taught adult classes in Liverpool. Last and First Men, his first novel, came out in 1930 and made his name. He went on to write Odd John and Star Maker, and later writers, Arthur C. Clarke among them, spoke of how much they owed him. He died in 1950.

Olaf Stapledon on the site

Last and First MenPublished in 1930 About 8 hours read One of the last human beings, living on Neptune two thousand million years from now, reaches back into the mind of a writer of our own time and dictates this history. It begins with the wars of Europe and goes on through eighteen human species: an Americanized world state, an invasion from Mars, giant brains kept in concrete turrets, a flight to Venus and then to Neptune. Olaf Stapledon's first novel (1930) has almost no characters. Its hero is humanity, and it shaped science fiction for a century.

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