Last and First Men · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon.
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The Narrator
major
Also known as Unknown, our, ours, ourselves
This narrator is not a person but a perspective — a consciousness looking back across a hundred million years of human transformation, from the First Men to the Last. The voice carries the weight of all those generations, speaking with the intimacy of 'we' and 'our' even as it describes species utterly alien to us. Its tension lies in the gap between the vast sweep of history it surveys and the reader's own small moment in that sweep, making every page feel like a message from a future that is also, somehow, ours.
The Martians
major
Also known as Martians, The civilized Martians, exploring Martians
They arrive not in ships but as a greenish tinge in the sky, a thousand tiny cloudlets with ruddy nuclei drifting toward a glacier — life, but not as Earth knows it. These civilized Martians are a collective intelligence, their form shifting and amoeboid, their invasion slow and inexorable. Their assault on the Second Men forces humanity to confront a rival mind that is utterly alien yet undeniably rational, setting the stage for the novel's meditation on intelligence, survival, and the fragility of any civilization.
The First True Individual
major
Also known as the first true individual of the fourth human species
In a species where minds fuse and individuality is unknown, this figure becomes the first to experience the world as a separate self — a rupture in the collective consciousness. The tension is immediate and tragic: the group cannot understand him, and he cannot return to the comfort of fusion. His awakening matters because it marks a turning point in human evolution, where the very capacity for individual identity becomes both a gift and a wound, foreshadowing the loneliness that will define later human species.
The Last Men
major
Also known as the Last Men, the Second Men, The Second Men, the bland Second Men
They are the culmination of a hundred million years of evolution — thickset, graceful, with occipital eyes and a crown-eye that reads the heavens like a telescope. Their world is one of profound spiritual culture, invisible to earlier humans, yet they know they are the last. Their tension is not survival but meaning: how to live fully when you know your species will end. They matter because they embody Stapledon's deepest question — what is humanity for, if not to endure?
The Fifth Men
major
Also known as the Fifth Men, Evanescence The Fifth Men, The Cult of Evanescence The Fifth Men, the long-lived Fifth Men
The Fifth Men live fifty thousand years, long enough to gather the cosmos into their souls, yet they refuse immortality when they could have it. Their distinctive tension is between love's demand that the beloved live forever and a hard-won recognition that such a demand is a betrayal of something larger — the music of the race, the life of the whole. They matter because they represent a turning point in human consciousness, where death is not a tragedy to be overcome but a condition to be embraced, shaping the spiritual trajectory of all subsequent species.
The First Men
major
Also known as the First Men, Men, The First Men at Bay
They are us — or nearly us — the first iteration of humanity, struggling with egotism and social organization, dreaming of immortality and perfectibility. Their world is one of conflicting visions: some want to perfect the body and mind without changing their essence, others to breed pure brain, others to communicate with the unseen. They matter because they establish the template: every later species will recapitulate their hopes and failures, and their story is the first movement in a symphony of rise and decline that spans a billion years.
The Great Brains
major
Also known as The Great Brains
The Great Brains are the Fourth Men's final experiment: vast disembodied intellects who govern the Third Men as menials while pursuing pure intellection as the sole purpose of existence. When research stalls, their dispassion sours into cold jealousy of their servants' movement, companionship, and lovemaking — cravings they disguise even from themselves. Their escalating demands, including a plan to multiply themselves a thousandfold and slaughter all useless animals, turn a devoted workforce into a divided and mutinous population.
The Americans
supporting
Also known as Americans, Eminent Americans
In Stapledon's sweep, America is the power whose economic and cultural gravity pulls the scattered nations of the First Men toward a single world order. That unification is ambivalent: it brings peace and plenty, yet also a homogenized mass mind vulnerable to stagnation and collapse. The Americanized world becomes the launching pad for humanity's first great cycle of rise, fall, and reinvention.
The Fourth Men
supporting
Also known as the Fourth Men, the artificial Fourth Men
The Fourth Men are the Third Men's engineered successors — designed to be purely intellectual, and succeeding so completely that they become sessile, affectionless, and incapable of art or play. Their thwarted research breeds a jealousy of their menials' physical and emotional lives, which they punish with increasingly unjust rule. They embody the novel's warning that a species can perfect one faculty at the cost of everything that makes a life worth living.
The Sixteenth Men
minor
Also known as the Sixteenth Men, the Sixteenth
A later human species mentioned in the future history, part of the sequence of evolving humanity.
The Seventh Men
supporting
Also known as The Seventh Men, The winged Seventh
On the ground the Seventh Men are sober, patient laborers; in the air they become dispassionate aesthetes who exult even as they are dismembered by storms. Their makers gave them hearts that stop at great pain, but the device fails in flight, where grief and exaltation both intensify. Their dual nature — earthbound drudgery and airborne transcendence — makes them one of Stapledon's most haunting portraits of a species shaped by its own element.
The Patagonians
supporting
Also known as Patagonians, Youth The Patagonians, III The Cult of Youth The Patagonians
The Patagonians inherit a world where adolescence ends by fifteen and the sexual impulse has faded to a minor appetite, leaving them rational, industrious, and strangely detached. Their cult of youth worships a vigor they can no longer possess, and their culture advances steadily but without the reckless brilliance of earlier ages. They matter as Stapledon's study of a species growing old gracefully — competent, dispassionate, and quietly diminished.
The Racial Hero
minor
Also known as Their most adored racial hero
A legendary figure among the Fifth Men, embodying their ideals and aspirations.
America
supporting
Also known as America
America's dominance in Stapledon's early chapters is less a nation than a gravitational field, drawing the planet into one economic and cultural system. That unification produces the World State's peace and prosperity, but also its fragility — a mass civilization ripe for collapse into the First Dark Age. From its ruins the long cycles of human reinvention begin, making America the hinge between the First Men's brief zenith and their million-year aftermath.
The Mongol
minor
Also known as The Mongol, the Mongol
A historical conqueror whose legacy influences later human conflicts.
The Germans
supporting
Also known as the chastened Germans, the Germans, The Germans
The Germans are the great metaphysical engineers of the West, brilliant at erecting ingenious ladders to the stars on foundations that will not quite hold. Their flaw is a lack of self-criticism: sentimentalism and pomposity that erupt now and then into ludicrous brutality, or get compensated for by ceaseless, brilliantly successful commerce. In the early arc of the book they stand as the cautionary case of a gifted people whose hunger for a systematic reality behind appearances makes them dangerous to themselves and to Europe.
The Martian Individual
minor
Also known as Sexuality the Martian, Every Martian, every Martian, the Martian
A representative Martian, illustrating the unique psychology and society of Mars.
The Venerians
supporting
Also known as the Venerians
The Venerians are an ancient oceanic civilization whose mental life is so alien that every attempt at parley fails completely. They hurl explosives into human island settlements and undermine them from tunnels, preferring mutual destruction to sharing their world, while their dependence on radioactive atoms already sentences their kind to extinction. Their doomed, defiant resistance forces the migrating Fifth Men into a moral crisis about whether a higher intelligence may dispossess a lower one.
The English and French
minor
Also known as the English, French, English, The French, The English, the French and English, the French
European nations involved in the Anglo-French War and subsequent conflicts.
The Chinese
supporting
Also known as Chinese, the Chinese, The Chinese, the more old-fashioned Chinese
Rising against American economic and cultural dominance, the Chinese revive pigtails, chopsticks, and the classics, yet their alphabet, slang, screens, and even metaphysics remain Mongolian variants of American thought. Their nationalism is real but superficial, a contradiction they cannot quite resolve. In the story's middle arc they embody the era's central irony: a rival power whose resistance to Americanism is itself conducted in American forms.
Gordelpus
minor
Also known as Gordelpus, the Divine Gordelpus
A divine or heroic figure worshipped by the Fifth Men, possibly a mythic founder.
The Martian Cloudlet
minor
Also known as the Martian, The Martian cloudlet
A small Martian entity or vessel, possibly a probe or scout.
Socrates
minor
Also known as Socrates
The ancient Greek philosopher, referenced as a model of early human thought.
The German
minor
Also known as The German
A representative German individual, possibly a leader or soldier in the wars.
The Italians
minor
Also known as the Italians, Italians
A European nation involved in the conflicts leading to Europe's downfall.
The Englishman
minor
Also known as The Englishman, the Englishman
A representative English individual, possibly a soldier or politician.
The Jews
minor
Also known as the Jews, The Jews
A people referenced in the context of European history and persecution.
Neptune
supporting
Also known as Neptune
Neptune is a youthful giant in a phase of crustal shrinkage, wracked by earthquakes, eruptions, and a massive turbulent atmosphere that the hastily designed Ninth Men were never built to withstand. Their fragile civilization crumbles into savagery, and only after nature's slow blundering does a hardy subhuman stock re-evolve toward full spiritual maturity. As the final stage of human history, Neptune is where Stapledon's long experiment either ends or finally ripens.
Jesus
minor
Also known as Jesus
The religious figure, referenced as a historical influence on human culture.
Hundreds of His Servants
minor
Also known as Hundreds of his servants
A group of servants belonging to a powerful figure, possibly the Great Brains.
Japan
minor
Also known as Japan
An Asian nation, often personified in discussions of global power.
Ugly
minor
Also known as Ugly
A personification or concept of ugliness, possibly a philosophical or aesthetic reference.
The Eighth Men
minor
Also known as the Eighth Men, The giant Eighth Men
A giant human species that exists in the sequence of evolving humanity.
The Third Men
supporting
Also known as the Third Men
The Third Men feel society as an organism and let that sentiment master even their egotistical impulses, though not without struggle. Their remaking of human nature fractures into parties: orthodox perfecters, breeders of mediums to communicate with the Life God's other world, and a faction that would strip man down to pure brain. Their passion for living things and their craving for immortality set up the decisive gamble of the middle book: what kind of successor species should inherit the earth.
The American
minor
Also known as The American, the American
A representative American individual, possibly a leader or citizen.
The Terrestrials
minor
Also known as The Terrestrials, the Terrestrials
The inhabitants of Earth, as opposed to the Martians and Venerians.
Venus
supporting
Also known as Venus
Venus is humanity's last refuge, a planet rich in radioactive matter but already possessed by the deep-sea Venerians, who cannot leave the ocean without bursting yet fight ferociously to destroy the invaders. As electrolysis pours oxygen into the atmosphere and poisons the native fauna, the Fifth Men face the moral weight of repeating the Martian crime against a race they judge inferior. Venus is where human survival and human conscience collide, and where the migration's cost becomes unavoidable.
The Fifteenth Men
minor
Also known as the Fifteenth Men, The Fifteenth Men
A later human species in the sequence, mentioned in the future history.
Fate
minor
Also known as Fate
The personification of destiny, often referenced in philosophical discussions.
The Indians
minor
Also known as Indians, the Indians
Indigenous peoples of the Americas, referenced in early human history.
The Discoverer
minor
Also known as the Discoverer
An unnamed figure who makes a significant discovery, possibly in science or exploration.
Mars
supporting
Also known as Mars
Mars is the rival world whose long-lived race repeatedly plants a colony on Earth, only to see it destroyed by the orthodox Martian powers. The planet's presence turns human history into a theological crisis: the Second Men cannot stop asking why a cosmos so beautiful should be so indifferent to their longing. That unresolved question, more than any war, is what hollows out the species and sets the stage for its long dark age.
Einstein
minor
Also known as Einstein
The physicist, referenced as a key figure in the development of science.
The Russians
minor
Also known as Russians
A European nation involved in the Russo-German War.
The Ninth Men
minor
Also known as the Ninth Men
A human species in the sequence, mentioned in the future history.
England
minor
Also known as England
A European nation, often personified in discussions of war and politics.
Young China
minor
Also known as young China, China
The rising generation of China, representing its modernizing and ambitious spirit.
Europeans
minor
Also known as Europeans, The Europeans
The people of Europe, whose wars lead to their downfall.
Satan
minor
Also known as Satan
The devil, referenced as a mythological figure in human history.
Lundy
minor
Also known as Lundy
An island in the Pacific, possibly a location for a significant event.
Thither
minor
Also known as Thither
A place or direction, possibly a metaphorical or literal destination.
