Description

Rating: Not rated

Tags: Science Fiction, Lang:en

Summary

White was probably most famous for his Sector General hospital stories, but this novella dressed up as a novel proves that he could write very good stories about other subjects, in this case taking the hoary cliché of the Last Man on Earth and turning it into both a plausible and entertaining story.

The starting scenario is shortly after the first nuclear war, which has left what's left of humanity largely sterile and with a rapidly declining population. Human life under this condition becomes far more precious, and every effort is expended to save those still alive. Ross is a young medical student who has been diagnosed with a rare fatal medical condition for which the current state of medicine has no cure for, so he is placed into Deep Sleep to await the time when hopefully a cure can be found. When he awakes, however, it is not to a room full of physicians and attendants, but one where the only other occupant is a bust of his mentor, Dr. Pelligrew, which starts talking to him, directing him towards the actions that will fully revive him. When he does revive fully, he finds his hospital is now occupied only by robots, and the world above is now nothing but dark gray ash totally devoid of all life (in some ways highly reminiscent of the world described by Cormac McCarthy's The Road, though this book was written much earlier), courtesy of the second nuclear war.

Ross is very well delineated. His thought processes and emotional reactions to the current conditions are those of a very human person, and the actions he takes to change those conditions are a strong mix of despair and defiance. The most intelligent robot also becomes a definite character in 'her' own right, and the interaction between the two sets up the balance of this work, that will eventually travel much further in time than might be imagined, with something of a surprise at the end.