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???
I think it was mentioned on Slashdot after they posted about Wired's 6 word story article. Have you seen that? It's cool!
ReplyDeleteWas going to blog about it... but it must've slipped my mind. Haha.
Probably something to do with NaNoWriMo and participants googling to see if anyone has used the first line they want to use?
ReplyDeletehi sharon,
ReplyDeletepardon 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.
yes, it was in on monday and i blogged it yesterday
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteNot quite the “remedy”, but here’s something else about “the last man”. Y – The Last Man & Children of Men.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to be remembered. Sorry I didn't.
ReplyDeleteHappy Belated Birthday, Sharon.
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.
ReplyDeletedaftsavant - many thanks for the links, good stuff and a fun diversion
ReplyDeletemair - 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!)
Are those two sentences that the whole story?
ReplyDeleteI just jump to the conclusion that it was a woman who knocked. A very polite woman?
The story I read based on that very short story had an alien doing the knocking.
ReplyDeleteA 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!
thanks amir - it's all fun. i have no problem with hundreds of people flooding to my blog. i desire fame and fortune.
ReplyDeletelol... I ended up on this page as well, thought I'd drop a comment.
ReplyDeleteI'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!
the book is "the last man on earth" and there's copies for sale on abebooks
ReplyDeleteit's very nice that you landed up here, melanie, and thanks for dropping me a note ...
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.
ReplyDeleteAmir is right, the aliens are the Zan. Happy hunting all! PEACE!!!
hope you find your book! i think i must order a copy too now ...
ReplyDelete