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Last and First Men hurt, but I'm back for more. And Stapledon continues to run with his vast future history, now encompassing the universe. It repeats the original structure, with a series of specific, detailed histories that eventually generalize and summarize, pulling back to show the entire grand scope. And in so doing, dares to slot the events of Last and First Men--the entirety of broadly-defined humanity's existence--as less than a footnote, never having joined galactic society and being obliterated in Sol system by a stellar accident.

But it is more than 'cosmic': this is a spiritual book. Its narrator continues to return to the topic of the Star Maker, the Supreme Being, and as stellar societies merge into galactic civilization and galactic mind, and half a million galaxies pull into synchronization and telepathic accord, the vast, inconceivable mental entity's only purpose is to commune with the Divinity and somehow reach meaning or answers or justification for all the failed species and suffering. And this here approaches something Lovecraftian, as this incomprehensibly vast mortal mind finally touches the source of all and realize how flawed and pitiful and wasteful the entire universe is: a rough draft for the next universal iteration towards some imperceptible goal. The Divine only perceives Its creation frostily, in analysis and infinitely remote dispassion, as It weaves aspects of morality itself into the work, as much as any physical property.

In this, in its conclusion, is a narrator and perhaps an author coming to grips with the onset of the second World War, and the vast suffering and destruction that will be both necessary and regrettable.

This is stark, detailed, frequently dry, and certainly exhausting literature.