Last Men in London is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel by Olaf Stapledon

Olaf Stapledon

William Olaf Stapledon was a British philosopher and author of several influential works of science fiction.-Life:...

.

The narrator is the same member of the eighteenth and final human species who purportedly induced Stapledon to write Last and First Men

Last and First Men

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen...

. Last Men in London is the story of this being's exploration of the consciousness of a present-day Englishman named Paul, from childhood through service with an ambulance crew in the First World War (mirroring Stapledon's own personal history) to adult life as a schoolteacher faced with a "submerged superman" in his class nicknamed Humpty. The inadequacies of Paul's character, the various dilemmas he has to face during his life, and the occasional influence of the advanced being who shares his experiences, provide Stapledon with a semi-autobiographical platform on which to expound his philosophical and moral beliefs.

Outline

1. The World of the Last Men
   1. Holiday on Neptune
   2. Men and Man
   3. Biographical Note
2. Exploring the Past
   1. The Portal to the Past
   2. Difficulties and Dangers
   3. Influencing Past Minds
   4. Hovering over Time
   5. Descent among the First Men
   6. In the Streets of London
3. The Child Paul
   1. Paul and his Neptunian Parasite
   2. The Child Paul
   3. Early Experiments on Paul
   4. Paul's Changing World
4. Paul Comes of Age
   1. Paul and Sex
   2. Paul Devout
   3. Paul Faces the Facts
5. Origins of the European War
   1. The Neptunian Attitude to the War
   2. The Philosophical Lemurs
   3. Prehistoric Origins of the War
   4. The Historical Period
6. The War
   1. Europe before the War
   2. Europe Chooses War
   3. Europe at War
   4. Paul in the War
7. After the War
   1. The New Hope
   2. Paul Gathers up the Threads
   3. Paul Comes to Terms with Woman
   4. London and the Spirit
8. The Modern World
   1. Paul Undertakes his Task
   2. The Research
   3. Fruits of the Research
   4. Paul Settles Down
9. On Earth and on Neptune
   1. Submerged Supermen
   2. Paul and Humpty
   3. Back to Neptune
   4. Epilogue by the Terrestrial Author of this Book

Trivia

• Mistaken references to the title of this work as Last Man in London may have given rise to the persistent myth that George Orwell
  George Orwell
  Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
  
   was influenced by it when naming his novel The Last Man in Europe, which was later retitled and is now known as Nineteen Eighty-Four
  Nineteen Eighty-Four
  Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
  
  .

External links

• The complete text of Last Men In London