Earth's Last Citadel

by C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner

Four humans from the Twentieth Century are hurled forward a billion years in time by a being from an alien galaxy. They have been brought to a dying Earth - to Carcasilla, Earth's last citadel - where the mutated remnants of humanity are making their final stand against the monstrous creations of a fading world.

Thrust in the middle of this desperate struggle for survival, the last humans search for a way to break the deadlock in the Armageddon at the end of time...

Genres: Science Fiction, Dying Earth, Fiction, Collections, Fantasy, Canon, Novels

146 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Excerpted from Wikipedia:
Catherine Lucille Moore was an American science fiction and fantasy writer, as C. L. Moore. She was one of the first women to write in the genre, and paved the way for many other female writers in speculative fiction.

Moore met Henry Kuttner, also a science fiction writer, in 1936 when he wrote her a fan letter (mistakenly thinking that "C. L. Moore" was a man), and they married in 1940.
Afterwards, almost all of their stories were written in collaboration under various pseudonyms, most commonly Lewis Padgett (another pseudonym, one Moore often employed for works that involved little or no collaboration, was Lawrence O'Donnell).

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 1 out of 5]

My rant-laden opening salvo of vitriol notwithstanding, I will grant you that there may indeed be some semblance of a coherent plot hidden within these pages that I'm just too much of a pudden-head to locate within the myriad of stock characters, half-formed ideas and confusing narrative. I would have liked to have turned to some sage luminary for a hand of help in cracking the "Mystery of the Non-existent Plot," but it turns out that Sherlock Holmes is fictional, Albert Einstein is dead, and the CSI team is tied up working on how Kristen Stewart and Ashton Kutcher ever got a gig in Hollywood (I understand this may take a considerable amount of time to solve).

Therefore, since I was apparently on my own, I decided to bravely continue my sojourn through the novel, being sure to confirm every few pages that the writing was still English, and all the while struggling to decipher W....T....F....the point of it all was.

I had no luck and ended up aggrieved and simmering in a pool of my own rage.

However...

There was a bright, sunny side to this debacle. The book's only 130 pages and so I was able to finish it before reacing the point where I would seriously consider doing permanent harm to myself.** Thus beyond the headache and some uncontrollable bouts of soft weeping, I should be fine.

**BTW, for those of you who care, my concussion is getting better and the workers are coming tomorrow to fix the head-sized whole in the drywall.

That said, I can't recommend this book to you (unless I really dislike you, in which case I have already sent you a PM giving it a huge thumbs up). Even if you have already read Kuttner’s masterpiece, Fury (which I loved), I would advise reading that story again (and again) before braving this story. Better yet, pick up some of his short fiction that he wrote with Moore which I find is generally very good.

Why, Henry?...Why Catherine? Why did you do this?

I am gonna stop here because I think I need to lie down as my head is beginning to hurt and the screen is getting blurry through the tears. 1.5 stars.

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

synopsis: 2 Allies and 2 Nazis find themselves at the end of Earth's lifespan, where things like World War II lack any relevance. Together, they fight against the mutated denizens of this dying Earth, and then alongside those mutants against a far greater threat - a cylinder of light shrouded in darkness, an energy being that longs to consume them all.

Cognitive Dissonance: the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

I think cognitive dissonance may also be a reason why this book was often so confusing, frustrating, and yet sometimes genuinely exhilarating. This Golden Age of Science Fiction classic was written by a husband & wife team (both well-known separately, and well-regarded) and that may explain the cognitive dissonance itself, as it was put together by two minds. Characters start off as exciting (especially the Nazis: a sharp-witted redhead adventuress and her feral mercenary companion - a fellow with the name of Mike Smith!)... but end up being cardboard or barely in the story; god-like threats are genuinely disturbing (including a floating Oz-like head in a tower made of what looks to be water)... but are also weirdly petty, poorly-defined; a vision of the future that is by turns rich with overripe ideas and shallow, derivative; the narrative both straightforward and irritatingly patchwork; the story often thrilling yet at times it literally put me to sleep. Some incredible ideas, many that went nowhere. All in all, an exciting and boring novel.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moore and Kuttner, husband and wife, were one of the top partnerships in genre literature. This was their first collaboration in novel form - in fact, it is more like a novella since it is quite short, was originally published in Argosy in 1943 and only came out as a paperback in 1964.

The story is no masterpiece. It is embedded initially in the pulp wartime espionage of its time before winging off into a space and time opera with evident debts to Wells, Hope Hodgson, Stapledon, Merritt, Lovecraft, Frank L. Baum and whoever else was to hand.

The city of Carcasilla sounds damn lazily like Carcosa, the mysterious city of Bierce and Chambers. There are points when we seem to be seeing a horror/scifi mash-up being concocted for a swift sale to knowing audience. Yet still it works as adventure and fantasy and even as horror.

At a certain point, it suddenly takes off into some seriously imaginative material, creating a vision of the far future and of a predatory alien evil desperate to survive as well as of the strange crystalline city where advanced science appears to be magic.

The 'gloom' lies in the realisation, drawn from Wells, that all human endeavour is likely to turn to dust and that our survival rests on a cosmic knife edge, precisely the presentiment of doom one would expect in the middle of a major world war.

The characterisation is barely developed, the science well out of date and the adventure somewhat predictable but if regarded as fantasy rather than as science fiction, it not only passes muster it shows two authors with a very rich imaginative pallette.

This is one where it is wise to suspend disbelief and go with the flow with its hint of seeing the point of view of anti-human evil with its own back to the wall, a sub-conscious recognition of another more human 'evil' equally desperate for existential survival in 1943.

The 'war' certainly weighs on this book which offers an insight into the paranoia and fear of the age but it also shows Kuttner perhaps being tamed from his tendency to be a boy's own adventurer by his wife and then letting their joint imagination rip. In that context, it works.

[Ron · Rating 2 out of 5]

“They were from -- outside. They wore light like a garment, and to them humans were--vermin. They cleansed the earth of them.”

Classic, but not all that good science fiction. Eligible for 2019 retro Hugo Award consideration, but not up to snuff. Liberal borrowings from H. G. Wells’ The Time MachineTime Machine.

“How great a man this was, who could speak so coolly while death marched down upon him!”

Old fashioned, manly men who acted more than thought. Female supporting cast not well developed, which is surprising considering Moore is acclaimed as a pioneer female SF author.

“Fighting it was like defying the lightning.”

We know now that the moon is gradually getting farther, not closer, to Earth, but the image of the moon looming large and huge tides is a good one. The hotter sun, a real trend, leads to a desiccated landscape.

“Far back in Alan’s mind, behind the helpless horror, the terrible revulsion, the more terrible taint of kinship with this being whose dreams he had known--lay one small corner of detached awareness.”

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catherine Moore and Henry Kuttner, generally acknowledged to be the preeminent husband-and-wife writing team in sci-fi history, initially had their novella "Earth's Last Citadel" released in the pages of "Argosy" magazine in 1943 (indeed, it was the very last piece of science fiction to be serialized in that publication). It was finally published in book form 21 years later. This is a pretty way-out piece of sci-fi/fantasy that reveals its debt to a handful of writers who had been major influences on the pair, particularly the florid early works of Abraham Merritt.

In it, four participants in the conflict known as World War II are shanghaied from the beaches of Tunisia and brought billions of years into Earth's future. The quartet includes Alan Drake, a U.S. Army Intelligence officer; Sir Colin Douglas, a Scotch physicist whom Drake had been rescuing; Karen Martin, an adventuress working for the Nazis; and Mike Smith, an Americanized German also working for der Fuhrer. The four are forced to put their differences aside when they reawaken and discover a moribund Earth, populated by giant worms and wailing flying creatures and shrouded in perpetual mists. This early section of the book is very well done indeed; a bravura piece of outre and descriptive writing that really makes the reader feel the desolation of the landscape. Later, our band of confused heroes becomes involved with the jewellike, underground city of Carcasilla, the barbarous Terasi, AND a sentient, alien vortex of energy that is trying to suck the life out of Earth's last survivors. It is in the authors' descriptions of the fantastic, gravity-defying city of Carcasilla that their fondness for the hyperadjectival purple prose of A. Merritt is most noticeable, but nobody tops ol' Abe in this department. There are also tips of the chapeau to the works of H. Rider Haggard, the so-called "Father of the Lost Race Novel," not least of all with the inclusion of a fountain of light energy that bestows virtual immortality; only a very slight variant of Haggard's Fountain of Life in his classic 1887 novel "She." Kuttner's love of the works of H.P. Lovecraft, with whom Kuttner corresponded in the 1930s, is certainly hinted at in his descriptions of the life-draining Alien, a nameless entity so very different from terrestrial life that it might as well have leaped gibbering from the pages of the Cthulhu mythos.

"Earth's Last Citadel" is a brief, fast-moving tale, and at 128 pages can easily be consumed in a few sittings. Typical for Kuttner and Moore, it is a perfect blending of their respective talents, and should satisfy most lovers of Golden Age sci-fi and colorful fantasy. As for me, I was a tad dissatisfied with the book's refusal to answer all my questions (such as why and how our heroes and the central Alien got into this mess to begin with!), and with how difficult it is at times to visualize certain aspects of the Carcasillan landscape. (The city's architecture is almost surreal, with its waterfall steps, liquid towers, etc.) Still, forcing a reader to exercise his/her imagination to the full certainly isn't the worst fault a writer can be guilty of! And to be completely honest, "Earth's Last Citadel" had me fairly riveted throughout...

[Moira Katson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earth's Last Citadel was a puzzle. Clearly a dated book, but not in the way you might think - mostly in its speed. The issues covered would have taken the average Game of Thrones book length to cover today, but were instead covered in 150 teeny mass market paperback pages. In that way, it read almost like a bedtime story, and it felt like an exciting romp.

The issues and ideas WERE interesting, even if I would have liked to see some of them take more time. There was one plot point I wasn't crazy about, the romance, but it wasn't overdone - it took up maybe five paragraphs. All in all, if you can get your hands on a copy of this book, it's a cool look back with some really interesting ideas, and pretty much devoid of crazy gender stereotypes, which is awesome!

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sort of a pulpier The City and the Stars, without Clarke's crystalline focus and polish. But with time-travelling Nazis.

I was surprised by the plot points or story hooks that just trailed off. With a mixed bag of time-travelling Nazi agents and Allied agents, one would expect an eventual showdown or conflict of ideology, but this never happened. But perhaps this is not out of tune given the original 1943 publication date.

Later, the characters travel through an extensive, broken-down underground complex from one sealed environment towards another. There is the teaser that many environments exist, that many contained strange and dangerous mutants, and that these mutants stalk the place looking for prey. We never get to meet any, which I found an inexcusable lapse.

I'm intrigued by the partnership of Moore and Kuttner, and how their styles mesh together. Moore's typical internal leanings were present but thankfully restrained. If at full force it would have impeded the story's breakneck pace.

[Tim Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It has been a long time I have read anything I might place in the Golden Age of Science Fiction in feel if not based on when it was written. This was the first book I have read in many years I would place in that category. For me Golden Age science fiction had a sense of wonder, a marveling at the mysteries of the cosmos though not in a fearful, dreadful way as one finds in Lovecraft or Lovecraft-inspired fiction, lots of scenery descriptions (often of wonderous sights), a good bit of optimism, clear cut good and evil, and characters that are definitely prone to quick action but are not usually terribly introspective, acting in a story that is not particularly character driven. Also those opposed to the heroes often have god-like powers, vastly alien but not explained in great detail or generally very sympathetic, while the hero relies a lot on practical know how and simple action (in that way reminding me of low fantasy sword and sorcery fiction). There are probably also a few racial and/or gender stereotypes and sadly some racism or sexism though not always.

I would definitely place _Earth’s Last Citadel_ in the Golden Age of Science Fiction category (subgenre?). It was a fast read, maybe too fast, as the book just seemed to whiz past me without a lot of depth at times. Sometimes the depth was from a lack of introspective characters (we don’t spend a lot of time in character’s heads) and sometimes from a setting or events that appear magical or supernatural to the protagonists and thus can’t really be detailed very well.

The story centers on four people who encounter each other in the Tunisian desert in World War II, so close to the coast they can hear a nearby naval battle. On one side we get the main character, Alan Drake, an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, traveling with a Scottish physicist he is charged with protecting, a man by the name of Sir Colin Douglas. They encounter near a crater that they think was caused by a meteor two people working for the Nazis and people Alan has encountered before, Mike Smith, an Americanized German soldier of fortune, and Karen Martin, another mercenary working for the Nazis.

In short order the four of them end up in a strange capsule and unknown to them at first fall into suspended animation, waking up in the far distant future, the sun changed so much you can look upon it without hurting your eyes, the world a strange, almost featureless land of mists, giant worms that crawl across the landscape, and odd winged humanoids that pass by overhead noisily. Not to give too much away, but the four become involved in a glass-like underground city called Carcasilla, inhabited by shining, beautiful doll-perfect people called the Carcasillians, ruled over by a Wizard of Oz floating head figure called Flande, threatened by both barbaric people called the Terasi and by a strange, sentient being of energy and light that is called variously the Alien or the Light-Wearer, with Flande also not being a friend of the four travelers. The book deals with how the four of them deal with these various threats, with the added wrinkle that Alan falls in love with one of the Carcasillians, a woman named Evaya.

The good, the book had a very fast pace, the initial strange descriptions of both the earths’ surface and the jewel-like city underground were well done, drawing me in and making me curious to learn more. Definitely a sense of the odd, the mysterious, the unknown, it reminded me of some of the alien planets in the original Star Trek series with red skies and a moaning, whistling wind in the background. I liked the twist with the Terasi, a simple as it was, the implied ancient history of the earth by the time the traveler arrive, and the nuanced evil of Flande, who while opposed to the Alien was also no friend to the four ancient humans.

The bad…oh boy. Well, no character is especially well developed, with perhaps Flande being the most interesting. I liked how Karen was shown as capable, a threat and later an ally, and not automatically a love interest but she wasn’t given a lot to do, certainly a lot less than Sir Colin, Mike, or Alan. Evaya was Alan’s love interest but she was just sort of…there. She didn’t do much and for a long period wasn’t even in control of her actions. She was nicely alien at times but not particularly identifiable and I struggle with describing anything she ever really did or could predict what she would do. She was just so passive.

I get that both the Carcasillians and the Terasi were post-literate and either living in societies where practical knowledge wasn’t needed and were ruled over by a god-like being (the Carcasillians, ruled over by Flande) or were low-tech barbarians living on the margins, foraging for what they could (the Terasi), so no one had books, but that also robbed the story of a lot of cultural or historical depth or make for compelling characters. The Terasi could have been that but throw in a language barrier and with only one character understanding what they said and that element was removed.

The Alien was very alien, a being of energy, almost but not quite Lovecraftian in a way, but the weird Golden Age hard to describe nature of the being made for action scenes where it was involved hard to understand what was going on. One description towards the end…”a race with power too vast for man to conceive, with beauty too blinding for man to look upon, with evil grace that struck terror to man’s very soul whenever he was obliged to confront it” – was all well and good but other than a vague sense that the Alien or Light-Wearer needed to feed, essentially came off as a force of nature, without even a well described form to hate or fear like say with a creature that was more earthy and biological.

I was never quite clear on why the four protagonist made their way to the super distant future other than “an alien did it.” If that was the plot device to get them the far future fine, and not a point they dwell on, but I didn’t quite get it. Not a huge problem I suppose though.

Ideally, I would have made the book longer, had the characters uncover more of the history of the world to this point, developed the Light-Wearer a lot, certainly developed both the Terasi and Evaya. It just went past too fast. Also too often events happened to the characters rather than them instigating events.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

review of
C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner's Earth's Last Citadel
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - November 10, 2019

I thought that I'd read something by Henry Kuttner before, probably in collaboration w/ someone other than C. L. Moore, but I can't find any traces of my having done so so, apparently, I haven't — unless it was a short story. This was written in 1943 but not published until decades later — what's up w/ that?!

This starts off in the N African desert during WWII. I wasn't expecting that.

""You'd be surprised. She's damned clever. She and her sidekick draw good pay from the Nazis, and earn it, too.["]" - p 3

When most people draw good pay & try to spend it they get arrested for counterfeiting — apparently that was a perq of working for the nazis.

My note to myself 'summarizing' the bk's style is: "Like Dean Koontz meets A. Merritt". Now, I've only read 1 Koontz novel, given to me by a security guard at a museum where I worked, & I didn't like it. It was too predictable-formulaic for me. It was called Lightning. I doubt that I'll ever read anything else by him. Merritt's a different story. I'm 'acquiring a taste' for Merritt. Basically what my note means is that the Koontz element is the nazi-thriller part but the prose is more 'flowery'. Given that this was written during WWII the nazi intrigue element isn't as what?-you're-still-milking-the-nazis? as I thought it was when I thought the bk was written decades later. Personally, if I were a farmer, I wdn't milk the nazis, I'd let them bloat until they explode.

Nnnoooowwww, when was the last time you were hypnotized by a mysterious ship in the desert? Do they expect us to believe this?!

"A door was opening slowly in the curve of the golden hull.

"Drake did not know that his gun-arm was drooping, that he was turning, moving forward toward the ship with slow-paced steps." - p 7

A "gun-arm"? Is that like a 'game leg'?

The ship takes them somewhen & then they wander around outside again.

"The dust of the world's end rose in sluggish whirls around their feet, and settled again as they plodded across the desert. The empty sphere of the ship was hidden in the mists behind them. Nothing lay ahead but the invisible airy path the birdman had followed, and the hope of food and water somewhere before their strength gave out." - p 20

It seems that they're having a mistical experience.

Then they found a McDonald's.. or was it a Gino's? Unfortunately, it was no longer cheap & their currency wasn't accepted. So they died shortly after p 20 & the rest of the bk was blank except for some mysterious black mold that moved across the surface, apparently hunting for rogue words, dunno, I didn't dare touch it.

&, yea, there were wonders to behold.

"Dubiously, they followed her up the spiral, at first watching their feet incredulously as they found themselves walking dryshod upon the waterfall whose torrent slid away untouched beneath their soles. But when they had mounted a few steps, they found it unwise to look down. Their heads spun as they walked upon sliding water over an abyss." - p 45

"They told him of the fountain's magic. It gave immortality. All who bathed in its pulsing light were immortal, as long as they renewed the bathing at intervals. Even Flande came to the fountain at intervals—the voices said." - p 57

NOW I understand the expression "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." But, y'know, immortality isn't usually all it's cracked up to be — I mean what's so good about something you can only do once? Take sex, e.g., you do it once & you want to do it again.. & again.. — but if you like immortality, that's it, once you're immortal you're immortal. ANYWAY, our heros aren't immortal, & they discover that the reason why they can't buy any food at the fast food joint is b/c they're the food.

"["]But we are both food for the Light-Wearer, and you will do well to treat me with respect."" - p 115

Why's that, exactly? It might make more sense to kiss the Light-Wearer's ass. But what about those nazis?

"Some premonition of what Mike intended galvanized Alan into action as he saw the Nazi's first forward stride. Flande must not die yet. Alan hurled himself against Mike Smith's shoulder with all his weight, sending the Nazi staggering." - p 126

I mean, what a mess, right? 1st they can't buy any food, then they ARE food, then one of them's vomiting on another one. Next thing you know some sort of outer-space dog will come along & lick it up.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 79-year-old book would be considered very slow (and likely boring) to most readers today, but as a piece of 40s culture, it’s considerably action-packed and interesting.

This novel is not the most exciting, as it moves quite slowly, the characters are very flat, and it’s full of telling. But, we have to remember this book was written when many people still rode to work on horses. We can’t expect The Expanse. Did I enjoy it? Yes, it’s very easy to read and follow, the slow parts don’t drag on too long, and I liked the representation of women. The action scenes are quite thin though.

Our main character, Alan, is the typical hero of this age - stalwart, strong, a war hero, and single. As such, he makes all the right, honorable choices, falls in love, and saves the day. The other characters, Karen (an axis spy), Mike Smith (a nazi, who is more often than not referred to in narration as Mike Smith and not just Mike), and Dr. Colin (a Scottish intellectual who speaks in phonetic Scottish that was annoying to read), are more interesting than Alan, as they aren’t your typical characters in this type of novel. We don't get enough of them.

The plot isn’t much to write home about, but it deals with aliens destroying the earth and some surviving raiders. Alan meets up with a woman, Evaya, who doesn’t do much except provide information and impetus to action (of course).

Overall, do I recommend it? Honestly, not really. I think it’s great as a relic, but it’s not the best classic sci-fi I’ve ever read - it’s quite slow. A real hard-core classic sci-fi reader will enjoy it on a different level and anyone who loves the 40s will probably like it, but I would not use it as an example to get someone into classic sci-fi.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

To appreciate this little gem one has to remember that it was written in 1943. Scientific discovery has come a long way, and speculations here don't always hold up (for example, we now know that the Moon is pulling away from the Earth, but Moore & Kuttner's future has the Moon brought in very close). The characters have very little depth to them; they are straight out of the pulp style: the hero is handsome and very heroic, his buddy is an engineer & science genius, and the love interest is beautiful and fragile. However, Karen the Axis agent is a stronger female than you usually see in sci-fi of this age, and that was refreshing. Lots of genre cliches are also present, of course they weren't necessarily cliche when this was written. The imagery is dazzling however, and there's a real sense of wonder in the setting and ideas presented. I enjoyed the book a lot, but would recommend it for hardcore sci-fi fans who enjoy sci-fi of this age.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

We no longer have any gauge to know what’s human and what is not.

Sadly, another used bookstore is closing, Flying Bear in Newaygo, Michigan. I happened to be in the area during their 40% off clearance, and found a bunch of old Moore/Kuttner books, including this novella from just after the beginning of World War II—it was first published in 1943.

Alan Drake is an Army Intelligence officer, escorting a brilliant scientist across the desert from German territory to British territory, evading two Nazi mercenaries, when the four of them—American officer, Scots scientist, German-American Nazi, and a Nazi adventuress of unknown origin—discover a technologically advanced UFO-like “meteor” and are thrown into a devastated long-dead world.

Thrown is the wrong term. Sidelined is probably better. They sleep through all the eons of humanity’s rise, fall, and strange evolution. This ends up being a mashup of forties-era adventure stories with H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine and William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land. There is a dark citadel and a light citadel, and the denizens of the light citadel are strongly reminiscent of Wells’s Eloi.

Moore and Kuttner do a great job of turning the Earth into an alien land, and of implying the horror-filled past that led to the last days of the human race. Most of the story is Drake discovering the pieces of what remains, with a bit of action tied on to the end; and it is a very wonderful, Moore-ish end.

As a side note, the world described here would make a great fantasy science fiction world, with its strange, half-glimpsed creatures, multiple paths of human evolution, and lost artifacts lying around waiting for power sources to awaken them.

And now they were moving down a far-flung curve of crystal stairs toward a vast basin of onyx and rose marble which stretched across the widest space he had yet seen in Carcasilla. Its edges were curved and carved into breakers of marble foam. Light brimmed the basin like water, violet, dimly translucent, rippling with constant motion.

[Juanchi Fontan · Rating 3 out of 5]

UN VIAJE UN MILLÓN DE AÑOS EN EL FUTURO 


Earth's Last Citadel (La Última Ciudadela de la Tierra) - C.L. Moore (1943). 

Instagram: @checienciaficcion

El subgénero de la tierra moribunda comenzó bastante antes que Jack Vance y Gene Wolfe publicaran sus obras maestras. H.G. Wells ya había presentado el concepto en La Máquina del Tiempo, y C.L. Moore recogió el guante casi medio diglo después cuando en 1943 publica, junto a su esposo, Erath's Last Citadel. 


El contexto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial marca el inicio de la historia pero no tiene reflejo en el resto del relato. Dos aliados y dos nazis se enfrentan en Túnez, a orillas del Mediterráneo, cuando se topan con una nave alienígena brillando en el desierto. Mientras la exploran, experiencian un sueño fantástico y, al despertar, se encuentran en la misma Tierra de siempre, pero un millón de años en el futuro.


El paisaje es desolador. Su planeta está irreconocible, gris, sin vegetación ni los colores que recuerdan. Vida hay, aunque no parece enteramente humana. Y algo los acecha, posiblemente el dueño de la nave que los transportó hasta aquí; una presencia terrible y amenazadora. Y, a lo lejos, una ciudadela imposible, de arquitectura indescifrable, claramente no humana. 


¿Qué pasó en la Tierra? ¿Quién o qué quedó vivo? ¿Por qué los persigue el Alienígena? ¿Qué fue de la humanidad?


Earth's Last Citadel es pulp fiction clásico de época. Lo atractivo, para mí, es el talento de escritura de C.L. Moore, una de las únicas mujeres publicadas en revistas de ciencia ficción de la época, además de conocer cómo eran las historias que se publicaban en estas revistas baratas que eran vistas de costado y sin respeto.


Si te interesa eso, adelante. Pero hay que admitir que más allá de la prosa de Moore y lo atractivo de leer algo escrito hace casi 100 años en ciencia ficción y en el subgénero de la tierra moribunda, no tiene mucho para ofrecer en términos de grandes ideas o conceptos. Pero estas son las historias que formaron el futuro de este maravilloso género literario, y hay que respetarlas. 


Y si sos como yo y tenés un interés en su historia y orígenes, no te lo podés perder. 

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nominated for a retro Hugo, while a decent story for the period, it's not Hugo material. This may reflect the very small pool of SF published during 1943. The first scene is our protagonist is being chased by Nazis, I think this was added to lure wartime readers of Argosy(mainstream pulp) in became it doesn't affect the rest of the story. There are a couple of ugly pulp bits,"...the unstable genius of many races shining in her eyes.", not uncommon in pulp fiction of the period. The story itself is reminiscent of A. Merritt's lost civilization novels so nothing really new here.

A better C.L Moore read would be Jirel of Joiry or one of her Northwest Smith stories.

It's harder for me to recommend a Henry Kuttner read, his stories didn't age well in many cases, but he was an important influence on 40s science fiction.

[S.j. Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Earth's Last Citadel / Moore & Cuttner / 1943
This very brief novella, 146 pages, wasn't very engaging. The story begins in a desert in north Africa, a U.S. intelligence officer, a Scottish physicist, and two Nazi mercenaries find themselves on a spaceship that time travels millions of years into the future. To sum up the highlights: winged humanoids that cry a lot, wispy glowing people who live in an underground dome, gnarly barbarian people who live in caves, giant sand worms, a mysterious fountain of light, a floating head on a giant screen, and an evil being referred to as "the light-wearer" or "the alien." All these elements had such potential and NONE of them were developed enough to create any interest. The characters are flat, the plot meanders aimlessly, and the ending was predictably dull. If there were supposed to be any symbolic relationships to the various elements mentioned above, they were totally lost on me. So much was left unfinished. 1/5 stars. :(

[Norman Cook · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you mashed up A. Merritt, H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, and H.P. Lovecraft, you'd get something like this book. It combines time travel, lost races, and unfathomable monsters. Unfortunately, the whole is not equal to the sum of the parts. The characters are mostly cardboard stereotypes--the intrepid man of action, the cerebral scientist, the femme fatale spy, and the Nazi strongman. There's lots of action and a real sense of wonder in many places, but by and large this is a tepid story that is mercifully short.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

In WW II, two members of each side get drawn into an ET ship and wake up millennia in the future. Earth has been thoroughly worked over the alien's now dead people, leaving Eloi-like city dwellers and savage barbarians in their wake (though in a nice twist, the barbarians are good guys). Can the modern humans defeat the future's tyrants?
I like this more than most of the reviewers, but I'm partial to this kind of pulp SF. It's wild, weird imaginative, and normally I'd give it 4 or 4.5 stars. But the ending is rushed and the two Nazi agents — a female adventurer and a mobster working for the Axis — were interesting enough the authors should have done more with them (instead they just taper off). Enjoyable even so, but it should have been better.

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish this book had another fifty pages in which to breathe, pages for character development or just a slightly less breakneck plot. But it makes good use of what words it does have, sketching a beautiful if impressionistic dying earth and drawing some genuine pathos for its final moments.

I am surprised that, writing in 1943, Moore and Kuttner would make two of their characters Nazi agents and then . . . not have them be the villains. They've been flung thousands of years in the future and past political divisions are not entirely relevant: fair enough, fair enough. And yet.

[Stephen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dying earth, Moore & Kuttner style. Actually, it's a *lot* of THE TIME MACHINE pastiche, with a cast of four temporal castaways abducted by an alien, rather than a lone tinkerer. Mildly interesting because C. L. Moore's style shows through pretty strongly - the main alien antagonist is sort of Technicolor Cthulhu, which evokes comparisons to her "Black God's Kiss" or the one where the guy falls in love with a shoggoth...

As a story, it's pretty standard pulp, with only the high weirdness giving it an extra interest. 2.5 stars rounded down, but don't let it dissuade you from reading Moore's better stuff.

[John Bruni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ordinarily I like the work of Moore and Kuttner. For whatever reason, this one didn't do it for me. Maybe it was the stereotypical Scottish brogue of one character. I did find it interesting that one of the heroes thrust into the future is actually a Nazi. It's one of the rare instances of a Nazi showing up in fiction during the reign of Nazi Germany. No mention of concentration camps. Just this dude who fought for the Germans in WWII. Still, the story didn't interest me all that much.

[Kateblue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this to determine if it should be nominated for the retro 1943 Hugo. Bleah. Should not win, IMHO. Boring and disconnected, no depth at all to the characters, interesting concepts and world building but not all of them explained satisfactorily. But it got better and the end was somewhat satisfying.

[7thTrooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stabil pulp som funkar bra om man inte försöker tänka efter samtidigt. Prosan är också över genomsnittet.

[Cov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just don't think it aged particularly well. Starts off strong, the premise is incredible, but turns into something more likely to be parodied than imitated.

[Alexandre Jorge · Rating 1 out of 5]

At least The Creature from Beyond Infinity was fun in times,this in the other hand is very boring..

[Per · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://archive.org/details/Fantastic...

[Ivan Lanìa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dopo aver letto in ordine sparso tre degli otto romanzi science fantasy di Catherine Moore e Henry Kuttner ho deciso di andare alla radice e leggere il primo testo in ordine di stesura (nonché unico in cui Moore sia accreditata come coautrice alla pari con il marito), appunto questo Earth's Last Citadel – e francamente un po' me ne pento, perché questo è uno di quei casi in cui l'opera prima anticipa situazioni sviluppate molto meglio in testi della maturità e quindi risulta, in confronto, grezza e ridondante. Più nello specifico, Earth's Last Citadel è sostanzialmente l'intreccio di The Time Axis con innestati all'interno alcuni elementi del worldbuilding di Valley of the Flame, e funziona peggio di entrambe le opere successive: il quartetto di protagonisti intento a viaggiare nello spazio-tempo consiste di quattro manichini senza carattere che rispondono perfettamente agli stereotipi di Eroe Tutto d'Un Pezzo e Blando, Vecchio Supergenio, Bruto e Donna d'Azione Per-le-pari-opportunità; lo scenario di Terra Morente in cui sorge l'eponima Ultima Cittadella ripropone con scarsa inventiva la solita dicotomia fra culture "grezze ma proattive" e "raffinate ma inermi" che nella letteratura del 1943 era già vecchia di cinquant'anni; l'Eroe Tutto d'Un Pezzo e Blando ovviamente vive per un periodo presso la cultura futura "raffinata ma inerme", secondo gli stilemi della letteratura di mondo perduto; il lasco conflitto centrale si risolve anche qui con una "battaglia psicologica" decisamente carente di pathos. Unici punti in cui il romanzo dimostra dei guizzi di carattere e colore sono alcune sequenze descrittive: la geologia e zoologia della Terra Morente, la morte del malvagio alieno di energia e il progetto di emigrazione degli ultimi umani su Venere, tutti elementi che avrebbero meritato di essere dettagliati in un romanzo "di costume" che esplorasse questa ambientazione dall'interno, anziché fare da sfondo di cartapesta per un'"avventura a portale". Mi consola che, a quanto ho capito, almeno l'ultimo dei tre punti è stato elaborato con buoni risultati da Moore e Kuttner poco tempo dopo, nella dilogia delle Fortezze.
Posto quindi che Earth's Last Citadel mi ha deluso, è giusto spezzare una lancia: i romanzi d'avventura di Kuttner e Moore uscivano su riviste mensili e a intervalli di sei mesi se non un anno l'uno dall'altro, quindi è comprensibile che i due coniugi avessero messo assieme un repertorio ristretto di situazioni e personaggi, riproponendolo di opera in opera con variazioni limitate – il pubblico medio non avrebbe notato più di tanto la somiglianza e loro avrebbero pagato le bollette con sforzo relativo. Certo, questo non vuol dire che le loro produzioni "in serie" meritino tutte di essere recuperate, specialmente a fronte di un piccolo capolavoro fuori dallo schema fisso quale The Dark World. Sia come sia, credo sia ora di passare ai loro racconti brevi, che in teoria erano la loro vera specialità.

[Paulo "paper books only" · Rating 2 out of 5]

aving read and reviewed No Boundaries by the same authors I found this book in a store I would never imagined and with a ridicolous low price so I grabed it and start reading imediately. Bare in mind that these story was written in the middle of WW2 and are one of the most revered names in what would be called SF's Golden Age (one of it), besides this C L Moore (the wife of Kuttner) was already publishing books when women at that time were not seen as today. Well when Kuttner died in 1958, Moore stopped writing altogether and she lived until 1987. It's a shame because she was very talented woman.

Well as I said most of SF from that period has historical value but the SF used or thought are completely surpassed and most people cannot understand those books or ideas. Well this book is about four people. Two allies (one american spy and one scottish scientist) and two Axis (one renegade american and one german girl) who stumble upon an alien craft in the Sahara and they are catapulted into the far future on a dying earth where aliens control a bred some of our own human descendents.
As I said this book is in the beginning of the SF era and at my modern measure I thought this book was dull and pretty small. There is no depth to the characters and the story relies on imagery like as they arrived and the moribund earth is populated by giant worms and fylging creatures and the views are shrouded in continuous mists. This part of the book drawns there and makes us feel the desolation and melancholy of our beautiful earth. The aliens are portrayed as devilish beings that are sucking the life of our earth and they resemble more akin to Lovecraft's aliens than anything else. I wouldn't advice to read this book as a CL Moore story or Henry's Kuttner. No Boundaries is far better... Then come back to this one.

The book is quite small and at the end starts being a little strange with the plot being quite strange and confusing...

[Isidore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read Kuttner & Moore in years, but this strikes me as hurried work, not representative of their best. Even so, there are some fine, hugely imaginative moments in it, particularly at the climax, and its point of view is pleasantly unorthodox.

Too much of the book comes off as a slapdash pastiche of A. Merritt, with Hodgson's The Night Land furnishing the rest.

But on the plus side, huge spans of time give the story something of the sweep of Olaf Stapledon. By the time of the events of the novel, a succession of alien races have occupied the earth, events so far in the remote past as to leave only mystifying traces. There is a strong sense of the irrelevance of even the most important human concerns. It's particularly striking that the time-travelling hero's struggle with a pair of Nazis is left unresolved, as if the vast, sweeping changes wrought by time render even that ideological conflict largely meaningless---pretty unexpected stuff for a story written in the worst years of WWII.

Best of all is the book's "villain", a truly alien alien referred to as the Light-Wearer. Lovecraft's aliens sport names which the human tongue can't pronounce. Kuttner & Moore go him one better by giving us an alien whose name can't be thought, and whose true appearance can't be perceived by human senses. The hero's climactic "mind-meld" with this being is the high point of the book, brief as it is, with glimpses of bizarre planets and incomprehensible structures that would have pleased Clark Ashton Smith.

It's a pity that K&M didn't take the time to develop all this slowly and carefully, avoiding pulp sloppiness. But it's worth a look.

[Joel Flank · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. On one hand, it was highly imaginative, especially for it's time. Another example of creating the cliche rather than being cliched. The heroes start in a desperate fight between british and nazi agents in WWII, only to be overwhelmed and abducted by a strange alien ship. They quickly are mentally overwhelmed and only awaken to find themselves abandoned.

A temporary alliance forms as they explore their surroundings, and wind up on a series of adventures exploring the odd world they're in. It's lifeless, and the scientist theorizes that they have slept for millions of years, and are at the end of the world. They soon learn that there are pockets of life, and go from one of the two societies that are locked in conflict to the other, trying to understand the weird world they're now in. They learn the alien beings that captured them took over the Earth, and then themselves declined, leaving remnants of their human experiments behind.

They wind up in a desperate race to deal with the last alien who was also in stasis with them, before he can destroy the last remnants of humanity and the heroes chance of living a life. I don't really mention the characters names on purpose - while there are some wonderful ideas here, overall the characters are stereotypes that don't stand out at all.

[carlos benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

All I remember is that I liked it. I was a kid when I read it..... There must have been something good about it for me to remember the title so well. I had bookshelves on the headboard of my bed and this book held a prominent place. I'm guessing here, but I think it was a bit of a space opera.

I can say with certainty that the book was published in paperback well before 1977. It was first on my headboard bookshelf no later than 1971 and I suspect it was actually well before that. I pulled 01/01/1972 out the air but upon further reflection it may have been closer to '69 or '70.