Origins of Apocalyptic Science Fiction

The Last Man

Julie Hugonny

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781032749143
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040630280
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: “A thousand little beginnings”
• 1 “It was a beautiful day for the world’s decadence.”: The Last Man, by Jean-Baptiste de Grainville, a poetic apocalypse
• 2 “One day all extinct, save myself, should I walk the earth alone.”: The cathartic word in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man
• 3 “Another universe began, whose genesis some future Moses and Laplace would tell.”: The unlimited possibilities of death and life in Camille Flammarion’s Omega
• 4 “After the battle comes Quiet.”: The consequences of evolution in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine
• 5 “It was not a good race which called itself man … never through me shall it spring and fester again.”: M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud – the Reluctant Adam of a new humanity
• 6 “Children with sharp teeth [and] an insatiable belly.”: Figures of eternal return in Jules & Michel Verne’s The Eternal Adam
• 7 “What is education? – calling red scarlet.”: Figures of regression in Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague
• 8 “The death of the earth for our kingdom.”: Human and posthuman in J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s The Death of the Earth.
• Conclusion: The Apocalyptic narrative, a timeless genre
• Index