The Last Man is a mystery short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Union Club series, it was first published in the March 1989 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Summary[]
In the Union Club, a discussion about the "last man on earth" leads Griswold to recount a case involving a tontine, a financial arrangement where the last survivor of a group inherits the entire fund. The two final survivors, Joshua Armstrong and Philip Thornton, died on the same day. Their respective families, locked in a bitter feud, were unable to determine which man died last and thus who should inherit the three million dollars.
Olivia Armstrong, Joshua's granddaughter, sought Griswold's help to prevent a lengthy and costly legal battle. Griswold arranged a meeting with representatives from both families. He proposed a scientific solution: exhuming the bodies and measuring their carbon-14 content. He explained that since carbon-14 decays after death, the body with the higher content would have died more recently. He provided them with an authoritative essay on the subject to lend credibility to the method.
Griswold knew that carbon-14 dating, with its five thousand seven hundred thirty-year half-life, was far too imprecise to determine which man had died a few hours later. However, the feuding families, believing the test was an infallible scientific method that would definitively end the dispute and rob them of the chance for a prolonged legal victory, were motivated to compromise. Within three days, both families agreed to avoid the test and split the tontine money equally.
Characters[]
- Griswold
- Club Member (the narrator)
- Baranov
- Jennings
- Olivia Armstrong
- Joshua Armstrong
- Philip Thornton
- The Armstrong Family Representative
- The Thornton Family Representative
Historical Figures Mentioned[]
- Lorenzo Tonti
See Also[]
List of short stories by Isaac Asimov