Last Man Novels - Isolationist Fiction

What are some great "adult" earth based or hard SF (or horror) Last Man/Isolation novels or stories (I am Legend, The Last Man, Robinson Crusoe etc.). Not the usual post-apocalyptic stuff, more last man or last (small) group on earth type stories.

I am not sure about fiction but here is an actual 4 minute documentary film of a founder of LT in a tragic, less than honorable moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAxARJyaTEA

There's always the short short story "Blood" by Frederic Brown, about the last two vampires fleeing extinction into the far future, looking for a time when vampires are forgotten so they can feed safely. But it's scarcely hard SF - more humorous whimsy.

George Martin wrote a good short about a guy isolated on a remote station, called "The Second Kind of Loneliness". It's in his Dreamsongs: Volume I anthology.

"Knock" by Fredric Brown: "The last man on earth sat alone in a room..."

Robert Charles Wilson's story "Divided by Infinity" ends with a Last Man scenario, on Earth.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a Last Woman story, at its conclusion - I assume we're not limiting ourselves to men only?

Also, are Adam-and-Eve stories acceptable? Last-two people stories? Lots of those, of course.

That brings to mind Alfred Bester's story "Adam and No Eve".

Charles Pellegrino's The Killing Star has a last woman on Earth, although other humans are still alive off Earth.

>2 DugsBooks:

I'm pretty sure Tim Spalding has reasonably good eyesight...

Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, taking the children as no longer human.

And the Science Fiction Encyclopedia has a Last Man theme entry. Note there was a Martin H. Greenberg anthology, with co-editors Isaac Asimov and Charles G. Waugh.

Earth Abides?

Then there is "What can you say about chocolate covered manhole covers?" but I think that is one of Larry Niven's short stories, not a book title.

>13 TLCrawford:

FredGarvinMP did say "or stories", and most of my cites above are stories. So you're good.

>10 dukedom_enough: .....Contact lenses ? ;-)

>15 DugsBooks:

Hmmm.

There is of course Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men and Last Men in London

There is Mary Shelley's The Last Man, but I found it extremely tedious and didn't make it as far as the beginning of the plague, let alone to the last man.

>18 isabelx:

That tedium may be intrinsic to the theme. You're the Last Man, you're sad about it, you brood about what will come afterward - not a lot to write about. Maybe that's why most of my examples are short stories.

>17 justifiedsinner:

Stapledon's Last Men were a species, not a single person, so I think not what's wanted here. Good book, certainly.

Thanks all. Good stuff (and yes last woman is very welcome). Keep them coming, I want to read them all.

Funny thing is I know EVERY author must have written at least one Last Man (or Woman) story, yet they seem to be so rare.

Far North, Marcel Theroux. Last Man Standing, Davide Longo. The Dog Stars, Peter Heller.

Here are two that I am going to toss out even though they have a large cast of characters, everyone is staring at the reality that they are the last humans. Well almost.

Mr. Adam and The Disappearance In both the ability to produce the next generation is ripped away leaving people to face the end. Not quite what was asked for.

James White, Second Ending. The last man rules over an Earth populated by robots; he orders them to recreate humanity while he is in suspended animation.

That's this James White.

The MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood starting with Oryx and Crake has a small group of people surviving after almost all other humans have been killed by plague.

Edgar Pangborn's story "A Master of Babylon." The protagonist isn't actually the Last Man, but lives alone in a flooded Manhattan for 25 years while thinking he is. My review. Lots of moody, last-man ambiance.

Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien
A girl alone in an isolated valley in a post-nuclear world. A classic.

>13 TLCrawford: this is post apocalyptic but not "last Man"... that is unless you consider it to be the last "industrious" man.... I never read such book with a lazier bunch of survivors...many years after the event and they have not even cleared the streets or educated their children. They walk around with their spoons eating out of tin cans....

Haha. That is pretty lazy.

#29 I don't remember that being my first impression of Ish (is that his name it has been years since I read it) but buy the time I finished reading it I wrote him off as skill-less rather than lazy. He tried to mount a tire on a rim but can't manage to figure it out. He does manage to find tires that still hold air and get a jeep running but he seems to know nothing at all about animal husbandry or gardening. When can goods ran out Ish was doomed to starve.

Then he met a woman that had skills but no education. She saw him as the leader even though his education, geology, was worthless to them. She fed him and the children and taught the children skills and to respect Ish even though the only qualifications Ish had for leadership was external genitalia and pale skin. She did not see any use for Ish's education and, he could not demonstrate any value in it. That is how I see the book. Other opinions can be just as correct and I admit to a bias from my background on a farm and working in manual labor.

I recently listened to The wall by Marlen Haushofer, probably my favorite book this year. >7 dukedom_enough: Another last woman book, her only companions are a cat and dog and a cow, yet it's a very emotional book and the writing was a beautiful exploration of society, animal care, loneliness, war.
https://www.librarything.com/work/184603/summary/110425798

It's arguable whether Robert Neville is the last "man" on earth or not, but: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.

A little deviation from the qualifications of setting but still having something of the feel is J. G. Ballard's Concrete Island, Robinson Crusoe in the city.

>29 Lynxear: >31 TLCrawford: As I reconstruct the meaning, it really wasn't laziness to not clear the streets, as much as that they could open a can of food; working unnecessarily is a hard sell. Just as one might not plant wheat if there were ample bananas on every tree. The surplus of a dead society remained ready to be exploited. A different ethos arose, one that didn't glorify the knowledge and practices of the past. Eventually, the subsequent generations were quite industrious, but differently. Bows and arrows again prevailed, and the people avidly hunted. The things of the industrial world fell into disuse, in favor of an alternative that worked for them.

>35 stellarexplorer:

Well I find it hard to believe that a town could have a 20+ year supply of tinned food.

Here is an excerpt of the review I wrote when I read it mistakenly for the second time

"A few things bother me though. The innate laziness of the characters...eating out of tins of food 20+ years later, no serious attempts to farm or raise animals, allowing basic functions of a town (water supply) to suddenly stop 20 years after the disaster, NOT EDUCATING Children???!!!(but thinking about it 20 years later??) It is an apocalypse with no real bad guys other than a few low-lives, an idyllic life of waste of resources and indolence.

I suppose this was the author's message but I found myself shouting at the characters to do something!!! :-) They don't even clean up their small town."

Not a book I would recommend, though it did start out well , I did admit...I just got more disgusted with the characters as I read on. :)

SPOILER ALERT
>36 Lynxear: the book is a classic, even if primarily for its status as an influential early postapocalyptic novel (1949 or so?) (Yes, I know there were predecessors) I have to admit that I was not as happy with the second half of the book as I was with the first. I loved the reemergence of the protagonist to an empty world from research away from civilization, reading the papers about an epidemic sweeping the world, finding his dead parents, setting off in search of a survivor somewhere, etc...The ending was preachy, somewhat didactic and even prescriptive. But I didn't find it offensively implausible. Which is funny, because I'm usually the one complaining about that.

>32 wifilibrarian:

Wikipedia notes that The Wall was adapted into a film of the same name. It's on Netflix in the US.

>37 stellarexplorer: I think we are basically in agreement on the book as I have admitted liking the beginning. If it was the writer's aim to comment on social aspects of the times in a negative way ... he succeeded. But was not a particularly informative or uplifting read... for me anyway.

It is not because of the story line being dated... Tomorrow! and Alas, Babylon are both dated and even simplistic in some aspects of a nuclear apocalypse but they are infinitely more readable.

(sorry for drifting from the topic as none of these books are "last man standing" types of books. )

I don't know there is a truly "last man book" though I am Legend comes close and gets 2 thumbs up from me. The Road is also an amazing book but it is the struggle of one man protecting his son in a world ravaged by an unknown apocalypse but there are several other characters in the story.

I also recommend The Last Canadian in which the hero thinks he is the only person alive after a germ warfare attack but finds out the truth later.

>38 dukedom_enough: that's right, I've seen the trailer but wonder how it would work as a film. I guess it has narration throughout. The writer's voice is so strong in the book, I wonder how much of that translates to film.

Anyone read Triumph by Philip Wylie? That was a pretty good take on the Last Man story.

>41 weener: Yes I read Triumph but again..it is not really "last man" it is a group in a fallout shelter... and I loved the detail given in its construction... not bad given the time it was written.

I think there should be a definition of what "Last Man" means if we take it literally there are very few books on the subject.

The Long Years, The Martian and from movies The Quiet Earth and The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (Harry Bellafonte). (Okay, The Martian is about isolation on Mars, technically...)

The OP said last man or last small group.

The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel

>28 nrmay: There's a film of Z for Zacharia coming out. I've seen a trailer. Last three people, if that counts.

>46 dukedom_enough: There are only 2 people in the book. The film has presumably decided to up the romantic ante.

A couple more 'last few standing' - The Book of the Unnamed Midwife is set in a post-epidemic US with very few survivors. That said, it still feels more heavily populated than Colorado in The Dog Stars, as we see 2 small communities as well as several batches of marauders. The midwife spends most of her time alone or with 1-2 other people though, and much of the novel focuses on how she / they deal with their isolation.

Extinction Point is a last woman standing for much of the novel - Emily is a lone survivor in New York, although she eventually sets off in search of a group of survivors far to the north. That said, it's not particularly good - it needed a good editor.