10/17/08

Last Man On Earth, Brendon Day, 2002

A heavily workshopped short story set in the 1950s that echoes elements of Confessions of a Crap Artist by Philip K. Dick and William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” revolving around Sidney Davison (“Davis” throughout) an elevator operator who escapes his life through science fiction. Davis has written a radio script called “The Last Man On Earth” that he has loaned to a boorish tenant named Thomson in hopes to get it produced. The script contains no dialogue and relates the tale of the last man alive in a disaffected narrative as he wandered through a deserted city.

The action of the story centers around Davis, Thomson, and Thomson’s date, Liddy on a trip in the elevator. Liddy flirts with Davis openly and convinces him to take all three of them up on the roof. Thomson stops off at his apartment and returns with a mysterious doctor’s bag that might or might not contain Davis’ script. Liddy takes something out of the bag that might be a Flash-Gordonesque ray-gun or a bong. Liddy describes what she thinks the plot of Davis’ “The Last Man On Earth”: World destroyed, boy is left alive, he meets last girl and it’s someone who rejected him in high school, they fall in love. The end. The story drifts off with Davis imagining baroque airships and rocket travel.

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