Till A’the Seas

"Till A’the Seas" is a post-apocalyptic short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow.

Plot

The story consists of two parts. The first describes the events which took place on Earth from a few thousand years after present to few millions years. The climate on Earth is getting warmer and warmer, oceans are slowly disappearing. People are gradually moving towards poles, becoming more and more barbaric. Mankind is steadily dying out because of the lack of water, until there is only a few decades left.

The second part starts in a small village in the desert. There is only one man left in the village: young Ull. A very old woman, the only company for the man, died just before. So, Ull starts a journey in search of other people, and he seems to know from old legends about the place. In a few days, extremely thirsty and tired, he finds a small settlement. Ull enters one of the houses and finds nothing, but a dried-up old skeleton. Depressed, he starts searching for water and finds a well with a little water in it. Trying to reach the string to pull up a dip-bucket, he falls into the well and dies. And after the death of the last man, mankind totally has vanished. A farce, named "evolution", faces a natural conclusion.

Creation and publication

The short story was a literary collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow -who was only 17 years old at the time-. It was written in January, 1935 and published in Summer 1935 in "The Californian".