Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel by the British author Olaf Stapledon. It was first published on 23 October 1930 by Methuen. 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 contemporary humans are 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.