Will I love The Last Man?

I've been a fan of Mary Shelley ever since I read Frankenstein, but this was the first time I read her novel The Last Man. I was blown away by this eighteenth century novel which imagines life in the twenty-first century. To me, it really cemented Shelley as the writer who really invented science fiction as we know it.

And this choice is a sneaky one: it was published in 1826, but it’s actually set in the late 21st century. I couldn’t resist including it for three reasons: it’s a product of the 1820s (and deals with several social concerns of the time, such as republicanism), it’s written by a woman (and my other four choices aren’t), and its rather apposite storyline concerns a mysterious pandemic that rapidly sweeps across the entire globe, ultimately resulting in the near-extinction of humanity (leaving just the last man)… It wasn’t popular at the time – widely considered to be Shelley’s weakest work… show more.