Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "
future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author
Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human
species, of which our own is the first. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the
Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied
civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilisations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of
genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional
supermind; a consciousness composed of many
telepathically-linked individuals.