Will humanity always be the dominant species on Earth? Or will our kind disappear entirely, allowing another form of life to reign supreme? Will there be a desperate struggle, or will there be a mass extinction of all life—except bacteria? John Wyndham has some very definite ideas on this subject, and in this story he takes us into the future some thousands of years to show us the end of all of our hopes, our ambitions, and our scientific and technocratic planning.