Far future in fiction

The far future setting arose in the late 19th century, as earlier writers had little understanding of concepts such as deep time and its implications for the nature of humankind.

Brian Stableford and David Langford argue that the genre could not exist until the true scale of geological time, and the theory of evolution and its implications for the nature of humankind, were fully understood.

[1] Classic examples of the genre from the first half of the 20th century include Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930) and Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night (1948).

[1] The concept of the far future is hard to define precisely, but a common element of such stories is to show the society that is "so completely transformed from the present day as to be almost unrecognizable".

[3] Sometimes the far future genre moves from science fiction to fantasy, showing a society where civilization has regressed to the point where older technologies are no longer understood and are seen as magic.

[3] At the same time, the relics of a technological past "protruding into a more primitive... landscape", a theme known as the "Ruined earth", have been described as "among the most potent of SF's icons".