Origins of Apocalyptic Science Fiction: The Last Man

Origins of Apocalyptic Science Fiction: The Last Man argues that apocalyptic science fiction found its origins in the early 19th century, in works of literature centred on the figure of the Last Man on Earth. This character, inexistent before then, inspired authors and readers alike, grew in popularity, and quickly became an archetype.

This obsessive retelling of the same story was a response to unprecedented social, political, and scientific upheavals and acted as a means to process those changes through the practice of fiction. By imagining the end of the human worldview through the figure of the Last Man on Earth, a new archetype of resilience and solitude, they expressed indirectly the trauma of those changing times and created a blueprint to read both past and future human history. This book traces the figure of the Last Man and its significance through eight major works of fiction, charting the evolution of humanity's most persistent nightmare and its transformation into our most enduring literary obsession.