Mankind faces extinction due to a mysterious red snow that sterilized women. "The end of the human race, told with savage gusto." - Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 1203. One of the few works of speculative fiction "from Capek's generation that compares favorably with anything by the Czech master. Its grand terminal event is the instant sterilization of the human race by a red snow that falls for ninety seconds all over the planet on August 17, 1935. The last man, Phaeton Andrews, dies on Easter in A.D. 2027, after a lightning bolt has killed all his cronies. Or does he die? According to a rabbit who saw everything, a golden chariot with magnificent horses descended to Earth, a being -- not human -- gave Phaeton the reins, and the two of them rode, laughing heartily, up into the sky. The events of Greek mythology are adroitly reversed." - Wagar, Terminal Visions: The Literature of Last Things
A satirical, science fiction novel about a global catastrophe of a red snow-like substance that sterilizes the entire population. The novel begins in the year 1935. As the population falls we are treated to a hundred years of horror, madness and grim humor featuring a feverish whirlpool of fanaticism, pogroms, massacres, laboratory near-miracles, race war, orgiastic paganism, and sex conflict.