Olaf Stapledon’s 'Last and First Men' imagines humanity’s rise, ruin, and strange rebirth on a mythic scale.

Olaf Stapledon published his first epic cosmic novel, “Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future,”...

Dancing About The Architecture With Aplomb

Roberts describes a literary history that looks like a sturdy tree, sometimes a baobab and sometimes a banyan.

In the season climax, Cathead takes me on a walkabout to meet my dead and the influencer upstairs finds me in a compromising position.

In the season climax, Cathead takes me on a walkabout to meet my dead and the influencer upstairs finds me in a compromising position.

For screenwriters like me—and job seekers all over—AI gig work is the new waiting tables. In eight months, I’ve done 20 of these soul-crushing contracts for five different platforms. It’s bad.

Buying a scrunchie in Westfield inspires a fugue state. In A&E, a policeman administers the Tufty Club test.

How many books is this?

A tough winter in Hackney. Yobs at the library, rats in the yard, and even the influencer looks sick. Fortunately, a cat adopts me as its spirit animal.

Beth gets a job in the library. We move back to Hackney and discover that people have changed.

Every day, the toddlers pulled the books from the bookshelves, as if sensing that books were the source of our troubles.

Fourth Interview: Trend Report. In which I accidentally invent a product called sex cheese.

I've arrived home past midnight to find Beth deep in labour. Can I get a cab to the hospital and someone to babysit the other children?

A speculative memoir

Writer and critic Matthew De Abaitua joins Andy, Una and Nicky to discuss  Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future  (1930), the astounding first novel by Olaf Stapledon. The...