[New project] Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

[David Grigg]

This enters the public domain on 1 January 1926, but I certainly won't attempt to get it ready before then. But it should be done by early next year.

There's a transcript available at FadedPage here: https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200531 .

[Alex Cabal]

OK, but please wait to start this because we need a repo link to create
a new project, but this won't be PD until Jan 1 so you can't create a repo.

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[David from SE]

Sure, understood. I’ll just do some preliminary work like identifying scans and possible covers.

David Grigg from SE

? 
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[David Grigg]

Here's my repository for this as it's now in the PD.

https://github.com/drgrigg/olaf-stapledon_last-and-first-men

[David Grigg]

I'll finish off The Haunted Hotel before doing any more work on this one.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Vince will manage with Robin reviewing.

On 1/1/26 4:54 PM, David Grigg wrote:
> Here's my repository for this as it's now in the PD.
>
> https://github.com/drgrigg/olaf-stapledon_last-and-first-men
>
> On Saturday, 6 December 2025 at 11:03:53 UTC+11 David from SE wrote:
>
> Sure, understood. I’ll just do some preliminary work like
> identifying scans and possible covers.
>

> __
> David Grigg from SE
> __

>
>
> On Sat, 6 Dec 2025 at 3:05 am Alex wrote:
>
> OK, but please wait to start this because we need a repo link to create
> a new project, but this won't be PD until Jan 1 so you can't create a repo.
>
> On 12/5/25 1:09 AM, David Grigg wrote:
> > This enters the public domain on 1 January 1926, but I certainly won't
> > attempt to get it ready before then. But it should be done by early next
> > year.
> >
> > There's a transcript available at FadedPage here: https://

> > www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200531 <http://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20200531> .

> >
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[David Grigg]

I'm thinking of this for the cover, since it deals with far-future humanity: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man-of-the-sea .

Is that OK?

[Vince]

Sure, but I’m getting an error trying to assign the project to it. I’ll do so when the problem is fixed.

Alex, it gives me an “Artwork tags can only contain letters and numbers” error when I try to add the book URL. I’m obviously not changing the tags, so this is a pre-existing condition that is just now rearing its head for some reason. Did something changed recently in the save code?

I hypothesized it’s the circumflex in “fantômas” it doesn’t like, and sure enough, in lib/ArtworkTag.php, there’s a line containing

if(preg_match('/[^\sa-z0-9]/ius', $this->Name)){

that trips the exception that generates the above message, so it seems like that not allowing diacritics there could be the problem (although how it got there originally remains a question)? (I didn’t delve beyond that, and I don’t know PHP, so I could be completely off.)

On Feb 5, 2026, at 6:18 PM, David Grigg <david...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm thinking of this for the cover, since it deals with far-future humanity: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man-of-the-sea .

[Alex Cabal]

Strange, no idea how that tag got there. I've removed it and assigned
the book.

On 2/5/26 7:49 PM, Vince wrote:
> Sure, but I’m getting an error trying to assign the project to it. I’ll
> do so when the problem is fixed.
>
> Alex, it gives me an “Artwork tags can only contain letters and numbers”
> error when I try to add the book URL. I’m obviously not changing the
> tags, so this is a pre-existing condition that is just now rearing its
> head for some reason. Did something changed recently in the save code?
>
> I hypothesized it’s the circumflex in “fantômas” it doesn’t like, and
> sure enough, in lib/ArtworkTag.php, there’s a line containing
>
> if(preg_match('/[^\sa-z0-9]/ius', $this->Name)){
>
> that trips the exception that generates the above message, so it seems
> like that not allowing diacritics there could be the problem (although
> how it got there originally remains a question)? (I didn’t delve beyond
> that, and I don’t know PHP, so I could be completely off.)
>
>> On Feb 5, 2026, at 6:18 PM, David Grigg <david...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm thinking of this for the cover, since it deals with far-future
>> humanity: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man-

>> of-the-sea <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man-
>> of-the-sea>.

>>
>> <Surreal painting of a man with a wooden mask holding a trowel next to
>> a column on a beach.jpeg>
>>
>> Is that OK?
>

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[David Grigg]

I feel sure I've asked this question before, but I can't remember the decision. It's to do with the capitalization or not of the word "earth" when applied to the planet. Stapledon is inconsistent, at one point writing "Thus ended the first invasion of the Earth from Mars" but elsewhere writing "Mars was a world whose mass was about one-tenth that of the earth". Can I capitalize it throughout when applied to the planet, obviiously in an Editorial commit?

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, I think so

> man- <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man->
> >> of-the-sea <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/
> the-man- <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/rene-magritte/the-man->

> >> of-the-sea>.
> >>
> >> <Surreal painting of a man with a wooden mask holding a trowel
> next to
> >> a column on a beach.jpeg>
> >>
> >> Is that OK?
> >
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[Vince]

If it matters, CMS says that it’s lowercased when generic (The earth is flat, down to earth, etc.), upper when used as the proper name of the planet (I prefer living on Earth to living on Mars).

The first example is clearly referring to the proper name (I would have left the “the” out of that sentence), but the second one is more ambiguous.

[David from SE]

Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about the use of the article changing things. But seeing “the earth” as applied to the planet still rubs me the wrong way. We don’t write “a rocket to the moon” but “a rocket to the Moon”. Nevertheless I guess I’ll leave them as they stand.

David Grigg from SE

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[Vince]

On Mar 13, 2026, at 1:52 AM, David from SE <standar...@thegriggs.org> wrote:

Hmmm, I hadn’t thought about the use of the article changing things. But seeing “the earth” as applied to the planet still rubs me the wrong way. We don’t write “a rocket to the moon” but “a rocket to the Moon”.…

But we do. :) The next CMS entry (8.141) after the one on “Earth” says

The words sun and moon are usually lowercased in nontechnical contexts and always lowercased in the plural. E.g.

The moon circles the earth, as the earth circles the sun.

Some planets have several moons.

Some publications in the fields of astronomy and related sciences, however, routinely capitalize these words when used as proper nouns.