Customer Reviews

The last American

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I bought this book looking for a story about post-apocalypse America: the full title is "The Last American: A Fragment from the Journal of Khan-Li, Prince of the Dimph-You-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy." It was short and cutesy--filled with puns just as bad as "Dimph-You-Chur" (="dim future"), not quite what I expected. A Persian expedition a thousand years from now explores the ruins of New York and Washington. The book is interesting at least for its vintage: first published in 1889, it is one of the earliest works in its genre. There is a thinly veiled and shallow commentary on American shortcomings in the gilded age.

This reprint of the 1902 edition of J.A. Mitchell's The Last American is a brief and critical commentary on American society, values. Its essentially a science fiction tale that takes place about 1,000 years into the future. America was long ago destroyed (due in part to dramatic climate change - how timely it is now!)and a group of Persian explorers voyage across the seas to visit the long lost country of "Merika."

Their journey takes them to New York and Washington and it is during those visits that reader hears social commentary from the Persian visitors on American society, culture, etc. Since the book was written over 100 years ago, the commentary no doubt is a criticism of American society at that point in time(ex. excessive focus on materialism, etc.), however, some of these criticisms are still valid today. Others, such as the one that America has no original ideas or creations of its own is just plain wrong (now or at the time when the book was written).

The book is also interesting in that the voyagers and critical commentators are from Persia, which today we know as Iran. Also, the explanation of America's sudden collapse due in part to dramatic climate change is an interesting (and also a bit uncomfortable) part of the story given today's problems we face with global warming.

As noted above, this reprint was taken from the 1902 edition, which included some wonderful full-color illustrations. However, the publisher has reprinted them in black and white which is understandable for an inexpensive paperback edition. The cover contains an enlarged version of one interior f/c illustration, so, that at least will give you a sense of what the others would look like if done in color.

In any case, its a good read and one that most can go through in couple of hours. And I recommend it.

I have a copy from 1902, the seventh edition, and I am happy I found it. The story is about a Persian ship that finds itself off the coast of the Western continent, a land known from myths and history, a land many thought didn't even exist. The crew explore this land, full of ruins and wonders, and even find a few surviving members of the natives. Natives once known as Mehrikans, the last of a great civilization, but a civilization that was already flawed before it collapsed. The author wrote the story as a warning about American threads that, at the time, seemed to be pushing the nation towards a dangerous end. Greed, self centered life styles, people more worried about class and fashion than their fellow man, he saw a America turning away from everything good and heading down the pathway of doom. The fact that the first copies were published in 1889 makes this a treasure and also a interesting mirror of history showing the thoughts and fears of Americans at the turn of the last century.

_This little rare gem of a book is one of the first examples of apocalyptic science fiction to originate in the U.S. (originally published in 1889.)

_Briefly, it is the account of a Persian expedition of exploration in search of the fabled city of Nhu-Yok, as told by the leader of the expedition. They find an endless expanse of ruins- complete with Statue of Liberty (completed just three years before the book was written.) Indeed the entire continent is now a wilderness once again. It all stands as an object lesson of the fate of the "Mehrikans"- "their rapid growth, their vast numbers, their marvellous mechanical ingenuity and their sudden and almost unaccountable disappearance." There is something uncomfortably and eerily prophetic about this unique excercise in speculative fiction- given the recent events concerning New York and the Islamic world. Also, the fact that the author places blame of the depopulation to "Climatic changes, the like of which no other land ever experienced" is uncomfortably close to our current situation.

TO THOSE THOUGHTFUL PERSIANS
WHO CAN READ A WARNING IN THE SUDDEN RISE
AND SWIFT EXTINCTION OF A FOOLISH PEOPLE
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

Even if you dismiss this as a thinly veiled commentary of social conditions during the Guilded Age it is still worth reading- for our current age has much in common with that period...