The Last Man
Novel by Mary ShelleyWikipedia
23
MENTIONS
10
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 23 mentions across 10 episodes found for "The Last Man".
Oct 22, 2026
Sean King O'GradyHOST
So that's our three episodes on effective altruism, long-termism, and apparently a bit about accelerationism and the dark enlightenment.
Sean King O'GradyHOST
Next episode, we're doing something I've been wanting to do since the very first episode of the season aired, We're talking about Mary Shelley, the original post-apocalyptic novel, The Last Man, and of course, Frankenstein.
Sean King O'GradyHOST
That will be our Halloween episode this year, and I can't promise it won't be spooky.
Sean King O'GradyHOST
Please stick around after the outro music.
Tess BellomoHOST
He suggested changes.
Tess BellomoHOST
And he encouraged her to turn the original ghost story into a full novel, like we said.
Tess BellomoHOST
So he did play a role in its development.
Tess BellomoHOST
But editing your partner's book is not the same as writing a book.
19 MINS LATER
Tess BellomoHOST
1826, she writes this book called The Last
Tamsen FadalADVERTISER
Man,
Tess BellomoHOST
which is a groundbreaking sci-fi novel about a global plague.
Claire DonaldHOST
Oh, really?
Daphne WoolsoncroftHOST
She wrote more novels after this as well.
Daphne WoolsoncroftHOST
She eventually went on to write The Last Man, which is an apocalyptic novel about a plague destroying humanity.
Daphne WoolsoncroftHOST
So, you know, of course, Most all of her work, especially her novels, were dark Gothic pieces.
Daphne WoolsoncroftHOST
But like your work, of course, is very diverse.
Paige LewisGUEST
And then there's, like...
Paige LewisGUEST
I mean, there's arguments that, like, uh, Mary Shelley was, like, the first real sci-fi writer because of, like, Frankenstein or for, like, I think it's called The Last Man, which is about a man after a really bad pandemic kind of wipes everyone out.
Paige LewisGUEST
And so, I don't know.
NehaHOST
Yeah.
John HopkinsHOST
Alongside all of the other writing, she does continue to produce novels.
John HopkinsHOST
Most notably, in 1826, she publishes The Last Man, about a global plague that kills most of humanity, leaving only one man alive.
John HopkinsHOST
It is one of the first works of dystopian fiction.
John HopkinsHOST
She also dedicates herself to editing all of her husband's poetry and prose, finally publishing an edited collection in 1839.
speaker_1NARRATOR
[upbeat music] The Pat Kenny Show on Newstalk.
Pat KennyHOST
Martina Devlin has rejoined me because I want to talk about her brand-new novel, which is called Glorious Monsters, and we're going to find out who those monsters are and the milieu in which we find them.
Pat KennyHOST
Martina, good morning and welcome.
Martina DevlinGUEST
Thank you.
Pat KennyHOST
Hmm.
Pat KennyHOST
Um, uh, at the heart of your story as well is another story entirely, a, a woman called Beatrice Cenci.
Pat KennyHOST
Uh, tell me about her, because she predates the era in which we find ourselves in the novel.
Martina DevlinGUEST
She does.
speaker_1HOST
Yes, Mary Shelley.
speaker_0HOST
Wait, Mary Shelley's novel, The Last Man.
speaker_0HOST
Like, m- most people just know her for Frankenstein, but here she is in the early 19th century writing a massive saga about a 21st century world being scrubbed clean by the bubonic plague.
speaker_1HOST
The Last Man is a foundational text, and its reception is incredibly revealing about human psychology.
speaker_0HOST
Oh, yeah, they hated it.
speaker_1HOST
They did.
speaker_1HOST
Wow.
speaker_0HOST
It was a novel called The Last Man.
speaker_1HOST
That timeline is just crucial to understand.
speaker_0HOST
It is.
Martina DevlinGUEST
She wrote, she's remembered for Frankenstein, but she, which is regarded as this giant of Gothic literature, but also as the first science fiction novel.
Martina DevlinGUEST
But she then wrote another novel, which is the first apocalypse novel called The Last Man.
Martina DevlinGUEST
That was published in 1826, eight years after Frankenstein.
Martina DevlinGUEST
And that's about a plague which wipes out humankind.
7 MINS LATER
Martina DevlinGUEST
And in choosing to write this kind of novel, she was putting down a marker that she wouldn't be she wouldn't go along with the kinds of subjects that women were expected to go along with.
Martina DevlinGUEST
It was highly unusual for her to do that.
Martina DevlinGUEST
And indeed, in The Last Man, her apocalyptic novel, this was a departure from the norm too.
Martina DevlinGUEST
And in the reading I've done around women in the aftermath of...
speaker_0NARRATOR
How did a private diary of grief become a story about the end of the world? Mary Shelley wrote her second science fiction novel after losing her husband and three of her children.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Published on twenty-three September twenty twenty-six, the essay asks what a two-hundred-year-old story about a global plague reveals about modern crises.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The central question is how private grief scales into a warning about human extinction.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Even if you have never read it, you know the story of Mary Shelley's second great work of political science fiction after Frankenstein.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The Last Man, published in eighteen twenty-six but set in the late twenty-first century, tells the tale of a lethal contagion spread by human conflict and war that sweeps the world and seemingly leaves one sole human survivor.
speaker_0NARRATOR
With wars and climate catastrophes hitting a world still reeling from seven million deaths caused by COVID-19, Shelley's pandemic novel has perhaps never felt so relevant, and the book's influence is widespread.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The tropes and themes of The Last Man have shaped the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction in the two centuries since its release.
speaker_0NARRATOR
In Shelley's Frankenstein and the many stories, films, and TV shows it has inspired, the abandoned monster becomes a plague upon his creator.