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7/6/10
Forever, Damon Knight, 1981
In 1887, the secret of immortality is discovered and administered to the Gerd Essenwien, the 12-year-old son of the discoverer. It becomes apparent that it also stops aging as well, trapping him in a boy’s body. Shortly after this event, a serum is discovered to stop all bacteriological disease, a universal vaccine. Both are adopted widely and having children falls out of fashion. People still die of accidents and heart disease and cancer, so the population of the Earth begins to dwindle. When humanity panics over the looming end of the human race, they find that the youngest women are still over two hundred years old and infertile.
Gerd Essenwein is eventually the last man on Earth, keeping in touch via shortwave with the last woman on Earth, a Japanese woman with the apparent age of 16. She travels by bicycle to Europe so they can meet (it takes her eleven years.) When he shows her that he cannot perform sexually, she returns to Japan and disappears from shortwave contact a few years later. Aliens arrive and ask Gerd to come with them when they find he is the last man on Earth. Gerd refuses and they leave.
ISFDB bibliography
Gerd Essenwein is eventually the last man on Earth, keeping in touch via shortwave with the last woman on Earth, a Japanese woman with the apparent age of 16. She travels by bicycle to Europe so they can meet (it takes her eleven years.) When he shows her that he cannot perform sexually, she returns to Japan and disappears from shortwave contact a few years later. Aliens arrive and ask Gerd to come with them when they find he is the last man on Earth. Gerd refuses and they leave.
ISFDB bibliography
1/15/10
Last Man, Jon Inouye, 1976
Overpopulation is solved by the systematic extermination of women and heterosexual men. Three hundred years later, a male homosexual culture has colonized the entire solar system, even, somehow, the sun. Reproduction is achieved through cloning and splitting a single “parent” consciousness through several bodies. In eliminating binary gender and heterosexuality, the culture also retires the term “man” and “mankind,” substituting “personkind” exclusively.
The last “man” on Earth, a heterosexual specimen of the old race, is kept alive through longevity drugs and stored in a museum . Inexplicably, he wakes and escapes, screaming homosexual epithets and crushing the skulls of “the weak.” He flees to the mountains, convinced that heterosexual men and women must have survived in isolation. When he finds them, they have reverted to a primitive lifestyle and immediately attack him. Dejected, he returns to the “personkinders,” his fate uncertain.
ISFDB bibliography
The last “man” on Earth, a heterosexual specimen of the old race, is kept alive through longevity drugs and stored in a museum . Inexplicably, he wakes and escapes, screaming homosexual epithets and crushing the skulls of “the weak.” He flees to the mountains, convinced that heterosexual men and women must have survived in isolation. When he finds them, they have reverted to a primitive lifestyle and immediately attack him. Dejected, he returns to the “personkinders,” his fate uncertain.
ISFDB bibliography
1/13/10
The Last Man, Seabury Quinn, 1950
The story begins with Roger Mycroft, a veteran of the Spanish-American War, visiting Monsieur Toussaint, a voodoo spiritualist who purports to speak with the dead. Initially skeptical, Mycroft is convinced by Toussaint's serious demeanor and agrees to return the next evening.
Back at home, Mycroft embarks on a long flashback to the his time during the war when he and the soldiers in his squad were guests of a rich landowner, Don Jose Rosales y Montalvo and his beautiful daughter, Juanita. Over the next few days, Juanita is courted by every one of the soldiers and refuses them all in turn. On the soldiers' last night in Cuba, Juanita promises to marry the last surviving man, as so to spare the feelings of his fellows . The soldiers form a tontine and Last Man's Club* and meet once a year to reminisce (and, presumably, to see who's died in the interim.) After many years, Mycroft is the last man alive and can marry Juanita.
Mycroft returns to Toussaint to have him raise the spirits of his fellow soldiers. He discovers that she too has died in the intervening decades and appears to him. She lures Mycroft out of the protective hexagram that Toussaint has drawn on the floor. Mycroft falls dead and joins his demon bride.
Weird Tales, May 1950, v. 42, n. 4
*While the tontine and the Last Man's Club are often conflated ideas, the military veteran Last Man's Club is a pact made to meet once a year often with the agreement that the last surviving member drink a toast at the last meeting to his deceased comrades, and thus differs from a tontine in that there is no prize or payout.
Back at home, Mycroft embarks on a long flashback to the his time during the war when he and the soldiers in his squad were guests of a rich landowner, Don Jose Rosales y Montalvo and his beautiful daughter, Juanita. Over the next few days, Juanita is courted by every one of the soldiers and refuses them all in turn. On the soldiers' last night in Cuba, Juanita promises to marry the last surviving man, as so to spare the feelings of his fellows . The soldiers form a tontine and Last Man's Club* and meet once a year to reminisce (and, presumably, to see who's died in the interim.) After many years, Mycroft is the last man alive and can marry Juanita.
Mycroft returns to Toussaint to have him raise the spirits of his fellow soldiers. He discovers that she too has died in the intervening decades and appears to him. She lures Mycroft out of the protective hexagram that Toussaint has drawn on the floor. Mycroft falls dead and joins his demon bride.
Weird Tales, May 1950, v. 42, n. 4
*While the tontine and the Last Man's Club are often conflated ideas, the military veteran Last Man's Club is a pact made to meet once a year often with the agreement that the last surviving member drink a toast at the last meeting to his deceased comrades, and thus differs from a tontine in that there is no prize or payout.
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