Finished Olaf Stapledon's
Last and First Men, a 'future history' from 1931 a little while ago. It was one of the earliest future history novels, and it's scope is quite enormous, spanning from (1931's) near future to the extinction of the "18th Race of Man" billions of years in the future. There are a number of interesting elements - Martians invade Earth thousands of years from now, travelling across space by harnessing the solar wind. A race of genetically-engineered superbrains are created in an attempt to create a technocratic utopia, they instead telepathically enslave the human race. Various disasters force the human race to relocate first to Venus, then to Neptune (
the surface of Neptune) and along the way, humanity develops telepathy and eventually a sort of 'supermind' and the ability to view (and eventually, communicate with) the minds of humans from the distant past.
Most of it is written in a rather dry, academic manner, which can be a bit of a slog. Although I found the dry, detached writing preferable to some episodes early in the narrative where the actions and dialog of individual characters were described. Some of that was just terrible.
And as with any decades-old science fiction, it's rather fascinating to see how much of Stapledon's vision of the future was mired in his "present" of 1931.
Some examples:
- Oil is just a flash in the pan, coal will be humanity's primary source of energy for thousands of years.
- Poison gas will remain a common weapon of war for centuries.
- Eugenics: from the 20th century on, the "First Men" will decline in intellect as modern medicine ensures that "inferior" specimens aren't weeded out.
- Casual anti-semitism: Hundreds of years from now, all the races will have mixed to the extent that there are no racial differences; except for the Jews, the Jews will continue to segregate themselves from the rest of the human race.
- And the least said about the fate of those "sports" from the general population who display strong racial features, the better.
- Casual racism: After the human race is nearly wiped out, two groups settle in different parts of the world to rebuild. One, starting from a settlement in a temperate part of the world, produces a civilized race of large brained supermen. While the other, starting from a settlement in a tropical climate, produces an uncivilized race of "baboon-like" subhumans.
- Colonialism: At one point in the future, a species of monkey evolves into a sentient race, indigenous to South America & Africa. When the large brained supermen from Europe begin exploiting the natural resources of the sentient monkey's homelands, the monkeys are "greedy" when they demand a portion of this natural wealth be left with them.
- No attempt is made to travel to the moon or anywhere else in the solar system until it is discovered that an impending disaster will render the Earth uninhabitable.
- More Colonialism: On Venus, the human's terraforming activities threaten the indigenous sentient Venusians with extinction. The Venusians respond with deadly force, and after some ethical hemming and hawing, the human settlers decide to exterminate the Venusians. This is depicted as regrettable, but necessary. After all, since the Venusians attacked first (trying to render their planet uninhabitable doesn't count) they're clearly unreasonable. And besides, they were an inferior species and doomed to extinction anyway.
