Last and First Men

Imagine humans changing a LOT over super long time, like millions of years! We start as regular people but have big wars and move to other planets like Mars and Neptune, turning into new kinds of humans—some super smart with brain powers, some living in water, some building huge floating cities. They keep trying to be better but face huge disasters from stars exploding, until the very last humans say goodbye to everything in a sad but beautiful way.

Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men' (1930) is a monumental future history chronicling two billion years of human evolution across eighteen successive species, beginning with the 'First Men'—modern humanity facing collapse amid wars and environmental ruin in the 21st century. Through epochs of catastrophe and renaissance, humanity migrates across the solar system: the telepathic Second Men rise on Earth and Mars, only to engineer flawed successors; the aquatic Third and amphibious Fourth succumb to hubris; while the Fifth Men's vast communal brains on Neptune pioneer genetic mastery, birthing the warlike Sixth and ethereal Seventh species. The narrative culminates in the Eighteenth Men, Neanderthal-like philosophers on Neptune's ruins, who achieve fleeting cosmic insight before stellar doom. Devoid of traditional plot, the book meditates on humanity's recurrent cycles of ambition, folly, and transcendence, portraying species as transient vessels in an indifferent universe, ultimately advocating a stoic reverence for the 'one spirit' binding all life.