Controversy
A controversial part of the book depicts humans, in the far-off future, escaping the dying Earth and settling on Venus — in the process totally exterminating its native inhabitants, an intelligent marine species. Stapledon's book has been interpreted by some as condoning such interplanetary genocide as a justified act if necessary for racial survival, though a number of Stapledon's partisans denied that such was his intention, arguing instead that Stapledon was merely showing that although mankind had advanced in a number of ways in the future, at bottom it still possessed the same capacity for savagery as it has always had.
Also their guilt in having to exterminate an intelligent but incomprehensible and hostile alien species was soothed somewhat by the realization that the Venusian biology depended on absorbing gamma rays and radioactive matter was gradually diminishing on Venus. So the Fifth Men saw themselves as doing a mercy killing, accelerating inevitable natural extinction.
Read more about this topic: Last And First Men
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