Five SF Novels About Being the Last People on Earth

The nameless boy wanders an empty world, prudently avoiding those few people he encounters. Whatever event reduced the human population, it seems not to have affected the implausibly well-stocked stores. Convenient for a boy all alone.

The boy’s solitude ends when he finds a dead woman and her still living newborn. Unwilling to leave the child to die, he carries the infant with him. It quickly becomes clear that this is a world that’s all too realistic when it comes to the needs of babies, something for which the fourteen-year-old boy is ill-prepared. Nevertheless, he perseveres.

Readers may not be convinced that in the wake of a catastrophe it’s realistic to posit fully stocked stores whose wares never expire. I don’t believe that strict realism is what Saxton was aiming at in this slender novel¹.

Impermease is a marvelously useful chemical. A pre-Chaos human would have been hard-pressed to avoid it in some form, whether in the form of birth control, cancer treatment, or pesticide. That was unfortunate, as an unnoticed side effect of Impermease was to sterilize the daughters of any woman exposed to it… something that was overlooked until virtually the entire population was exposed. Cue a population implosion² and the Chaos it triggered.

David is a pariah to the local post-Chaos patriarchs, who have no love for surplus men in general or for David’s late parents in particular. Anne was the patriarchs’ property, treasured for her fertility. Together, David and Anne might be able to escape the patriarchs…but only if they can somehow reach the Enclave, which is overseas and quite possibly mythical.

David and Anne would also be fine subjects for an essay about adventure leads who spend the entire novel bickering with each other.

In 2135, virtually every human on Earth vanished. The handful left behind had no choice but to embrace rustic lives. Quite unexpectedly, those left behind discovered that not only were their lifespans vastly increased, but that they were developing vast mental powers that more than compensated for the technology now lost.

Thousands of years later, Earth’s people are content with their quiet lives. The revelation that their long-vanished kin also survived and continued the path of technological innovation Earth abandoned is unwelcome. So is the news that Earth’s lost children are on their way back to a home that no longer wants them.

In addition to the extended lifespans and psionic powers, the humans left on Earth were not entirely forced back to 19^th century technological levels. By 2135, there were vast numbers of robots, most of them eager to keep serving humans. This faithful labor force is, for some reason, curiously unacknowledged by the humans.

“Captain Trips,” a highly contagious influenza developed as weapon by the American Defense department, escapes and spreads across an unprepared world. In short order, the Cold War is a fading memory. So too could be the human species. Slightly less than one percent of humans survive.

What was the continental US is now a very empty place. Survivors gather in two locations: Boulder, Colorado and Las Vegas. The Boulder folks have been pulled together by dreams of a kindly grandmother, who presides over a community that is, in the main, cooperative and benign. Those who flock to Las Vegas live under the despotic rule of the demonic Randall Flagg.

Flagg does not brook opposition. The Boulder community must go. The conflict between good and evil shapes the rest of this doorstop book.

Used bookstore fans should be aware there are two versions of this story. My MMPB is the lean 1978 version, which clocks in at a slender 817 pages, while the expanded 1990 edition is 1154 pages. The expanded edition alters the timeline somewhat, and restores some cuts. Which is the superior edition? The better one, of course.

Caught in a downpour, Danny Lodge takes shelter in a WWII pillbox. This happy accident means Danny is one of the very few to weather the Soviet nuclear attack on Britain. Unlike most Brits, he is alive and largely unharmed.

David’s mother is dead, as are most of his neighbors. His father is traumatized and his hometown of Shipley is in ruins. The Lodges owned a shop, so there are supplies…for now.

Despite the destruction, government survives in the form of the local Commission. That’s excellent news for the Commission but less excellent for the survivors. The Commission controls food and water. Those who can’t be or won’t be slaves will be eliminated.

It’s astonishing how many British thermonuclear-conflict stories of this era reference Protect and Survive, the official guide to surviving nuclear war. The authors of these stories are convinced that the government advice was largely useless and that post-apocalypse life would be dire. US authors (such as Dean Ing) wrote a number of novels in which Americans survive and thrive. Were there any such books published in the UK?