I came away from the Dying Earth books feeling that the thing that makes that Earth really dying is that the narrative is so nihilistic. Finding magical amulets or archives doesn't help, because nobody has the capacity for change. Amazingly picturesque, but hard to take after a while.

Have spent a long while trying to figure out how Stapledon is as compelling as he is, but there it is. No one else remotely like him-- while I have seen a couple of novels in which comparable amounts of time pass, they don't manage to make you feel it the same way. I wish I knew literally anything about how he did it.