Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (1931)

I chose to read this because I read somewhere on the Internet that it is a neglected science fiction classic, praised by Arthur C. Clark and other sci-fi luminaries. I was disappointed; I was bored; I slogged on through it because I very rarely give up on a book until the bitter end. I do not recommend it.

First, this is not really what is conventionally called a novel. It is an overview of history, with only broad events covered and no specific characters mentioned. It is even less specific than what you might find in a typical World History textbook in a middle school. But this is a different kind of history--it's the future history of the human species, from 1931 to 5 billion years in the future. Yes, it does mention a myriad of intriguing situations which could be appropriated by science fiction writers to create conventional novels. Perhaps that is why Clark and others appreciated it. No, it is not interesting or even believably predictive for the average reader. (His predictions for the years from 1931 to the present are totally inaccurate, to start with.)

What Stapledon does tell us that has been shown to be true is that history is cyclical and tends to repeat itself. But then we already knew that.