Passage 1
So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate, watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless.
Progress and declineTechnological catastropheHeredity and biological controlno danger · reports or quotesaccept · considersNature and evolutionConsequences and welfareDiminishes autonomyCivilizationalHuman future and environment
Wells extends decline beyond social arrangements to a cosmic horizon: the Earth's life ebbs under an aging sun, beyond any human intervention.
Chapter XIV, “The Further Vision”