To get ready for the upcoming Symposium on Frankenstein, or, Everybody Loves the Creature, I’ve been re-reading (yes, re-reading thank you) Shelley’s The Last Man. Sometimes it is billed as science fiction, because in 2056 the world is ravished by plague and we get down to, yes, the last man. But besides being spared any inkling of what 2011 would be like, lucky creature, let alone 2056, Shelly writes pretty much of her own time. Yes, England is a Republic, but there is still a royal faction in the wings, plotting a come-back. There is quite a bit of roman à clef about it. Lionel, our narrator and LM, is Shelley herself; Adrian,
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