The Last Man (Mary Shelley novel) | Hacker News Reader

The Last Man (Mary Shelley novel)

en.wikipedia.org

64 pointssamclemens22 comments

Mary Shelley suprises me yet again with not only the first horror novel but also the first dystopia damn

William Godwin (Mary Shelley's father) wrote a novel called Caleb Williams which I remember as a very early dystopian thriller - not in the alternate-world sense, but in the "innocent man hounded by sinister agents" style a la Enemy of the State (or North by Northwest for that matter) and tons of other modern things. Pretty cool to have one foot in the 18th century and the other a good 200 years into the future.

It's unclear if Walpole's Castle of Otranto is the first horror, but in any case it predates Frankenstein by 53 years.

I’d immediately thought of “The Last Man in Europe”, which was the working title for George Orwell’s 1984.

Sounds a bit like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_man

My mind went to I Am Legend (novel, 1954)[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend_(novel)

There's a pretty good graphic novel with with a similar name and theme. It was written post 9/11 and definitely draws on that as a source of thematic inspiration. I'd give the TV show a miss though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y:_The_Last_Man

> the governmental system of the Romantic era.

I didn't know the Romantic era had one. That's really bad, even for Wikipedia.

The early 1800s didn't have governments?

When discussing government as opposed to say art or literature, "Romantic era" is a strange choice.

A cynic might argue that Humanism and the Enlightenment had no lasting impact on the “stupid cruelty” of the governed or their governments.

Was the English system of government similar to the French? The German? The Greek? The Chinese? And who governed the Romantic era?

Countries have governments, badly defined time periods don't.

The sentence you quoted from mentions the British Empire twice already, do you really need a third mention at the end to understand what the context is for the quoted part?

We know exactly when Shelley lived. There’s no need to mention that either. It’s a form of bad journalistic fluffing, that in —-a straightforward interpretation— is misleading.

Can't be easy getting angry about journalism at bits of sentences taken out of context in non-journalistic texts.

> It was not until the 1960s that the novel resurfaced for the public as a work of fiction, not prophecy.

Yet...?

I was going to reply with “it would have been more impressive if she also wrote about climate being a factor”. Assuming the Wikipedia summary is accurate, she does have climate as a major factor. That said, the major and minor details still do not come close to match our reality

I too am missing the connection. Million monkeys and typewriters. Old novel has parallels to modern events, with significant deviations from reality. Author clearly visitor from the future.

FWIW, the part about "prophecy" has been removed from the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Last_Man_(Mar...

Based on the comments here, I assume the link used to redirect to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man_(Mary_Shelley_nov...

But now it seems to go to the disambiguation page

Indeed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Last_Man&acti...

Huh. Ok, we've replaced the submitted URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Man with the Shelley link above.

Thanks to you both!

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