Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The Last Man on Earth Sat Alone in a Room

I have had about a hundred more hits on my site than usual today (from across the globe) and everyone seems to be googling the same words to get here:
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door...
They're landing on my Great First Lines post from yonks ago, where Amir posted the above in the comments - not only a great title but one of the shortest short stories ever.

Please can someone stop by long enough to tell me what's happening and put me out of my misery???

16 comments:

Ted Mahsun said...

I think it was mentioned on Slashdot after they posted about Wired's 6 word story article. Have you seen that? It's cool!

Was going to blog about it... but it must've slipped my mind. Haha.

Chet said...

Probably something to do with NaNoWriMo and participants googling to see if anyone has used the first line they want to use?

Anonymous said...

hi sharon,
pardon me and my ignorance, but may i know have the stories of you and your library been featured the StarTwo?
i tried to look up in the paper every weekend, found none. i'm afraid i might miss it.

bibliobibuli said...

yes, it was in on monday and i blogged it yesterday

daftsavant said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
daftsavant said...

Not quite the “remedy”, but here’s something else about “the last man”. Y – The Last Man & Children of Men.

Amir Hafizi said...

It's nice to be remembered. Sorry I didn't.

Happy Belated Birthday, Sharon.

Anonymous said...

Hi - I googled "The Last Man on Earth...." because a major news outlet Mon or Tues(i forget which now - prob MSNBC?) included it in one of their articles about great first lines... the author said it was one of the creepiest and also shortest story ever or something... but then didnt include an author. This peaked my interest (as did 100s of others, probably) and as a result I googled it, not finding the author, but instead your site. I frankly still dont know what its from or who wrote it.

bibliobibuli said...

daftsavant - many thanks for the links, good stuff and a fun diversion

mair - many thanks ... and just see what you started here.

king bonk - very many thanks for the explanation! that solves the mystery of why everyone came here ... but now we all want the name of the author.

(not that you need to buy the whole book since you have it all already!)

Glenda Larke said...

Are those two sentences that the whole story?

I just jump to the conclusion that it was a woman who knocked. A very polite woman?

Amir Hafizi said...

The story I read based on that very short story had an alien doing the knocking.

A Zan.

And... SPOILER ALERT








There is indeed a last woman on earth in the story.

Well, Sharon, I didn't mean things to happen as they did. But I must say that I'm glad the did.

Cheers!

bibliobibuli said...

thanks amir - it's all fun. i have no problem with hundreds of people flooding to my blog. i desire fame and fortune.

Mistress of the Dorkness said...

lol... I ended up on this page as well, thought I'd drop a comment.

I'm actually looking for a good reference on a favorite book. A short Sci-Fi story collection published back in the early 80's. That was the intro line to one of the short stories. I don't know the author, because I no longer have the book... but, it was compiled and edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenburg, and George Waugh.
It was an interesting short story, well-crafted (as you can obviously tell from the opening line).

ISBN: 0-449-24531-4 / 978-0-449-24531-6 (USA edition)
Publisher: Fawcett

Cheers!

bibliobibuli said...

the book is "the last man on earth" and there's copies for sale on abebooks

it's very nice that you landed up here, melanie, and thanks for dropping me a note ...

Anonymous said...

Melanie, I believe we are looking for the same book. and finally I feel closer to finding it! Some of the other stories are:the luckiest man in denv, the offog, the drop, the stainless steel rat,and the hypnoglyph. I remember the stories and the names but not the name of the book. I received it as a gift in the early 80's and it was my alltime favorite collection of scifi shorts.
Amir is right, the aliens are the Zan. Happy hunting all! PEACE!!!

bibliobibuli said...

hope you find your book! i think i must order a copy too now ...