Last Man

English · 1826 · 7h 50m · Science Fiction, Historical Fiction

In Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, a plague spreads through a future world, threatening the people and societies Lionel Verney has known. The novel follows Verney from his difficult beginnings as the son of a nobleman ruined by gambling to the arrival of the epidemic.

First published in 1826, this early work of science fiction imagines a future shaped by catastrophe. Its focus is not only the outbreak itself, but the lives and relationships caught in its path as the world changes around them.

For listeners interested in classic speculative fiction, Shelley’s novel offers a nineteenth-century vision of a civilization facing the possibility of its own end.