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Small octavo, pp. [1-8] [1] 2-131 [132: printer's imprint] [133-136: blank] [note: first and last leaves are used as front and rear paste-downs, original rose boards, spine panel stamped in black. First edition. "A man awakens after a half-million years, in surroundings that are meant to imitate those of his own period. (The details are 'uncannily like, and equally uncannily not like.') He is the last member of his race, and he is encouraged to write down this first-person account, more as a way of coming to terms with his own situation, to preserve his sanity for the brief remainder of his life, than as a communication to anyone else now alive, whose frame of reference is so profoundly different from his own as to render him a member of a different (and extinct) species. As a utopian tale of the far future, it is notable on several counts: its brevity (this is a novella, really), its succinctness, its easy readability, its omission of the usual 'tour-guide' to explain the new society (and turn the narrative into an essay), its emphasis on the alien quality of the new world, taking it beyond those terms that could let us see it as either eutopian or dystopian. Also, by setting the story in a manufactured facsimile of the familiar world rather than setting forth the usual futuristic/utopian furniture (e.g., men and women in white flowing robes; airships and other gizmos, all powered by electricity; tediously detailed explanations of the new improved legislatures, telephones, sewage treatment systems, etc.), the author adds another level of meaning to the story, making it a powerful allegory about the alienation of existence in the present-day world. Tayler would not have been the only person in postwar Europe who felt profoundly alienated from a world that was evolving away from the familiar at a frightening and accelerating speed; but he was the only one who expressed that alienation in an imaginative work of this nature. A very interesting book." - Robert Eldridge. "Evolution and the far future. In some ways a remarkable work that should receive more attention than it has. The author conveys well the emotional strain of the narrator and adds many imaginative touches that anticipate later science-fiction, notably W. Olaf Stapledon." - Bleiler, Science-Fiction: The Early Years 2157. Clarke, Tale of the Future (1978), p. 51. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 211. Negley, Utopian Literature: A Bibliography 1088. Sargent, British and American Utopian Literature, 1516-1985, p. 176. Bleiler (1978), p. 191. Not in Reginald (1979; 1992). "Withdrawn" stamped on the half title page, private owner's signature there too. Slight spine lean. boards sunned, spine tanned, internally clean, a good, sound copy. A very uncommon book. (#165144).
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