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Flying Visits

In 1932, Olaf Stapledon, British philosopher, science fiction author & Conscientious

Objector during World War 1, wrote the Last men in London.

- Though this is a work of fiction, it does not pretend to be a novel. It has no herothere

is no plot. I imagine that a member of a much more developed human species living on

Neptune two thousand million years hence, enters into our mindsUsing one of us as a

mouthpiece, he contrives to tell us something of his findings

Men and Woman of Earth! Brief Terrestrials, of that moment when the First Great

Human Species hung in the crest of its attainment, wavelike poised for downfall, I a

member of the last Human Species address you from an age two thousand million years

after your day, from an age as remotely future to you as the Earths beginning is remotely

past

No influence of ours can save your species from destruction. Nothing could save it but a

profound change in your own nature; and that cannot be. Wandering among you, we

move always with fore-knowledge of the doom which your own imperfection imposes on

you.

Even if we could, we would not change it: ofr it is a theme required in the strange music

of the spheres

In the Streets of London I was in a town. A great red vehicle, roaring and trumpeting,was in the act of swooping upon meClearly I had struck the right period, but who was

I? Surely this must be the young man whom I sought. I shall not reveal his name, I shall

therefore refere to him simply as Paul

Paul was gravely agitatedEvidently I had come upon Paul in the midst of his great

crisisever since his childhood I had been tampering with Pauls mind so as to make

him more sensitive to the momentous issues which were at stake

Paul was now passing a shop which bore a panel of mirrors between its windows. Such

mirrors I had often noticed in your cities, cunning devices for attracting the attention of

your amusingly and fatally self-congratulatory species. Paul slackened his pace and gazed

in to the mirror.

Only for a moment did Paul regard himself. With a blush and an impatient jerk he turned

away, and looked anxiously to see if anyone had been watching him. Immediately, with a

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deeper blush, he faced the mirror again, and pretended to be searching for grit in his eye.

Amongst the crowd of passers-by, two figures were approaching. The young man was in

khaki. The girl clung to his arm with demure possessiveness. He did not notice Paul, but

she caught Paul's eyes as he was turning toward the mirror. In the fraction of a second

that elapsed before his eyes could free themselves, he saw that she dismissed him as no

true male, that she thanked God her man was a soldier, and that she was ready to do her

bit by yielding herself unconditionally to him. Real tears welled in Paul's eyes to wash

out the imaginary grit