JF Ptak Science Books  Post 2894

“The Fate of the Last Man”is an interesting and unsigned romp into the deep future of the ending of the human species from the 31 May 1877 issue of Scientific American. It is very exceptionally long-term, looking into the future of up to a billion years hence–which is a captivating thing all on its own, using that kind of a number in the late 19th century. (Also it is interesting to note that even after all that time the author doesn’t have humans flung to one place or another in the galaxy–after all, deep space flight had already been established in fiction for hundreds of years by this point…not commonly so in literature, but definitely there.)  In any event the author works their way into the first of ten examples of Last Man scenarios describing that after epochs the mountains will get worn down with the solid matter flowing into the oceans, which fill the oceans, causing the continents to become islands, the islands to shrink, and so on until there is nothing there but water and a bit of the world’s tallest peak with some guy sitting there on it, until even that is consumed, and our Last Man drowns.  

As it turns out, the ten scenarios include the last man [sic] dying and the species becoming extinct by drowning, being gassed, gassed and/or blown up, “sunstruck”, suffocated, “burned up”, frozen, crushed, “killed by the crash of orbs”, and then, finally, at #10, we are surprised that “there will be no last man”.  Its a nice piece of thinking, and pretty creative; recognizing that I’ve quoted some of the descriptives for how the end will come.  

The surprise ending part is this: almost everyone dies, though there is a self-replicating survivor that will be a BugMan of some sort and start the whole “human” thing all over again.

[The image above and left has nothing to do with the article, but I had to include it because it is so fabulous and it appears in the same year of the SciAm as this article…and it comes close to being some sort of BugMan, or Lobster-something.]