I love Doris Lessing! I have read many of her works of fiction but, I am new to her essays. I was blown away by her honest "bird's eye view " of our world. She has the insight to look around us and truely see what the world has become and how we got here. Her points are simple yet, seem to escape most of us. Reading Prisions will give a first time reader the oppertunity to experience the witt and prose of a master. After finishing try The Fifth Child!

In straightforward, unsentimental language, Doris Lessing gives a message we all need to hear. Reading 'Prisons...' will take about an hour of your life but may change it forever.

I teach college sophomores in a Humanities course where we spend 4 semesters trying to answer the question "What does it mean to be human?" Starting in the spring of 2003, I will do my best to see that students completing the course have read this enlightening piece by Lessing. Her critique of "groupthink" has never been more relevant. In a world where multiple brands of fundamentalism seem to be gaining ground every day, with marked influence on the under 30 set, I believe that Lessing is a must read.

Only Doris Lessing could have written this book. She's so brilliant, so insightful, and cats have played a big part in her life, so of course she eventually chooses to write about this.
This slim little volume is packes with hilarity, pathos, saddness, insight, stories, and philosophy.
And there are cat characters and one liners that will stay with you always.
Top billing.

The negative review of Particularly Cats is pretty funny; it's clear the reviewer was expecting just a book about cats, not a Doris Lessing book about cats. I'm sure by now she's assuaged her emotions with the standard sentimental fare she was looking for. DL is not to everyone's taste. As for me, I found this book very absorbing. DL expertly observes the lives of several cats she has owned, describing and interpreting their unique temperaments and actions. Interwoven with the narrative is all sorts of fascinating speculation on evolution, human (and cat) psychology, science...and I'm sure there are points floated briefly in her deceptively light prose that I missed. She never beats you over the head with her analysis, just as she never breast-beats over her emotions experienced while facing very difficult choices about her cats.

Particularly Cats opens in Africa, where DL grew up, and depicts a few incidents with cats that happened on her family's farm, all in the larger ecological context of hawks and their prey, wild cats, and adders who can blind you with a spit to the eye. Why is a cat programmed to expect 2/3 of her litter to die very quickly? What happens when humans upset this balance of nature? In Lessing's (true) story, her mother one year decides she can no longer bear redressing the imbalance herself, and in a chilling scene, the task devolves on her father. Later in the book we read of the consequences of spaying or neutering, the more favored, humane, modern method of population control, and the conflicting emotions Lessing experiences as she subjects her cats to the procedure.

Unlike the negative reviewer, I found Lessing's way of referring to the main characters in Particularly Cats as "grey cat" and "black cat" refreshing and amusing. Refreshing because it helps stave off cutesiness that could interfere with the tale, and amusing because "grey cat" is a very effective way of undercutting the vanity and unique beauty of the cat she refers to as "grey cat." (As for "black cat", it is merely a plain description of the cat she refers to as such.)

Lessing briefly touches upon topics that beg further elaboration and research on the part of the reader. For instance, she remarks on the attitudes of some scientist friends of hers who are also cat owners, and how they change their story depending on whether they're among fellow scientists or among fellow cat owners. Observant cat owners, notes Lessing, are more advanced in the study of cat behavior and psychology than scientists, but scientists read only "important" scientific publications, not the "unscientific" cat-lover rags that contain cat-owner's surprising findings. This off-hand, throwaway remark is far-reaching in its implications...could it perhaps be extended to say that scientists in other fields pursue their study with blinders on? I don't know if she means to offer that connection, but Lessing does remark in the intro to _Mara and Dann_, after relating what for shorthand I'll call an instance of family ESP: "This sort of thing happens often in families but seldom in laboratories."

Anyway, I have to say I'm a huge fan of Lessing, I loved _Particularly Cats_, and I'm not myself a cat owner. So you may take my Highly Recommended with a spoonful of salt.

A very emotional book. The addition of the new chapter about Butchkin, who now is old but appears earlier in the book in his youth, is worth the whole book. A sensitive and powerful description of the emotions of the cat and his owner's reactions to his aging, illness and recovery.

Owning cats is often a painful experience, when they get old and sick. It's part of owning a cat. This book is a wonderful journey through many cats lives and Doris' profound love of them.

As a woman growing older myself, I read this book to understand better the feelings and thoughts a woman might experience being in love at a later stage in life. To this end, I was not disappointed. Doris Lessing explores the meaning of love, not just infatuation, but also the loves of friendship, marital love and brotherly love and the their incumbent duties, as well as the (ab)use of love for personal gain or entertainment. It may be true, as some reviewers suggest, that people who have been untouched by love may not appreciate this book as much as those who have, but I think anyone interested in the meaning of love in all its aspects and across generations can get a lot out of reading this book. The main criticism I have is that while the story itself is about the staging of a play, I found the characters in the book and the aspects of love they portray rather over-staged, too. It is as if no character has been wasted in an attempt to explore the meaning of love, and this is a bit tiresome at times. On the other hand, this may be the point - that all people are in some ways generating or responding to the love or lack of love around them. One book I would recommend to readers of Love Again is Love Letters (an anthology) by Antonia Fraser.

Lessing uses the device of a theater play to provide both the bewitching and the kaleidoscopic variety necessary to a thorough examination of love and its inevitable attendant, pain. Just as the characters of another, much older, play about bewitchment and love reveal themselves more fully only when in the throes of love's terrible enchantment, so here are the various characters anatomized in their different loves. And, Lessing seems to say, each love harks back to childhood, to those terrible (and thankfully forgotten) anguishes that marked us deeply and ineluctably.

For all the weight of its subject matter, this is a delicate book. The conclusions Lessing has drawn are painted for us vividly yet not crudely; nor does she retreat behind a veil of sophistication or good-humour. Instead she takes us on a descent into hell. It is debatable whether anyone who has not experienced something of the sort will be able to resonate with the descriptions Lessing provides. As she herself writes, it is just "words on paper" unless you already know, have already sensed the desolation that lies just behind the outer layers of many people's lives.

Her portraits are generally sympathetic, for all that this is an intensely personal book. Much to be recommended, but not a comfortable read.

"Love, Again" is one of Doris Lessing's "later" novels and it focuses on an older protagonist caught in the snares of romantic love. Sarah Durham is sixty-five and describes herself as not having been in love in decades. All that changes when she, the widow of a founding member of "The Green Bird," a successful London theatre company, decides to stage an avant-garde operatic play concerning the enigmatic Julie Vairon. Vairon lived most of her life in an isolated French village, writing music and painting and was virtually unknown until her "discovery" in the 1970s.

It is Julie Vairon's tortured love life that really interests Sarah, however, even more than does her strange and eerie music. Vairon was romantically involved with two Frenchmen, yet neither romance had a happy ending. Vairon did, however, find love at last, or what passed for love, only to have everything end both mysteriously and tragically.

As Sarah and her company of actors at "The Green Bird" begin work on their rendition of the life of Julie Vairon, Julie's own eroticism seems to be working its magic on the cast. Everyone seems to be falling in love with everyone else...and some of the romances are of the most improbable imaginable.

Although someone not familiar with Doris Lessing's writing may think the above premise sounds more than a little silly, let me assure you that it is not. You won't find any lovesick fools running around in this book. Rather than reaching the heights of ecstasy, the lovers in "Love, Again" are anguished souls who become involved in relationships that don't have even a ghost of a chance of working. And Lessing, a superlative writer, makes us feel the grief and sense of loss experienced by her characters. We don't laugh at them; we grieve with them.

Stylistically, "Love, Again" is a different sort of Doris Lessing novel. It is intricate, very internal and reflective. It is also something of a double narrative, a literary device that I, personally, like very much. Lessing very cleverly and skillfully lets the melancholy and tragic ghost of Julie Vairon haunts the love lives of her present-day characters. And the life of Julie Vairon is the perfect background on which to tell the story of Sarah and company.

As much as this book concentrates on love, however, love is not its central theme. The book revolves around Sarah Durham and how she copes with her own sexuality and attractiveness in light of the inevitability of growing older. This is subject matter that Lessing has delved into before: in "The Summer Before the Dark" Kate Brown was a woman attempting to deal with the first pangs of growing older and lost youth. Sarah, however, is older and seemingly beyond the changes that sent Kate into a literal panic, but she does have problems of her own to deal with.

Sarah's problems are the most problematic area of "Love, Again." While I can readily accept the idea of one "thirtysomething" man falling madly in love with Sarah, the idea of three doing the very same thing is a little too much...no matter how great Sarah looks or how charming she is. Lessing, however, is such a good writer that she can make us suspend our disbelief and buy into the proposition that three gorgeous and very sought-after men are madly pursuing Sarah. It may sound a bit preposterous in this review, but I'm not Doris Lessing. In her hands, it comes off just fine.

As for the ending, I'm not going to give it away, but let's just say that Lessing is too melancholy to buy into the happily-ever-after scenario and she doesn't write fairy tales. The ending is satisfying and fits the book perfectly.

"Love, Again," is more than enough to satisfy anyone who is looking for an engrossing story with characters to really care about and believe in. I wish I could find more books like this one.

Only non-travel guide about Africa in my local library branch when I got back, so I picked it up. Certainly a very interesting picture of the slow death of British colonialism, despite Zimbabwean independence in 1980. And the successive trips provide a living view of changing attitudes and opinions, both of European expatriates and Nationals. Her inner dialogue of changes, good and bad (both very grey categories), is very informative as well.

That said, there is only a loose thread of continuing story that flows through the entire text. Granted, she's documenting her travels, but it seems a bit more perspective (or a more involved editor) could have helped give the book a bit more flow. I'd recommend it quickly to those interested in an authentic look at Africa, but probably not for those looking for a quick read during lunches.

I read The Fifth Child several years ago for a school assignment. I remember being very into it and not being able to put it down. I kept thinking, this book is such a thrill, how could it have been on my class list? I'm sure I was able to pull together some obvious themes in the paper I wrote, but the truth is this: In the end, after having read dozens of books of various genre over the years, this one is not one that stands out in my mind. I cannot recall any one particular thought or conclusion that I had upon reading it. To me, it simply was a chilling story of a mother with a congenitally freaky child.

The Fifth Child is a remarkable book. The story of a young couple who have a dangerous, violent child and the consequences of this, particularly for the mother, is chilling. What do they do with him, especially after it becomes clear that he is a danger to the family? How far can mother love go when your child is a "monster?" Note the child's last name is a variation of "love it"...as in must the mother love him/it? The book is a thought provoking study of this problem, as well as a commentary on the society in which the child was born. He was born into an upper middle class London family at the height of the Thatcher era. It is no coincidence that this monstrosity seems most at home in the company of other violent, inarticulate youths who are (frighteningly) like him. One of Doris Lessing's most readable novels, I highly recommend The Fifth Child.

I was surprised to find the "experts" listing "The Fifth Child" in a horror category. This is Lessing as we have come to know her style of bringing you into the characters' lives quickly. You find yourself passing judgements alongside the fictional characters. Though the book starts as a dream of being different by upholding the traditional values of family, it quickly turns into an understanding of the dynamics of family and friends who, facing an unknown, turn their backs and pass judgement on a loving couple who soon turn their backs on each other to preserve each one's value system. A family torn apart by what is considered the "curse" of the fifth child to this family who wanted children to the rafters, is a family you can identify with. A discovery into the heart of human, and perhaps "un-human" experiences of dear Mother Nature. I read it in an afternoon and wanted more.

I took over a month to finish reading this BORING BOOK because everytime I started a page I would fall asleep in the middle of that same page.It is such a shame that I HAD NO CHOICE BUT TO READ THIS [STUFF] because I had to do this book for one of my most important exams.Mrs.Lessing must have been going through some sort of madness or sickness I assume while she was writing this sorry excuse for a novel.God help us all who must read this book!

We meet Martha Quest as a resentful 15 year old girl, growing up on a farm in Africa. As noted adequately here, this is the first book in her Children of Violence series-- held by many to be Lessings most important body of work (with the exception of _The Golden Notebook_).

I'm one of these Lessing fans from back in the day when _The Golden Notebook_ changed my life, and I haven't read much of her other work. I was impressed by Martha Quest-- it falls in the category of our classic coming-of-age novels, and as such stands well on its own as a novel. Lessing's Martha is at times so frustrating you want to shake her, but I think that's typical for the age of the character portrayed. Martha is all sharp edges-- she can't seem to fit with her parents, the men around her, the people with whom she tries to interact. With the blindness of her age, she's able to acutely feel how hard she has it, without really feeling the struggle of others around her who may have an even more difficult time. By turns infuriating and attractive, it can be painful to read Quest's story precisely because so it's so human as to be disturbingly familiar.

A should-read book.

All pleasure: fast, furious, and completely modern. One of the best of the past century.

Doris Lessings's 24th novel, "The Sweetest Dream" concerns itself with people from whom we never seem to find escape, even if we want to...family members.

This is a book that many people may not like. It's fairly long, not divided into chapters and, for the most part, lacks a plot. Rather than plot, Lessing chooses to concentrate of the needs of family members instead...immediate family members and extended family members. This is a book filled with "issues" and each character seems to have his or her opinion on each and every one of them. If the book seems too long, consider this: the pages are filled with so much dialogue during the discussion of these "issues" that they (the pages) simply fly by. It really doesn't take long to read "The Sweetest Dream."

I wouldn't say that this book is "about" anyone in particular, although its heart and soul is Frances Lennox a British actress and writer, who, at a very young age, made the mistake of marrying Johnny, a devout communist. Although she attempted to correct that mistake, she seems to only become mired even more deeply in Johnny's troubled life and times.

Frances and her two teenaged boys are at home much of the time while Johnny cavorts in various parts of the world. He only seems to light long enough to deposit yet another person on Frances' doorstep for her to take care of. (The latest being Johnny's current wife.) Frances finally finds a little peace and solace in the home of Johnny's widowed mother, Julia. This is a house filled with misfits: Frances' and Johnny's sons' friends and Sylvia, the troubled, anorxic daughter of Johnny's current wife. Although Frances dreams of the theatre, the need for cash seems to trap her in the world of journalism instead. Meantime, she's become the "family" caretaker and caregiver, much to Julia's distress.

Why doesn't Frances tell the selfish and self-centered Johnny when to quit? After all, his own mother thinks he's a cad, a brute, a loser. Frances, though, just keeps on lavishing love while her dreams of the theatre and a real man by her side seem to be slipping away. To find out whether they really do or not, you'll have to read the book.

While "The Sweetest Dream" is a very well-written novel with a premise that seems to have all the requirements, as I read, I realized that something was missing from the narrative. It is passion, fire. The characters seem almost defeated from the start. While believable, they are somewhat flat. I think Lessing needed to delve more deeply into their hearts and souls. It is only in the book's final development that Lessing really lets us care. And no, it isn't too late.

In the final analysis, however, "The Sweetest Dream," though a little flat, is still a wonderful book and one any fan of Doris Lessing absolutely should not miss.

While there are many critiques of the radical left written by conservatives (often as dogmatic and out of touch with reality as their targets), this is a critique from a liberal/moderate left viewpoint that should touch a chord to people who are concerned about the injustices in the world while knowing that there are no simple solutions. The title of the book refers to the dream world that will come after the "glorious revolution."

This book is in the form of a narrative about a group of people from the sixties until our time. The plot is rather weak and several of the characters are extreme stereotypes but they and the story serve as a vehicle to chronicle the social evolutions of the last 40 years and it is there where Lessing is at her best giving wonderful snapshots of the times while providing her sharp social commentary. The story takes place in London and a fictional African country that seems to stand for Zimbabwe. There are strong sketches of the suffering of the African people, emphasizing the role of the local corrupt despots in contributing to their misery. Lessing does not use the term, but I have heard Africans describing their new elite as the "black British". Her descriptions do justice to the term. She provides devastating pictures of the radical left, both of the old time Communists and of the "new" left. Comrade Johnny is as irresponsible a husband and father as one can possibly imagine and at the same time an unrepentant Stalinist who completely disregards reality. His dogmatism may seem unreal but I had the misfortune of knowing such people when I was growing up (outside the U.S.) and they are indeed as dogmatic as Lessing describes them (and often almost as irresponsible as comrade Johnny). The main sympathetic characters are three women, unselfish in the extreme. Johnny's mother Julia, his first wife Frances, and his stepdaughter Sylvia provide the models for women who keep families and societies together in each of three generations. There is also an African woman, Rebecca, who plays a similar role in a mission and eventually she dies from AIDs transmitted to her by her husband. Sylvia works as a doctor in an African mission hospital and she provides the main link between the two geographical locales. Most of the male characters are unsympathetic, from the corrupt African officials to the globe trotting agents of "philanthropic" organizations that tend to do more harm than good. However, there are several female villains as well. One of them, Rose, is a vitriolic yellow journalist as self-centered and irresponsible as the male villains. Lessing provides devastating and funny sketches of her and other extreme feminists. With all her feminism Rose complains that "political correctness" is plot of the American imperialists to take over the world. Another ultra-feminist comes across the statement that the "female mosquito transmits malaria" and rails against the "fascist" establishment that she thinks is responsible for the statement.

Because political and social commentary is a big (and the strongest) component of this book the reader's own political orientation will affect the enjoyment of the book. If you think that Stalin has been misunderstood, or if you think that social problems will be solved by posting the ten commandments in schools, this is not a book for you.

This story centers around three women, Julia, Frances and Sylvia, each one a very strong central character interweaving with each other throughout the book..I enjoyed the book and found it exceptional..in some instances the plot did fall a bit, but the tempo picked up again quickly..I feel it brought home the real situation of the poor in a third world country that very few of us in the affluent west realize ..the tragedy of a complete family being stricken by AIDS which at that time period was not recognized as a disease, but a evil spell..cast by shamans of local tribes..Lessing the fine writer that she is proves with age one gets better!!

"The Grass is Singing" is at once a simple story and a complex psychological and social analysis. It is a commentary on race relations in imperial Rhodesia, and an exploration of the timeless dichotomy of culture and nature.

The book is perhaps most interesting when the author describes the ideology of white colonists in Africa. In particular, the idea that extreme racism develops out of a need to justify economic exploitation is poignantly posed. It is not that whites oppress blacks because they hate them, rather they hate them because they have to oppress them and deny their human worth to maintain their standard of living. Thus, newcomers from Britain must be taught how to deal with and feel about the natives, and poor whites are despised because they seem to blur the color lines.

The main characters of this book are the Turners, Dick and Mary. Dick is an unsuccessful farmer, who lacks the mindset and risk-taking behavior of a commercial farmer-entrepreneur. Always in debt, always facing bad harvests, he still manages to live on because he finds fulfillment in his work and feels attached to the farm. Mary, on the other hand, is fundamentally unhappy with life. She was used to life in the city, working as a secretary, visiting clubs and movie theaters. She marries Dick simply because she realizes her friends think she should marry, and her meeting with the harsh realities of the countryside devastate her. Mary hates the sun, the natives, the bush; in short, everything associated with nature as opposed to culture. In the end, her unhappiness overcomes her to the point of full-fledged psychosis.

This book contains many insights, and Lessing describes the natural and social settings very vividly. Her detached exposition of the values of white farmers is very effectful (in this respect, I was reminded of Turgenev's quiet depiction of the misery of the Russian peasantry as a 'sideshow' in his stories). On the whole, however, I would have to say that the book failed to live up to my expectations, which had been raised by the captivating first chapter. We dwell inside Mary Turner's head for 200 pages, and unfortunately she is a spoiled and rather boring woman who fails to engender much sympathy.

Though she is a renowned author, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook, generally thought to be her best work, I found garbled and depressing.

'The Grass is Singing' was written when she was much younger and more stable, but it is still depressing, dealing as it does with the appalling treatment of the blacks by the whites in Africa. The prejudice and cruelty Lessing evokes ring true,as does the characterization of Mary. Personally, I found it impossible to empathise or even sympathise with her, and wasn't exactly upset at her fate. It is Moses one feels sorry for.

Lessing is able to be at once detached and involved in the lives of her protaganists and is only judgemental by implication. The collapse of Dick and Mary's relationship is well delineated and inexorable. Her descriptive powers are impressive - Africa comes through very strongly and one can almost smell the dust and the rain and the blossom. A good read.

When a colonial woman with a not unconventional upbringing who is not the luckiest person, decides to go for broke and marries as she is getting on, what could happen?

The anatomy of the master servant bond is one of the main themes of this book. Before welfare systems, all cultures had master servant relationships as the rich employed servants. The master servant relationship was stark in colonial Africa. The masters had to know the natives so that they could get work out of them and a certain amount of loyalty but the masters in Africa also had to keep the natives down, almost like animals, so that they could remain the masters and the servants could remain servants.

The natives of course as servants, could also benefit as underdogs as all servants do, being loyal, friendly and pleasing but not above their masters. Mary in the book, starts with preconceptions about her relationship to the Africans, and as things get from bad to worse, she if faced with a mistress servant relationship going horribly wrong.

Her husband is a fool, tied to the land and unable to organise his ambitions or get anything out of his farm. She knows better, but luck is never on their side. One actually has a respect for Mary and her penetrative intelligence, but the book describes how this very human intelligence with its stiff attitudes (she marries when she understands people are sniggering about her behind her back, in any case, women at the time did not have much choice in this), breaks down, collapses utterly.

Harrowing, hot hot weather with the dry beauty of Africa described by a veteran. This is a book that unravels in your hand and is a literary masterpiece for a first novel.

Lessing describes herself as a colonist and is known to be unconventional and vaguely feminist. She displays a keen erudition of the issues, language and sights of her once native Africa - and brings it home.

This entire series is deplorable. The second book held slight interest, but as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the rest of the series. The ideas are insipid, overused, and uninspired. Long and not worth the effort.

This second volume of the Canopus in Argos: Archives quintet marks a radical break with the science-fictional style of the first book, Shikasta. Instead, it shares with the fourth, The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, a more mythical, allegorical presentation and an aching lyricism of style. In the Canopean universe, the various Zones correspond to states of spiritual being: in Shikasta, Zone Six is a kind of limbo where people wait to be reborn and where the Canopean agent Johor/George Sherban picks up the two who will join him on Earth as his sister and brother. Zone Three, in this second volume, is a tranquil and apparently untroubled realm where, nonetheless, the birth rate is declining and a certain lassitude has overcome the people. Canopus (named here only as "the Providers" who know what is best and must be obeyed) orders the queen of Zone Three, Al.Ith, to marry Ben Ata, the warrior king of Zone Four - an altogether poorer and cruder place. The bulk of the story follows the progress of this arranged marriage from resentful acceptance on both sides through practical working together to solve their realms' mutual difficulties, to the torments of jealous infatuation and out the other side - whereupon Ben Ata must marry the queen of Zone Five, a realm more primitive and deprived than his own, and Al.Ith has become a stranger to her people. But the Providers really do know best, and the three Zones (and Al.Ith, Ben Ata and the queen of Zone Five) continue to evolve, interpenetrate, and share with each other what is needed from themselves. The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five works equally well as cultural allegory, psychological myth or lyrical love story; it is also a pleasure to read.

I am afraid this book may turn out to have a limited audience: too literary and "unrealistic" for science-fiction fans, and too fantastic for literary types. Too bad, because this is a stupendous book, or rather, series of novels. Some may think it strange that an author with as high-brow a reputation as Doris Lessing would stoop to writing "space fiction" (her term), but she has been incorporating sci-fi elements in her fiction as far back as The Four-Gated City, and maybe farther, depending on your definitions. What is science fiction if not the use of extreme and imaginative settings to point out truths invisible in our crowded world? Science fiction encourages "thinking outside the box," a concept that Lessing has explored in a lifetime of ground-breaking work. What are we? What does it mean to be human? Is there more? Lessing hits these questions with a courageous mind and an arsenal of experience and imagination.

"The First and Last Men" has been praised for "containing enough material for hundreds of conventional science-fiction stories". I only wish there were at least one--conventional or other--science-fiction story in it. For this is a novel with no plot and no characters. We might call it a fictional history, but a history of England, for example, has largely to do with kings and queens and Cromwells--characters--, as a history of physics has largely to do with Newton, Einstein, and Bohr--characters. To a certain extent, the early part of the book tries to make up for this lack by
anthropomorphizing nations--nations behave as if they were persons. (Of course, you can get away with saying anything you like about nations this way, zzzzzzzzzzz.)

Wherefore no characters? It appears that this novel espouses an extreme form of anti-individualism, such that it seems to me a sort of reductio ad absurdum inadvertent argument in FAVOR of individualism. (By the bye, the novel itself calls capitalist exploitation of the masses "individualism", whereas I call
capitalist exploitation of the masses "corporate collectivism", rather the opposite.)

"The First and Last Men" was originally published in 1930 (or 1931; I can't remember), but its fictional history starts immediately after World War I, which is to say, the first part of its fictional history ought NOT to be fictional. The extent to which it misreads its own time is surprising and mystifying. Compare it to Hermann Hesse's "Steppenwolf", which accurately predicts the rise of Nazi-ism and a second world war, and was originally published in the mid-1920's. For that matter, compare it to Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", which was originally published in 1932 and remains very much on target.

In short, it seems to me, judged by any reasonable standard, this novel is simply awful. I'm guessing it has avoided excoriation only because it is fairly obscure. Read Stanislaw Lem instead.

Olaf Stapleton has made a novel, not just of science fiction, but of philosophy and the future of mankind. From the first man to the last, we follow mankind, how it develops, the problems it faces, not only in their changing environments, but also their social problems and the problems within mankind's mind. Sometimes Mr. Stapleton only hints at the details and problems as he takes us across history in leaps of thousands and, sometimes, millions of years. I take a point away for his use of 'telepathic' powers within the story and the fact that he seems to think that man needs millions of years to change cultures or even invent such things as rocket flight! But rememeber that this man's works effected later generations of thinkers, sci-fi writers and scientists.

If you liked this book, you might wish to try getting 'Star Maker' by the same author.

Wow! Stapledon is an excellent sci fi writer and an excellent philosopher of the human condition.

There are no ordinary characters in this story. The protagonist is humanity, and this is humanity's autobiography. Or perhaps the story is better understood as a family saga, with each succeeding race of humanity as a new character, from the First Men (that's us) through the Last Men in the way far future.

Again and again, over a vast span of time, humanity waxes and wanes, flourishes and is nearly extinguished, sinks to barbarism and rediscovers a religion of selfless love. Humanity takes on new forms and moves to new planets. In the moments when humanity is capable of philosophical and spiritual reflection, it is plagued by recurring issues--in particular, by the tension between two of its greatest spiritual attainments: (1) a deep love for and identification with all life and the passionate desire for all life to continue and to be free of suffering, and (2) a dispassionate aesthetic appreciation of fate, a mystical awe at the beauty of the drama of the cosmos, including individual and racial suffering and extinction.

The story is engaging, and I was awed by how clearly articulated and how deeply explored is this basic paradox of spirituality. Like two of my favorite authors, Nancy Mairs and Annie Dillard, Stapledon takes a clear and unflinching look at the pain and angst of life in this universe and manages to find hope and beauty. Just two small gripes: it gets a little too pedantic at the very end, and the editor should have deleted about 90% of the occurrences of the word "extravagant." If you like science fiction with deep ideas, or if you like spiritual or philosophical reflection and think you can at least tolerate the sci fi genre, I highly recommend this book.