Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale – Sunny Moraine
Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale is about a woman who implores her partner to tell her stories about when life was so different.
This is a bittersweet monologue by someone juxtaposing memories of the old days with the days of her present.
The writing is evocative and draws the reader in with its emotion and yearning. This is a bleak look at how life on this planet could change for the worse and how survivors might need to remember the old times so they can live in the new reality.
This is a great example of a short story written using a pattern structure, where many of the sentences begin with ‘Tell me’.
“Tell me the story about the light and how it used to fall through the rain in rainbows.”
A Case for De-Extinction at the End of the World – Lyndsie Manusos
A Case for De-Extinction at the End of the World starts with a child feeling a connection with the long-extinct mammoth.
She grows up and becomes part of a group that clones a mammoth just before the end of the world.
The story quickly dips in and out of the unnamed narrator’s life as she moves from childhood to adulthood. The world begins shaking, signalling the end of the world, but the narrator stays with the mammoth fetus even after everyone else flees.
This is another great example of a pattern-based short fiction story. Every paragraph, until you get near the end, begins with the word ‘Because’.
“Because at 25, I was part of the somewhat-secretive group of scientists tasked with growing a cloned mammoth fetus in a womb created from spinach leaves.”
Finis – Frank L. Pollack
In Finis, the world is waiting for the day when the light from a theoretical star that exists at the centre of the universe reaches Earth.
Then it does.
Eastwood and some of his friends wait in a state-of-the-art university physics building to see the new star appear.
When the new day dawns, death and destruction follow the new star’s arrival. Eastwood and Alice, a girl that he doesn’t know well, survive the first day but are sure they won’t survive the second.
Published in 1906, I don’t know how the science of this story stacks up to reality, but the explanations of what’s happening and why sound reasonable to me.
This is an interesting tale of the end of humanity being caused by nature rather than man.
“All the streets were crowded, as they had been every night since the fifth of the month, when the great new star, or sun, was expected to come into view.”
The Man Who Lived – Raymond F. O’Kelley
In The Man Who Lived, Edward Penderby wakes up one evening and discovers everyone is dead.
Penderby lives in London. Unemployed and hopeless, he’s “tired in body and mind” from looking for work but being constantly rejected. He wakes up and heads out into the street and finds that everyone is dead except him.
He travels around London trying to work out what’s going on. Along the way, he tries out some things he’d never got the chance to, like eating in an upmarket restaurant and staying in a luxury hotel.
This is an interesting story with a surprise ending.
“The first body was outside a store at the corner. It was an old newspaper-seller’s, in a greasy blue suit that shone … Penderby, determined not to be an inquest witness, hurried past.”
Rewind – Chloe Ly Grimont
Rewind is set on the verge of the end of the world when scientists come up with a way to rewind time.
Written in journal format, the unnamed narrator describes what happens in the short term and longer-term. Events don’t all happen in reverse. For example, people continue to age normally, however children disappear on the day of their birth.
The narrator is introspective and waiting to see what happens when it gets to a day in the past where a loved one was lost in the sea.
This is a sad story with an interesting twist on time.
“Seven minutes left. Seven minutes until an asteroid crashes into the Earth, decimating ten billion people in one clean swipe.”
The Watcher – Ryan Law
In The Watcher, a couple are living in a valley after an unnamed apocalyptic event.
The husband spends time outside, watching and gathering food, taking pleasure in the small things, like rainwater falling into an open mouth or singing aloud when you know no one else is going to hear you.
Not much happens in this story, but it’s more of a sad, Adam and Eve love story about hope.
“He didn’t need to watch, but sometimes, he liked to remind himself that they were alone, and safe. That they were gone. That everyone was gone.”
