"The Martians and Us"-a very good short series about British Science Fiction,however there are some quibbles with the so-called "originality" of some of the ideas and concepts discussed.

For example, the Theosophists and other occult groupings, were very much interested in the idea of human evolution being guided by hidden adepts.

Astral projection (to Mercury of all places) predates by thirty years in the western world at least "The Star Maker".

The point isn't whether these things are real, it is that people believed them to be real and that western society was familiar with these concepts.

The concept of global apocalypse was brought up by Edgar Allan Poe in a short story where a comet has consumed the Earth's oxygen. Obviously the story is really abut the "survivor's" afterlife , but the precedent remains in literature.