The Final Fall of Man

by Andrew Hindle
Eligible Publication: Human (The Final Fall of Man #8), CreateSpace, January 2017
In the Thirty-Ninth Century, great men and women of the human race strode among the stars and trod the jewelled thrones of the universe under their sandal’d feet.
Well, they weren’t wearing sandals, they were mostly wearing spacesuits because that was just plain common sense. And there weren’t really any jewelled thrones as such – not as far as anyone knew – so much as dusty ice-balls and emptiness and some algae in a couple of places. But human beings went out there and stepped in that algae, and then tracked it back into their starship airlocks and then looked around behind themselves as they walked on through into their recreation areas and said “oh damn, was that me?”
Yes, human beings did that.
And sometimes the algae turned out to be highly contagious or flesh-eating or toxic or fecund beyond terrestrial comprehension, and sometimes those human beings who had brought it on board their starships all died in graphic, horrible ways. And sometimes the emptiness turned out to be not quite so empty, and those human beings who had blundered into it had all their things taken away from them or were never heard from again.
And sometimes the ice turned out to have terrifying alien monsters capable of perfectly impersonating their hapless prey frozen inside just waiting to be dug out and thawed for some reason, and those human beings seemed to be okay but you never could be quite sure about them again after that.
But these incidents were rare, and there were always more human beings. Making more human beings was one of human beings’ all-time favourite things to do. It was basically the cornerstone of their entire civilisation.
So they spread, and as a species – with a little help from their friends – they survived. And they prospered and flourished. And they were noble and poetic and fearless and, occasionally, they were colossal bastards. But, in those final years of the human race, they mostly got it right.
The swan song of homo sapiens sapiens was sweet and sad and, if not harmonious, then at least glorious. If you’re going to go out on a song, as a rather famous entertainer once said, make it a beautiful, beautiful song. And if you can’t do that, well – make it deafening.
Yes, in the Thirty-Ninth Century, great men and women of the human race strode among the stars.
Also, these guys were there.
Eejit (The Final Fall of Man #1), CreateSpace, November 2014
Drednanth (The Final Fall of Man #2), CreateSpace, March 2015
Bonshoon (The Final Fall of Man #3), CreateSpace, June 2015
Fergunakil (The Final Fall of Man #4), CreateSpace, October 2015
Blaran (The Final Fall of Man #5), CreateSpace, February 2016
Molran (The Final Fall of Man #6), CreateSpace, June 2016
Damorak (The Final Fall of Man #7), CreateSpace, October 2016
Human (The Final Fall of Man #8), CreateSpace, January 2017
Category:Best Series