This week we review The Last Human by Isaac Young.
The Xurak trained their eyes upon the galaxy and sculpted their vessels for this task. It is not that they built their worlds of horror because they delighted in such things. They sought the most monstrous of designs to strike fear into the alien heart. Nothing less could be permitted, lest the tragedy of Terra strike again. And it was only after several generations that the Xurak fell in love with what they wanted to inflict on their enemies.
Vas Du’Kaal is the last human child in the universe. A slave to uplifted praying mantises, this kid can’t speak - he’s never learned how. He’s just another cog in the Bugman machine. There is no such thing as mother; there is only your P’taph, the bug who tells you what to do.
So, there he is, slaving away in the maggot-fields, when a spaceship arrives captained by bounty hunter (and legendary 800-year-old warrior) Amon Russ. He’s there to capture some alien, and in so doing, he notices: oh wow, there’s a human child over there, in with the bugs. I will buy that human child, because he’s probably the last one in the universe. And we’re off on our found-family space-adventure.
Fast forward a couple thousand years, and this is what the galaxy of Star Trek looks like: humans are the elder gods that everyone lusts after, or wants to take apart. They want to keep humans in zoos because they’re so awesome. It’s tough to be a god.
Allegorically, we’ll go ahead and say it: humanity is a stand-in for Western-slash-European civilization, which destroyed itself, basically, between 1914 and 1945, and now you have uplifted races moving into formerly human territory and kind of taking things over. We’ll leave it to our listeners to look for parallels there.
What does it mean when your high-tech civilization discovers that there are actual demons in hell? What if your species is doomed? What do you do next? The Last Human creates a world that is inspiring. This is the way you keep a genre going, rather than just disassembling it and selling off the pieces.
Mentioned in this episode: our episode on The Domes of Calrathia; Young’s Star Trek essays (The Ultimate Dissident Review and A Leftwing Dream in a Rightwing Future); Starship Troopers, from the Tortuga Book Club; and John Derbyshire.
Join us next time for Current Affairs by Cairo Smith.
