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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 10, Spring 1946
Page 251
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 251 Omega--and Olaf Stapledon by Thyril L. Ladd No one who has perused even casually Camille Flammarion's Omega: the Last Days of the World and Last and First Men by William Olaf Stapledon can help but be struck by the similarity of conception between the two books. This similarity is indeed very pronounced. Flammarion relates the entire future history of the world, beginning in the twenty-fifty century, when a great comet threatens the planet with destruction. Though hordes of people are killed, Earth survives the resulting collision, and endures through many centuries. So, too, does Stapledon follow the progress of the world and its peoples. And like him, Flammarion sees man changing in form and mental outlook as he goes down the ages, though of course he postulates somewhat different changes. While Omega has not been carried to the lengths that has Last and First Men, its conception is by no means narrow or inadequate. To one who has never before encountered the work it may even come as a surprise to learn that this French author's picture of the days to come was first published over half a century ago. Some of the kaleidoscopic vignettes we glimpse are intriguing indeed. We see people of the hundredth century staring in wonder at a museum cabinet where mummified specimens of nineteenth century humans are displayed, amazed that man could ever have descended from such creatures. The slow, gradual death of the earth is shown, erosion levelling its mountains and its seas and rivers seeping little by little into the rocks. Ingenious as ever, man staves off his final end by building glass-enclosed tropical cities, the better to catch and store the energy of the cooled sun's weak rays; and he sustains himself by inventing synthetic foods when all remaining plants die from lack of moisture. But with the inevitable failure of the water supply comes the final cessation of life on the planet, and in the final scenes we view a dismal, desert world, with only two glass cities remaining. Only one man and one woman are left alive, and meeting, set out in an airship to seek water; but it is not to be found. Finally they arrive at Gizeh, and seat themselves beside the age-rounded terrace of the pyramid there, whose sunken form has been revealed again by the dried-up seas. And in this, the last scene of the book, Flammarion goes a bit occult. The shining shape of the pharaoh Cheops, whose pyramid it was, appears before this last couple. He tells the two that man, in astral form, has been conveyed at death to the planet Jupiter, there to dwell in changed form and attain the perfection that has always been his goal. And thither Cheops sweeps them---and Larth is indeed left dead. Omega is a beautiful book, possessing some eighty illustrations, large and small, by over a dozen artists. It is interesting also in that it presents many astronomical facts and figures in a manner that is easily understood, and far from boring; Flammarion's account of comets, for example, is one of the clearest essays on the subject that I have ever encountered. The volume is historically informative as well, tracing briefly the events at times during the world's history when humanity was put into a frenzy of fear or religious fervor by a belief that the end of the world was at hand. (It is to such outbursts that Flammarion attributes many of the fine cathedrals that dotted Europe.) Those readers who have found pleasure in the modern Last and First Men should, to further their interest, read this French astronomer's treatment of a similar subject. Like Stapledon, Flammarion used for his hero the entire human race. Some consideration must be granted, naturally, to Omega's science: since it was written numerous advances have rendered many once-believed hypotheses untrue. But barring such slight antiquities, it is yet worthy of perusal, for it remains unquestionably by an effective work---and one upon which, moreover, Stapledon's could conceivably have been based.
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 251 Omega--and Olaf Stapledon by Thyril L. Ladd No one who has perused even casually Camille Flammarion's Omega: the Last Days of the World and Last and First Men by William Olaf Stapledon can help but be struck by the similarity of conception between the two books. This similarity is indeed very pronounced. Flammarion relates the entire future history of the world, beginning in the twenty-fifty century, when a great comet threatens the planet with destruction. Though hordes of people are killed, Earth survives the resulting collision, and endures through many centuries. So, too, does Stapledon follow the progress of the world and its peoples. And like him, Flammarion sees man changing in form and mental outlook as he goes down the ages, though of course he postulates somewhat different changes. While Omega has not been carried to the lengths that has Last and First Men, its conception is by no means narrow or inadequate. To one who has never before encountered the work it may even come as a surprise to learn that this French author's picture of the days to come was first published over half a century ago. Some of the kaleidoscopic vignettes we glimpse are intriguing indeed. We see people of the hundredth century staring in wonder at a museum cabinet where mummified specimens of nineteenth century humans are displayed, amazed that man could ever have descended from such creatures. The slow, gradual death of the earth is shown, erosion levelling its mountains and its seas and rivers seeping little by little into the rocks. Ingenious as ever, man staves off his final end by building glass-enclosed tropical cities, the better to catch and store the energy of the cooled sun's weak rays; and he sustains himself by inventing synthetic foods when all remaining plants die from lack of moisture. But with the inevitable failure of the water supply comes the final cessation of life on the planet, and in the final scenes we view a dismal, desert world, with only two glass cities remaining. Only one man and one woman are left alive, and meeting, set out in an airship to seek water; but it is not to be found. Finally they arrive at Gizeh, and seat themselves beside the age-rounded terrace of the pyramid there, whose sunken form has been revealed again by the dried-up seas. And in this, the last scene of the book, Flammarion goes a bit occult. The shining shape of the pharaoh Cheops, whose pyramid it was, appears before this last couple. He tells the two that man, in astral form, has been conveyed at death to the planet Jupiter, there to dwell in changed form and attain the perfection that has always been his goal. And thither Cheops sweeps them---and Larth is indeed left dead. Omega is a beautiful book, possessing some eighty illustrations, large and small, by over a dozen artists. It is interesting also in that it presents many astronomical facts and figures in a manner that is easily understood, and far from boring; Flammarion's account of comets, for example, is one of the clearest essays on the subject that I have ever encountered. The volume is historically informative as well, tracing briefly the events at times during the world's history when humanity was put into a frenzy of fear or religious fervor by a belief that the end of the world was at hand. (It is to such outbursts that Flammarion attributes many of the fine cathedrals that dotted Europe.) Those readers who have found pleasure in the modern Last and First Men should, to further their interest, read this French astronomer's treatment of a similar subject. Like Stapledon, Flammarion used for his hero the entire human race. Some consideration must be granted, naturally, to Omega's science: since it was written numerous advances have rendered many once-believed hypotheses untrue. But barring such slight antiquities, it is yet worthy of perusal, for it remains unquestionably by an effective work---and one upon which, moreover, Stapledon's could conceivably have been based.
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