"Not with a Bang" by Damon Knight

First appeared in F&SF. Reprinted by Isaac Asimov, Groff Conklin, Terry Carr, Alfred Hitchcock, Edward L. Ferman, Annette Pelz McComas, Isaac Asimov, and Martin H. Greenberg.

A plague smites Earth.  The last man on Earth, Rolf Smith, courts the last girl, Louise Oliver, who is something of religious prude ("I will not live with you in sin.").  She forces him to court her and respect her with the old rules.  She has saved him once before by helping him out of the rigidity brought on by the plague. He makes sweet promises, and she finally relents.

[Spoiler]  He goes to prep himself in the men's bathroom, thinking of all nasty ways he'll eventually treat her when... he locks up. Presumably, Louise is too much of a prude to go into the men's room.

Rolf Smith's name says it all.  He's a renowned wolf [Rolf] (backed up by Knight's description of him as a wolf) but a common, ordinary, everyday variety [Smith].  The hypocrisy of his words and actions is revealed early on:

"He leaned forward, trying to capture the attention of those fishlike eyes for a second. 'Darling,' he said, 'I respect your views naturally."

His body action feigns interest [leaned forward] and he says he respects her views, but his thoughts insult her [fishlike eyes] which also plays in a predatory sense as well--wolf vs. fish.  His thoughts show he in no way respects her or her views.

Asimov points out the double entendre in the title.  (See "Eripmav" for an example of a bad pun.)  This works because it flows in all meanings.  One needn't pull up at just the fact that Rolf doesn't get any (many will probably cheer at this, even if it means the end of all humanity).  Rather you run with that to the almost nursery-rhyme-like ending of T.S. Eliot's poem:

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper." [Emphasis mine from Eliot's "The Hollow Men"]

There's something extremely vulgar and irredeemably miserable about the last man in the world being a mendacious hypocrite.  Yet we somehow feel sorry for both.  Knowing the end of Eliot's poem accentuates this.

A close reading of "Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes" by Daniel Marcus

Originally appeared in Asimov's July 1996
Collected in Daniel Marcus's Binding Energy, story collection from Elastic Press
Now available freely online

SF readers often don't want their stories spoiled, but some stories actually improve once you know what has happened (studies have confirmed this.  Daniel Marcus' "Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes" is one of those.  This story requires simultaneous reading protocols of SF and literary genres, which makes it challenging story, indeed.

The title could refer to either Shakespeare's play or T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland," The latter, in its discussion of modernity's slip into detachment from one another (perhaps exemplified in Eliot's own stylistic detachment), may fit the story's theme better.  Moreover, the events within the tale have their detachment.  While the events are not arbitrary, reordering would not change the thematic content definitively.

The key event occurs at what might be called the penultimate scene.  A silkpup is picked up by a Ken.  Silkpups immediately imprint on the first thing they encounter, but if deprived, they grow dejected and die:

"The Ken looked at Suki.  'Fascinating,' said the Speaker.  She replaced the pup in its nest, turned on her heel, and walked out the door."

The Ken (the Speaker speaks for the Ken), after the initial curiosity, has no regard for the damage she's done to the pup.   Suki has to kill it.

This mirrors what has happened to Suki and what Suki has done to others.  Yet can it be helped?  In some ways their detachment and unconcern about the lives of others is due to their technology.  Suki had a relationship with Tam, but she ceased being interested when he uploaded himself.  Likewise, she becomes infatuated with Roan, a Void Dancer, but his world runs in different circles, even though he showed some initial interest.

Fascinating study of how future technology may take us further down the road that Eliot feared.  Sadly, it is hard not to buy into Marcus's theme.

Curiously, both Marcus and Christopher Barzak opened with interesting yet challenging stories to their collection, perhaps signalling the kinds of readers they seek.