Five Stages of a First Draft

I am currently working on a new project for Wet Ink Games. Its early days so I don’t want to say much about it, but this process has given me reason to think about the creative process and specifically about the many stages of work a creator has to go through to make any particular idea a reality. There are lots of creators who have covered this before, but I want to put my own little spin on it. I think of my process from an idea to a first draft as happening over five broad stages.

Stage One - Filling the Blank Page: The the first step of any new piece of writing is to start with a blank page. I have heard many people say the blank page is the most intimidating because there is nothing to work from; the page is blank. I don’t see it that way, because when starting a new project I first set down a lot of ideas about what I want to do. There is often no method or reason to this step, it’s just a way to get all the possibly relevant ideas if not on the actual page, then at least up to the front of your mind so you can work with them. I will sketch scenes, propose characters or even just names, write down bits of dreams I’ve had, list possible plot events and make a list of scenes is movies or comics which I want to use as inspiration. This step is like brainstorming, but it seems more directed than that to me. I am usually not trying to find an idea at this stage, but looking for what will help me build up an idea I already have. This is the most free stage because there is nothing else set down yet so there can be no conflicts or missteps at this stage. All competing details are still possible and exist together in limbo. Once you have put everything you think might be helpful in front of you, you are ready to begin the work in earnest.

Stage Two - Finding the Edges: Once you have your working central ideas you need to know the full extent of the project. You need to know how big this particular project is and where it ends. All the threads of history and inspiration you’ve pulled into this particular project need to break off somewhere. This roughing out of the whole shape of the work sometimes leads you see it as possibly part of the larger series of works, but at some point you have to decide this is the part I am working on now and set that off as a individual project in your mind and on your page. This is the stage of outlining a whole project or maybe writing a one or two line description of each chapter for a novel. I have done a list of what needs to happen in each chapter for several of the NaNoWriMos I have worked on over the years. In the case of writing a RPG book, a list of all the things you want in the game and how many of each is part of what you make at this stage. For example, we need 20 new animal types and five or six new airplanes for the next Wild Skies book. We know that going in. This stage is not limited to outlining. Sometimes you have to start the writing to find out what you need to know about characters and backgrounds. There are still no wrong answers in this stage. You are filling out the shape of how big and how long you think the work is going to be. It may still change in the making. This stage generally doesn’t take that long, but it is my favorite part of the creative process. I love the combination of direction set in this first stage with this stage’s freedom.

Stage Three - Painting in the Floor: I may be mixing architectural metaphors here, but I like to think of this step as filling the work out to the edges set in the previous step. It could also be called “painting in the canvas.” This is the longest step in the process. After the direction is set and you know about where you want to go, you have to actually go there. In stage two you can simply write, “the characters discuss their emotional history,” but in stage three you have to figure out want that history is and how you are going to reveal it to best effect and what words your characters are actually going to say. If you set yourself the task of creating a dozen character profiles or six new airplanes which all need statistics to make them unique then you have to write up all those details. It can be a slog to get through this stage as it’s not a time for a lot of new ideas. It’s slow and steady crafting. It’s the “cruising altitude” portion of the flight, to mix in yet another metaphor. About 80 to 90 percent of a project gets written in this stage.

Stage Four – Finishing the Corners: This is the stage where you have to go back and deal with whatever you skipped in the previous step. This has been less common in the novels I’ve written because I’ve only finished longer fiction like that all in one go during November. It is a more common problem for me in RPG writing where there is often many different types of writing within one project. Maybe you left a detailed time line for last because the alternate history section wasn’t written yet. Or maybe you skipped the details of a weapon’s game numbers because you wanted to get on to describing the attributes of your fantasy creatures. This stage also includes all the details you didn’t plan for from the start. You may not know you need a chapter exploring the motivations of the queen mother until you get to the climax of the story and she’s there when her son is murdered. Whatever the reason you skipped something or left it out, in stage four you have to go back and get those things done. This is the hardest step for me, usually. There is often a reason I left the tricky bits for the end and they are still tricky to get right. I find the work of this stage is motivated not by what I am interested in writing or thinking about, but by the needs of the story. It is often work I just have to push myself to get through.

Stage Five – Polishing all the Details: Fifth and lastly the work as a whole must be harmonized in terms of format and details. Did you change a character’s name in chapter three? You have to make sure it’s corrected in the first chapters. Did you create place-holder information while someone else was working on the real details? That has to be swapped out. Were you inconsistent in story details like descriptions of a place or in format elements like use of quotation marks? You have to bring all that into line. You should also fix spelling errors you missed in your initial haste. This is the final pass through whatever you’ve written to get everything “right” as much as you can before the first draft is done and other people get to look at it. It is a clean up stage and doesn't usually involve too much mental power so while it can be tedious, it is not hard.

There you have it, my breakdown of work. I’m off to paint in some more floors. Expect more news in the new year!

Culminations which are but Preludes

The first downloadable supplements for Wild Skies: Europa Tempest are now available! These were paid for by stretch goals and certain backer levels during the our Kickstarter campaign two years ago. Right now we have an adventure called Lucky Rabbits Afoot, featuring raiding rabbits from the Saar Warren and a closer look at the small nation of Luxembourg. We are also offering a mercenary crew profile of the Rock Roost Renegades which includes four full characters from Corsica and a few of their unique technical innovations. These are just the first of several small releases we have in the works.

I have been working to fulfill my part of these extras for a while. It’s been a real learning experience, as cliched as that is to say. The “Luxembourg adventure” I wrote was inspired by a campaign I ran during the very early days of Wild Skies when when it was a setting grafted onto a different set of rules. As part of the process I got to (and had to) pick an artist, correspond with that artist, send art reference, have my work reviewed and all the rest. I have only written one previous adventure, so I’m still not sure exactly what I need to do. To make things worse, this is the first adventure for the Compass System so there are no models to follow. Again, I get to (and have to) make all the decisions about format and length and how to boil down the NPC combat stats for GMs without leaving anything out. Maybe it just feels trickier than it is because I am my own worst critic. Now that it is out, it can see what a lot of other people have to say and make changes for next time.

The mercenary faction was a special personal project for me. Not only did all the same “learning curve” stuff about art and setting format precedents apply, but I got to work with my father to create the faction. As a backer at a certain level, he got to create this faction and all the characters. My father is not a roleplayer at all so he didn’t really have a desire to pick skills and assign attributes. He is a story teller and the depth he went to in creating back stories for his team of ex-military freedom fighting bats from Corsica is inspiring. He started with the facts of the Corsican biota and chose his characters and the nature of their fighting techniques from there. He wrote character bios and a short story about the origins of the team which I then turned into the game’s numbers and skills list. This was not what I expected when we offered “we will work with you to create a mercenary crew” as the Commodore backer level, but it ended up being very nice to collaborate with my father on this project.

Wet Ink Games has more products to release and more games in the works, so keep watching the skies for more!

100 Years Since the October Revolution

100 Years Since the October Revolution Today is the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik coup which brought them to power in Russia. If you have heard of the October Revolution, that was today. Yes, in November because Russia was still on the Julian calender and it was 14 days out of date by 1917. All this year, I have been following the time line of the Russian Revolution day by day. I’ve put up almost daily posts about the events on my Facebook page. I’m sure there are lots of articles about the revolution being published today, but since I’ve been following the 100th anniversary of the events all year I’ve had a long time to “watch” the way the whole Russian Revolution played out since the Tsar was first deposed back in March. I want to speak just a little bit about what I’ve learned and what lessons, if any, there might be for today.

I’ve asked myself over and over again; why were the Bolsheviks successful? They weren’t even the largest communist party in Russia and compared to the Russian population they were statistically insignificant. So, how did Lenin and Trotsky and all the rest pull off the coup? There is no doubt they were all committed revolutionaries willing to do anything. They were also very violent men who shed no tears for anyone who had to be killed to accomplish their goals. This doesn’t seem to be enough to explain the Revolution, though. There are committed, violent people who managed to make a mess or cause a scene all the time who are duly arrested and eliminated from polite society. Since the 1990s this has been the story in America over and over again. The bombers at Oklahoma City and Boston and those who attacked on 9/11 did not end America.

The thing I have seen over and over again by following the Russian Revolution day by day is that the structure of Russian civil society was so weak it had almost no resiliency at all. There were so few institutions other than the military and the Tsar’s bureaucracy. When moral was reduced to almost nothing by constant reversals in the Great War and the Tsar removed from power there were no other sources of authority for the Russian people to look to. I am thinking of the sort of people who regularly appear as talking heads on documentaries on news programs and on interview shows. Academics, sports figures, artists, politicians, entertainers, managers of charities; Russia had almost none of those kind of people nor the social institutions they represent.

Within the realm of government, after the abdication of the Tsar, the vacuum of power was filled by whomever could elbow their way in. The first new government formed by the politicians who had served under the Tsar was immediately opposed by a rival organization of political organizers who had been previously barred from politics altogether. Both of these groups had almost no experience with politics because Russia had only had politicians for twelve at that point. The two sides functioned as rival governments and were so hostile to each other the effect was for reasonable people on both sides to conclude they could do no good and left the stage. Each new vacuum was simply filled with progressively more oppositional leaders. I’m oversimplifying things quite a bit, but the pattern is clear. Those in power sought to accommodate a vocal minority, such compromises delegitimized those in power in the eyes of those opposed to compromise and they left the government, in effect growing the relative influence of the tiny minority. This happened over and over again until at the bottom of the barrel Lenin and the Bolsheviks were left as the only people who still wanted the job of leading the country. When the coup happened, those left to complain no longer had the power to do so.

Outside of government it seems everyone simply watched the power struggle unfold. The government had such little impact on the daily lives of people they concluded nothing happening in the capital would really impact them. It didn’t really impact them until the Bolsheviks won and began to spread their influence outside the capitol at the point of rifles. Again I am over-simplifying. The weakness of Russian institutions seems to have left the people of 1917 with the impression there wasn’t much worth fighting for. Not until soldiers showed up looking for the peasants’ grain did opposition to the Bolshevik regime really begin.

This year this story of the Russian Revolution has played out for me against the backdrop of the vitriolic political situation in America. It’s like watching one movie projected onto the front of a screen while another plays out projected against the back of the screen. Of course things don’t line up perfectly and there are certainly differences in degree. Yet there is some kind of harmony between them for me. There are lessons to learn. Every time I feel apathetic about the state of my nation’s politics I have to check myself. Apathy and fatigue more than anything else led to the victory of the Bolsheviks. It was more a slow, sad stepping away from power by all the other possible contenders than it was some glorious victory for the Bolsheviks.

That for me, then, is the lesson of the October Revolution 100 years later. Don’t give up on politics. Don’t give up on civil society. Don’t quit participating in the cultural institutions which make up a healthy society. We have something here which absolutely is worth fighting for.

A Review: Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane

3 of 5 stars.

When reading about the Kennedy assassination, the idea of conspiracy and cover-up are always waiting in the wings even if the author doesn’t mention it. I figure it is best to go ahead and embrace that fact. As part of my reading, I what to read the best evidence from those who disagree with the official story. The first stop has to be Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment. It appeared the year after the Warren Commission Report and proceeds from the supposition that any truth the Commission uncovered was not in the Report itself, but in the 26 volumes of recorded testimonies and statements made to the Commission’s legal team. Lane’s book, if nothing else, is a source for some of these extended interviews which offer readers a wider sample of what people said to the Commission. This quote from near the end of the book serves as a good abstract of Rush to Judgment:

“The Commission reviewed the testimony of 552 witnesses. Some of the testimony was inconsistent with other testimony, in sum or in part, and it was necessary for the Commission to evolve a standard for assessing it. I believe that it did so: testimony compatible with the theory of Oswald as the lone assassin was accepted, even when incredible, while incompatible testimony, no matter how creditable, was rejected.” p. 395

Mark Lane was hired by the Oswald family to represent Lee Oswald’s interests to the Warren Commission. Since there could not be a true trial owing to Oswald being dead, Lane acted as his defense attorney to the extent the Commission allowed. Having seen the sausage get made, so to speak, after the Commission issued its Report, Lane felt it was his duty to point out how far from “beyond a reasonable doubt” the Commission had actually proved its case. Lane points out time and again how key witnesses for the Commission would not have survived cross-examination. Witnesses frequently changed their stories and sometimes were led by Commissioner questions and other times all-but admitted to being coached by lawyers for the Commission. He also quotes numerous ways in which the Dallas police and Federal government representatives gave statements to the press which would have hindered a fair trial.

Lane attacks virtually every element of the Commission’s conclusions. Playing the defense attorney, Lane seeks to show the bullets which hit Kennedy weren’t fired from behind. They weren’t fired by Oswald. They weren’t fired by the rifle found on the sixth floor of the building where Oswald worked. The rifle found didn’t belong to Oswald. Lane does not present alternative evidence, he is only trying to poke holes in the Commission’s arguments using evidence collected by the Dallas police and Federal investigators which the Commission didn’t quote in its Report. If Lane has a coherent alternate theory about what happened in this book it seems to be there was a shooter of some sort on the sixth floor, but also another behind the fence at the top of the infamous knoll. Neither of these two shooters was Oswald, who was out front of the building at the time.

Sometimes Lane mounts an effective defense, other times less so. Take a couple short examples. He is pretty convincing when describing how the rifle tests, supposedly performed under similar conditions to the day of the assassination, were actually from a different height and a different distance than from the Depository window to presidential limo. “Could Oswald have made the shots?” has always been a pretty important question so maybe it is important to know the shot wasn’t actually repeated by the Commission. A weaker point by Lane is the medical report which estimated a 60 degree angle of entry for the wound in Kennedy’s back proves the shot came from too high up to have come from sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. I read that and have to ask what is more likely; the medical report is wrong about the angle or a shot was fired from some imaginary sniper’s nest high enough above the street that a 60 degree angle was created? I must conclude, as the Commission did, that the medical report was inaccurate on this point.

Lane does his best work throwing question on exactly what happened (and when) that led to the death of Dallas police patrolman J. D. Tippit in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. The Commission’s reconstructed escape route from downtown is shown by Lane to go well beyond what can actually be proven. From the unfair police line ups where Oswald was picked as the man seen fleeing the scene of Tippit’s murder, to the conflicting witness statements in the bus and taxi Oswald supposedly rode to the fact two types of bullets were found in Tippit’s body; there are holes in a narrative the Commission simply papered over with heavy-handed lines like, “Nevertheless, the Commission has concluded...”

“Perhaps the Commission thought that if Oswald spent a single moment unaccounted for between the assassination and the time of his arrest, it would be unable to deal effectively with those rumors, current at the time, of Oswald’s participation in a conspiracy. Its criteria for investigating and accepting evidence were related less to the intrinsic value of the information, I believe, than to its paramount need to allay fears of conspiracy.” p. 175

I think Lane’s assessment of the Commission’s goal to “allay fears” is spot on. The Warren Commission Report presents a complete narrative of what happened on 22-24 November 1963 and comes as close to answering the question “why?” as they can, considering Oswald was killed. To reach this clear narrative, they left out some of the details. In essence, they sought the “best fit” line of evidence through a lot of conflicting testimony. Lane spends this book pointing out that not all the data points are on the “best fit” line. While some of these points are interesting in their own right, it doesn’t really change the overall narrative. There will always be data which isn’t on the line. That alone doesn’t mean the Commission’s conclusions are wrong. To take one example Lane mentions over and over again. After the shots were fired many people converged on the area of the parking lot behind the fence at the top of the knoll. Many witnesses thought the shots came from this direction. Many others said they moved to or looked toward the area because others were already doing so. Lane assigns great importance to these initial reactions. My question, though, is what evidence was found there? No shell casings. No discarded rifle. No reports of people running from the scene. The knoll is a data point not on the line.

While Mark Lane’s book failed to convince me the official story is wrong, it did its job is raising questions about the Report and the bias of the Commission. I think Lane’s biggest success is in pointing to the evidence of how hard the Federal government and, even more so, the Dallas police worked to minimize their own failings as relates to the assassination. They should have done a better job to protect the president (and later Oswald) and they could have; they just didn’t because of their own assumptions and some gross miscommunication. I don’t think Lane has uncovered evidence of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, but it is interesting to see how much the Dallas police were working to save face by altering or omitting testimony and pushing time lines as much as possible and how much the Commission let them do so. To the extent there is a cover-up it is all in the mishandling of the evidence and witnesses after the event. That leads back to where this review started, the Commission couldn’t have proven its case in court, but for better or for worse, it never had to.

The last word will go to Lane himself, because I basically agree with him on this point. From page 207; “If historians are required to conjecture as to the meaning of the altered transcript,” or any of the other things which don’t quite add up, “the responsibility for such speculation must rest with the Commission.”

Wild Skies is Flying High

This past weekend we celebrated the official launch of Wild Skies: Europa Tempest with two gaming events. First was open gaming day at The Louisville Game Shop where we played Wild Skies with backers and gamers new to the game. Then at Nerd Louisville’s Slur Your Role XXXVII we ran two games and introduced even more of the local gamer crowd to our game. It was a great weekend. All the games went smoothly and everyone seemed to have fun. It is great encouragement to see people new to the game and the system jump right in and get how everything works. It is very satisfying to have the printed book in hand to show off art, call for random rolls from our tables and read out the bonuses listed for all the skills. We got to answer additional questions about the game from a good number of people who came to check it out. All this bodes well for the future of the game.

Brandon and I are working to put our book out there in as many places as possible. It’s time for some shameless self-promotion!

You can take a narrated tour of the printed proof for yourself. We will be making some more videos in time, so watch that space.

Wild Skies got a nice introduction from Geek Watch.

We appeared on the weekly #RPGnet creator live chat and our conversation with the folks there has been archived. It was a two hour chat and we got into all aspects of Wild Skies including inspirations, game mechanics, the setting and what comes next. RPGnet is a registered trademark of Skotos Tech, used with their permission.

Brandon appeared on a podcast by the fine folk of Creative Play.

We have also been featured on the blog of the Indie Game Developers Network. We are members of IGDN and Wild Skies: Europa Tempest will be for sale at GenCon at the IGDN booth (#2437). You can get your copy there. IGDN’s blog will be featuring member’s products throughout the run up to GenCon so check back to see what other exciting things are happening in the world of small-scale games production.

That’s everything I know about so far, but Wet Ink Games has more events and podcast recordings scheduled so there will be more to report in time.

The Launch of Something

Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale! It has been almost two years since the KickStarter, over three since I started work on my parts of the rules system and something like seven years since Brandon and I first cooked up the setting. We have PDF copies for download right now. We are getting the proofs of the hardcopy version and there will be both hardcover and softcover copies available soon.

There are a lot of reasons to be happy about reaching this point. First off, I have to say, the book looks great! I keep saying it looks like a “real” game book. We made a role playing game! I give a lot of credit to Knox, who did all the layout work. He took it upon himself to make the flavor texts I wrote look like the type of document they are supposed to look like. He played with fonts and layouts to make advertisements, medical reports and letters look like pieces of ephemera from the world and not just descriptions of this fictional world. The art is another big part of the success of this product. To work with so many talented artists and get such good pieces to illustrate the concepts and rules adds more than I can tell to the overall impression we have managed to put together a real product.

This first product for Wet Ink Games has been a non-stop education process for myself and Brandon. I’ve written manuscripts before, and seen my words published by game companies in the past. This is, in fact, the third book-length project I have written with Brandon. All the editing work was stuff we were used to, even if there was more to do this time around. Beyond that it was all unknown paths for me. Before now, my part was only to get the words on the page. I’ve never had to (maybe I should say “gotten to”) work with artists before. I didn’t have to think about layout. There was no process of back and forth about column length and where information appeared on a page. I didn’t have to pay attention to details like whether a title was underlined or bold. That was always someone else’s job. Putting the Europa Tempest book out there means we have overcome all the challenges we didn’t know we would have when we decided to do this book. I know it’s an achievement.

I hesitate to add a “but” to this post, but there is a “but.” Firstly, this Wild Skies project has been a big effort and has taken up so much of the background (and sometimes the foreground) of my life for years. I know getting this far is not the end; it’s just one step in the process. We aren’t finished with this first book until the hard copies are out. The KickStarter isn’t fulfilled until be do a couple more supplements, which are already in process. Then there’s the promotion events we have lined up. Provided all this goes well, we have plans for the next book in the Wild Skies game line and plenty of ideas for more books after that. This no time to stop and celebrate. There is no end, nothing ever ends. Secondly, and I want to be brief about this one, there is something very melancholy for me about seeing all the work of the last three years boiled down to a link and a price tag. I’m not sure I understand my own feelings on this, but there it is.

To bring the mood back up, let me once again say, Wild Skies: Europa Tempest is for sale now! Pick it up from DriveThruRPG.
Follow the project on KickStarter.

A Review: The Warren Commission Report

4 of 5 stars.
For the last few years I have always been reading a series of books on a set theme in the background while I read other books. I read about a dozen books about the sinking of HMS Titanic and the destruction of Pompeii in the past. Now I have begun a series about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I read Profiles in Courage which is by Kennedy, but I didn’t have much to say about it. I have just finished the report of the official investigation into the assassination: The Warren Commission Report. A text-only copy (with frequent OCR processing errors) is readily available.

How can one really even review this report? It is the text of the official explanation so I have heard most of the story before. If you happen never to have heard the official story before, it goes like this: President Kennedy died of a single gunshot wound to the back of his head. This shot and (only) two others were made by a single shooter from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. That shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald. The bullet fragments in the presidential limousine were fired by the gun found on the sixth floor. That gun was bought by, shipped to and photographed with Oswald months before the assassination. No evidence of material, logistical or planning assistance of any kind from any source was uncovered. Jack Rudy killed Oswald two days later for his own reasons and had no previous connection to Oswald or any other conspiracy. I didn’t find any unreasonable leaps in logic or gaping holes in the Commission’s theories given the information presented. Re-examinations of the case usually start here. All alternate theories must be mounted in opposition to this body of collected information.

What a massive body of information the Report is, too! It is 888 pages including footnotes and is based on what must be thousand of pages of sworn testimony and depositions by eye-witnesses, experts, government officials, and family members and acquaintances of Oswald and Rudy. Since I watch a lot of non-fiction crime shows I am familiar with fingerprint evidence, microscopic comparisons of firing pins and bullets, and question document examination. All of these were used to match the evidence to Oswald. All of these lines of evidence are explained in detail for people who in 1964 had seen fewer episodes of Forensic Files than I have. A bullet matched to a gun, matched to a suspect, who was seen in the area before, during and after the assassination is strong evidence. Plenty of people have been convicted of murder on less. Though, to be fair, and the Report itself points this out, since Oswald was dead by that time the Commission was not bringing evidence to criminal trial so not all of the evidence gathered quite rises to that high level of proof. Case closed!

Unless all the evidence is manufactured, of course... In many ways, reading this report in the 2017, after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, after the Watergate scandal, after the Iran-Contra affair, after actual impeachment hearings against a sitting president and that whole “we were wrong about WMD” misadventure it becomes impossible not to think of the possibility the Commission was lied to. The Report makes constant mention of whom the information reported comes from. About half of the information is “according to the FBI” or “according to the Secret Service” or “according to the Dallas Police” or (even!) “according to the Soviet Union’s embassy in Mexico City.” Are these really trustworthy sources of information?! Maybe in 1964 they were. The Commission certainly had faith in the reports and records turned over to them by other government agencies. As the biographies of the commission members make clear, some of them were literally born in the Nineteenth Century! There was criticism of the trusting nature of the Commission even at the time. Overall, it seems that was a simpler age and there is something beautifully old-fashioned about the Report and its tone of assurance.

Speaking of beauty, the part of the Report I find most striking is the domestic portrait it paints of Lee Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina. (Since her family was from Minsk, she’s probably Belarusian, but these intra-USSR distinctions were not the concern of the Cold War-era Commission.) After concluding Oswald was the assassin, a large part of the report and a very long appendix (Appendix 13) deals with all the minutia of his life. Perhaps the Commission was intending to encourage disdainful pity, but to me, he comes across as very nearly sympathetic. He never really succeeded at anything in his life and he ended up bitter about it. Born into humble circumstances and never able to rise above them, he was a loner and a constant reader who had big ideas he was never able to put legs under. I see something of myself in that biography. He became disillusioned of the American system, but after living in the USSR, he learned that wasn’t really any better. The only positive he took from Minsk was his marriage to Marina. They seem to have come to care for each other, but initially they both married to spite previous partners. I want to know much more about Marina. She is a major source of the Commission’s information on Lee, but she is not the focus of their investigation. After the Oswalds came to the US, Lee seems to have been searching for some way to make a big splash and become important in the political scene in the way young people often do. He was 24 at the time. He bought a gun. Missed a shot at a right-wing ex-general. He tried to start a pro-Cuba group and found no support. He tried to go to Cuba and they didn’t want him. Then he read on a certain Monday the President would be passing below his office window that Friday. He never got the advice Holden Caulfield did about living for a cause rather looking for a way to die for it. To me, that’s just another tragic part of what is an American tragedy on almost every level.

A Review: Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

3 out of 5 stars.
Ultimately, this was an enjoyable book, but only from a certain point of view. First off, let me be very clear: Last and First Men is not a novel. It is presented as a history lesson from our very distant future; what it really is, is a meditation on the nature of humanity. If that doesn’t interest you, bail out now.
So, you are interested in what a fictional history of the future might reveal about human nature. Good. Science-fiction is often at its best when it is responding to the concerns of the present. The concerns of 1930, when Stapledon published this book, appear throughout. With the Great War still very recent history the near future is all about fear of another, even more destructive war. It is very tempting to read the first part of this book with an eye to grading Stapledon’s predictive powers. A land war involving Russia? Check. The inevitable triumph of the United States in the 20th Century? Check. China and America in conflict in the Pacific? Check. Human folly ultimately leading to the collapse of civilization? Well, maybe that one hasn’t come about just yet.
It is only with the rise of Second Man from the scattered savage tribes who survived the apocalypse that Stapledon’s goals with this book begin to become clear. Despite writing about particular future human individuals and describing their societies, he is not actually interested in telling a story about specific characters or even making a comparison between societies. He is writing about long-term trends in humanity. As a professor of psychology and philosophy he had a lot to say about those trends. In this Stapledon departs from any book I have read before. The story of Second and Third Man rather dragged for me, but by the time he began to discuss how Fourth Man, as enormous brains in jars were unable to understand the simple pleasures of touch, he had me hooked. By discussing what each new version of humanity was able to learn and able to accomplish Stapledon sketches a treatise on how to be a whole person. The most successful of Stapledon’s eighteen iterations of the species are the ones who master brain, brawn, emotion and community. As a treatise on this topic, I found it more interesting than any actual works of philosophy I have read (though I must admit, I haven’t read many).
I won’t describe the resonances I noticed between this book and speculative fiction by Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Sheffield, Carl Sagan, J. R. R. Tolkien and Arthur C. Clarke. Suffice it to say I think Stapledon was an influence on many other writers. Instead, I will quote one line which I think best captures what Stapledon was trying to do with this book. One of the Last Men describes the knowledge they have gained and likens it to the knowledge of the ancient mystics. However, they are not the same, “For while they are confident that the cosmos is perfect, we are sure only that it is very beautiful.” This is the line which has stuck with me in the weeks since I finished it. I find strange encouragement from the possibility of seeing the beauty in the world despite all the tragedy. This is a theme which resonates today as much as it must have in 1930.
So, while Last and First Men isn’t exactly good it is very interesting. Stapledon is addressing ancient questions like: “what is the mind?” and “what does it mean to be human?” By putting humankind in so many bodies over millions of years, these questions are explored from many angles. If you want to see some answers from the early 20th Century, by all means read this book.