Last and First Men

by Olaf Stapledon

The merely fantastic has only minor power.

Brought into a ruined world without their own consent, they refused to accept the crushing obligation toward an improbable future.

all the delights of the whole population of time could not compensate for the agony of one tortured individual. And anyhow, they declared, it was obvious that there had been no preponderance of joy over pain. Indeed, save in the modern age, pain had been overwhelmingly in excess.