The Last Day and the First
By Tim Lebbon
()
About this ebook
'...even when the screams ring out and the blood spills, there remains a thread of light, and turning the page you fall into beauty once again.'
—Rio Youers
My name is Rose, and I'm the last woman left alive. So begins this novella that follows Rose's final day, but it is also the first day of a future that few could have imagined.
Tim Lebbon
Tim Lebbon is the author of over fourteen novels and novella collections, and his short fiction has appeared in over fifteen anthologies, including The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. He is a winner and multiple nominee of the British Fantasy Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Guild Award.
Read more from Tim Lebbon
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The Last Day and the First - Tim Lebbon
Exploring TIM LEBBON’s
Eco-Horror Playground
Let’s talk about the end of the world. Not the death of planet earth, when it gets swallowed by the sun (according to Wikipedia, this will happen in approximately 7.59 billion years), but the end of civilisation as we know it. I’m talking about the decimation of society, the collapse of balance and humanity. No more cell phones. No shopping trips to the mall or nights on the town. No internet. No Netflix. No Taylor Swift or Elon Musk.*
Can you imagine?
Tim Lebbon can. And has—many times. In fact, when it comes to the end of the world, nobody does it better. Whether it’s the nightmarish vesps tearing their way through humankind in The Silence, or the blinding, suffocating snowscape of his award-winning novella White, Tim’s depictions of the apocalypse are unfailingly stark, terrifying, and believable.
But while the themes of cataclysm are consistent, each story is different from the last, exploring new (but equally unsettling) scenarios. Tim’s 2020 novel Eden follows a group of endurance sports enthusiasts who attempt to cross a Virgin Zone
—a vast expanse of terrain that has been returned to Mother Nature—with horrific consequences. In Coldbrook (2012), a team of scientists at a facility in the Appalachians unleash hell on earth after opening a gateway to a parallel world. And Bar None (2009) sees most of humanity laid to waste by an avian flu, with a handful of survivors questing forth across southwest England in search of, possibly, the last pub on earth.
There are others, including short stories like The Origin of Truth
and From Bad Flesh,
the excellent Borrowed Time trilogy, and Tim’s most recent novel, The Last Storm. From this, it’s not a stretch to conclude that the end of the world is Tim Lebbon’s playground, his preferred literary canvas...and, equally, that this is a subject that weighs heavily on his mind.
Eden and The Last Storm are outstanding examples of eco-horror, a contemporary term for a brand of fiction that delves into our fears of impending environmental catastrophe, and the potential backlash from Mother Nature. Although eco-horror
is a relatively new term, the fiction it describes is not, and broadly encompasses any story that involves mankind fucking things up. Movies like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them! spring immediately to mind, as do King Kong and Godzilla...and let’s not forget the 1978 cult classic Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. We—the horror fans among us—are fascinated by the prospect of our own destruction, whether it comes as a result of atomic fallout, global warming, or uprooting a perfectly content 34,000-pound gorilla and dropping him in the middle of Manhattan.
There can be no doubt that Tim Lebbon has made his mark within the eco-horror sub-genre. Furthermore, I believe he ranks among the best of its regular contributors.
Heck, he may even be the best.
That’s a broad statement, I know...but once you’ve read The Last Day and the First, I think you’ll see what I mean.
Okay, before we go any further, full disclosure: Tim Lebbon is a friend of mine. One of my best friends, in fact, both inside the writing community and out. He lives in Wales, I live in Canada, so we see each other far too infrequently, but meet regularly on Skype (usually with a beer in hand) to shoot the breeze, which generally amounts to sharing our joys, successes, and frustrations. It’s a friendship that started out strong and has only grown from there. Rest assured, though, that I will do my best to be objective here, and not write this introduction through Tim-coloured glasses.
With that out of the way, back to the business at hand.
The Last Day and the First is a captivating novella. In my opinion, it’s one of Tim’s best (it’s right up there with White—that’s how good it is) and resides comfortably in my top five favourite novellas of all time—a select list that includes Stephen King’s The Body and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. And yeah, I know what you’re thinking: Tim-coloured glasses. But that’s not the case. My friendship with Tim aside, The Last Day and the First rises head and shoulders above the typical eco-horror fare. Yes, it touches on our fears and humanity’s failures, but it does not dwell on these things. Instead, what we have is an observation of life at its most delicate, seen through the eyes of our protagonist, Rose, the last woman alive. Rose’s strengths and sensitivities form a narrative that holds a mirror up to the human race and the world it has left behind. It is characterful, heartfelt, at times unflinching, and always beautiful.
I’ll put it another way: So many end of the world stories are inherently bleak, but The Last Day and the First is vibrant and hopeful. I’d go as far as to call it a beginning of the world story. Managing this is no mean feat, and shines a light on Tim’s enviable writing skills. He has brought about the downfall of civilisation countless times, but never quite like this...never so optimistically. I don’t want you to think you’re in for an easy ride, because you’re not. There is horror in these pages (the scorers make sure of that). But even when the screams ring out and the blood spills, there remains a thread of light, and turning the page you fall into beauty once again.
I remember Tim telling me how our mutual literary agent read this novella, and needed a moment to himself after finishing it, just to reflect on things. Our agent has been in the publishing industry for five decades, and has read tens of thousands of manuscripts, so for The Last Day and the First to have this effect on him should tell you everything you need to know. My own experience was similar. I was left feeling pensive and tearful, but ultimately fulfilled. After taking a moment to gather my thoughts, I wrote to Tim to tell him how moved I was by his story. I also offered to write the introduction. I admit now that this