The Last Night

Abstract

First published in Esquire in December 1963 and reprinted in Cannibals and Christians, Mailer’s only mature science-fiction story takes the form of a film treatment, prefaced by his note on the art of the treatment. With the earth and the entire solar system poisoned by fallout, an American President, pressed by his closest scientific adviser, must decide whether to destroy the planet itself so that a single starship carrying a hundred survivors can escape to the stars.