One day, a riot occurs at a mine, and the rioters inadvertently cause a colossal subterranean explosion, rendering most of the Earth's surface uninhabitable for millions of years save for the poles and the northern coast of Siberia. One feature of the Patagonian civilization was a cult of youth. 100,000 years later, the Patagonian Civilization emerges. Four millennia after the formation of the First World State, humans deplete Earth's supply of fossil fuels, resulting in the total collapse of civilization. Two centuries thereafter, all religions and secular science consolidate into a religion based on the worship of motion whose god is Gordelpus, the Prime Mover. In the twenty-fourth century, the US and China go to war, and the war concludes with the formation of the First World State.

Beginning in the early twenty-first century, several increasingly devastating wars take place in Europe, which result in the United States and China becoming the two dominant superpowers on Earth. (Chapters 1–6) The First Men are our own species. It is the 11th title in the SF Masterworks series. Another Stapledon novel, Star Maker (1937), could also be considered a sequel to Last and First Men (mentioning briefly man's evolution on Neptune), but is even more ambitious in scope, being a history of the entire universe. In 1932, Stapledon followed Last and First Men with the far less acclaimed Last Men in London.

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. Stapledon's conception of history follows a repetitive cycle with many varied civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, as the later civilisations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.

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. 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.

Odd john stapledon