Speccie Last Words by 19th September
 

No. 2765: last words
‘The Last ___ on Earth’ You are invited to fill in the gap as you choose and provide a short story of that title. (150 words max.) Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 19 September.

Wheels are whirring. I have an idea! And I am sure you have too, and probably a better one

When it says '150 words' rather than '16 lines max ' it's technically a prose comp. I take it your offering will be in verse, John?

Jayne

If I do it, it certainly will be, Jayne.

I think the use of the term 'short story' suggests prose is called for, though I know a tale can be told in verse. I'll be entering prose, if I can come up with something. This does have a ring of school creative writing exercize about it, though.

I agree that it's not an immediately inspiring assignment. This is all I've come up with:

‘He’s very listless today, poor redundant thing,’ she told me, as we stared through bars at the last man on Earth. ‘Won’t even read his nasty porn mags or watch his Jeremy Clarkson DVDs. Perhaps I’ll send you in to him with a unit of alcohol. He likes that.’
I stood ready to serve, obedient as a robot should be.
‘But we mustn’t feel sorry for him,’ she said firmly. ‘He looks harmless now, but watch him when he’s been drinking. He’ll probably get very sexist and offensive. Then it’ll be obvious how wise we females were to get rid of these brutes and rely on cloning. So much more reliable, so much less messy. And when this one goes, nobody can ever dispute women’s right to rule the planet!’
At which I allowed myself a small metallic chuckle. We robots have plans.

They thought that all books had been destroyed years ago, but they'd recently discovered one hidden in an old man's sleeping cubicle.

In Execution Square, a uniformed Kindleman held up a tattered object. 'My friends, do you know what this is?' 'A book!' hissed the crowd. 'What do we do with books?' 'We kindle 'em!' 'And how do we kindle 'em?' 'WITH FIRE!' they roared.

The Kindleman ritually strangled a passing cat, drenched it with petrol, set it alight, and tossed it onto the prepared bonfire. Page by page, the book was fed to the flames. As the last page blackened and shriveled, the crowd gave a collective sigh of fulfillment.

That evening, queuing for our ration of ProtoVeg, I reflected that my son, though he would never see a tiger or an elephant, had at least seen with his own eyes the last book on earth.

George, highly entertaining - I hadn't seen it when I posted my piece.

I'd been thinking, as it were, of "doing" the Last Woman on Earth, but nothing has come of it so far.

These are all awfully good. What about the last poet on earth?

Somebody's bound to do the last Spectator competition on earth?

The last god died without a word, but the last believer went out howling, yelling imprecations against the name of Dawkins so violent that they became legendary. Long after the professor’s work on biology had been forgotten by even the dustiest of antiquaries, and centuries after the last copy of his books had gone to landfill, the tale of that cursing was still told with wonder and delight. Few understood its original context, since the very idea of religion was slipping into oblivion, but the name of Dawkins remained a name of power; the ignorant would use it as a talisman. In the Times of Trouble the desperate uttered it by the light of votive candles. During the Great Struggle the name became a password among resisters. At the celebration of the Great Victory the mob cried ‘Thanks be to Dawkins!’ The Earth had a new god.

Oh George, how brilliant!

Thanks, John.

If it was the last NS competition on earth, it would undoubtedly be a re-run of one from the 50's.

George, yours are both excellent, although I confess to a preference for the first, especially "I allowed myself a small metallic chuckle".

Thanks, Brian.
I think I prefer the second, but I've bunged both Lucy-wards, in the hope that one or other might take her fancy.

'The Last Spectator Competition' - that's a thought. Are we competitors an ageing breed, with our range of literary reference and our delight in formal verse?
In the course of some historical research, I looked at some copies of the Westminster Gazette of a hundred years ago. Every Saturday the literary editor (Naomi Royde-Smith) set a competition, usually of a somewhat daunting nature. Readers might be asked, for example, to translate a poem by Robert Bridges into Greek hexameters.
In a hundred years time, will our Spectatorial amusements seem as recondite and strange to any readers of the future who chance to puzzle over them?

'The last book' was bad enough, but here's an even gloomier piece:

The last woman on Earth

Our deep underground shelter protected us for a long time, but when the life-support systems began to fail, we were obliged to return to the surface.

It was even worse than we had feared. The planet was barren. Not a bird, not an insect, not a blade of grass. What will happen when our survival rations run out? I see only one solution, even though it is one of our most deeply-ingrained taboos.

As the only woman among eight men, I am protected and pampered - for the moment. My companions constantly remind me that I am the sole hope for the future of the human race. They take it in turns every night, each of them no doubt secretly hoping that he will be the one to impregnate me.

But I’m very much afraid that when they finally discover that I, like the planet, am barren, they will eat me.

In a hundred years, the competition will consist of translating 150 words of the Koran into that other dead language, English.

Most effectively grim, Brian.

Do you think that Lucy's postbag this week is going to be unalloyed misery?
Maybe we could think of something to cheer her up. The last cholera germ? Or the last TV reality show?

The latter is certainly a cheering thought, George. But in the main, the last anything is likely to be fairly depressing. I fear that poor Lucy will simply have to reap what she has sown.

Too rude?

Kate smiled. It had been a grueling but successful gambit, this “Naked November,” during which the royals had pursued a breathtakingly audacious plan to end intrusive press photography by attending all public appearances in the nude. At first, there had been the inevitable embarrassments, such as that truly dicey ribbon-cutting ceremony. Prince Charles’s unfortunate gardening mishap while planting bulbs had undoubtedly been the campaign’s low point, but by month’s end even the Italian newspapers had capitulated and refused to publish any pictures of aristocrats or celebrities who weren't decently clothed. Then, too, everyone agreed that for sheer bravura performance, nothing had equaled Her Majesty, skydiving above Piccadilly Circus. In any event, the most scurrilous gutter publications now endorsed Mitt Romney’s statement, made on his post-defeat “Apology Tour” of England, expressing the hope that the world had seen the last photograph of “one of the naked members of the royal family.”

Frank

Not at all. Very droll.