A human inhabitant of Neptune, living two thousand million years hence, describes a Naptunian exploration of our present world. He tells of the adventures which befell him while he was resident in the mind of one of our contemporaries. He gives an account of the European War as it appeared to Neptunian observers, and of the social and spiritual confusion which subsequently overlook our species. Finally he reveals the suprising story of a new human type, more developed than our own, which recently arose by mutation in our midst. Readers of LAST AND FIRST MEN, which was recognized as a masterpiece, will welcome this second imaginative work from Mr Stapledon's pen.
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The narrator is the same member of the eighteenth and final human species who purportedly induced Stapledon to write Last and First Men. 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.
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First published in 1932 by Methuen & Co. Ltd.