Henri Allorge's The Great Cataclysm (1927) takes place in the Age of Science in the year 9978 when Earth has cooled down and a population of scientists and artists live in a handful of great cities scattered across the globe. They spend their time studying the ruins of the great cities of the past and are served by a population of advanced apes. But the stability of this utopia is threatened when all their electricity suddenly vanishes...

"The Great Cataclysm might well owe the fact that it won a literary award to the stridency of its pacifism, but the more interesting aspect of its moralistic argument is probably its ardent condemnation of waste in the exploitation of natural resources." Brian Stableford.