Earth's Last Citadel

By Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

"[A] pomegranate writer: popping with seeds—full of ideas." —Ray Bradbury

A mind-bending, time-traveling novel from an undisputed master of the genre.

During World War II, four humans are hurled a billion years forward 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Release date: Aug 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626814028

Reviews for Earth's Last Citadel

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of their very first collaborations, and published during the WWII years, as a serial, in Argosy. It's really excellent work, even though it must have been rushed at the time (1943 is a very long time ago). It's hard to think of this slim volume as lasting through a four part serialization, though.

[clong_818048 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have generally enjoyed just about all of the short fiction I've read from the team of Kuttner and Moore. The novels have been a bit more hit and miss, and this one continues that trend.This is science fiction without any science, a far future fantasy in which a quartet from 1943 is transported into a bizarre, at times surreally imaginative, dangerous and not particularly coherent future. I agree with the reviewer who compared this book to an early Doctor Who episode. Still if you are looking for a bit of light escapism, this might fit the bill better than your average golden age adolescent wish fulfillment tale. And it does include a concept which may possibly have inspired one of the more memorable creations in one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time.

[randystafford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My reactions upon reading this novel in 1992.I didn’t care for this novel all that much. I suppose Baird Searles included it on his list of classic sf novels because it's pulpy and probably one of the earliest far future science-as-magic stories. While I didn’t find the novel particularly entertaining, it was critically interesting. First, the menacing Alien from beyond time -- first and last of his kind on Earth, feeder on mental energy (a vampire of sorts) is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian horror. He is a Light-Wearer. The good Light-Wearers created, from human stock, the Carcasillans and protected them (and expected worship from them) from the bad Light-Wearers like the Alien. This lends a biblical flavor to the book. This book is interesting as a midway point in the far-future sub-genre of sf. There is the bifurcation of man into Eloi-like Carcasillans and Morlock-like Terasi. However, this is only a surface appearance. The truth turns out to be different. The Carcasillans turn out to be fairly tough and still possess the proud technology of Earth’s alien overlords and man’s exterminators. Even so, they were Light-Wearer attempts at creating a slave race, a race that rebelled and became incredibly curious (only thirst for knowledge animates since them since dying Earth has no future). This bifurcation of man shows up in the two cultures of Arthur C. Clarke’s The City and the Stars (one rural, one urban) and the wonders of Carcasilla (immortality, forgetfulness) remind one of Clarke’s Diaspor (with its immortality and mind editing). The book was written in 1943 and WWII and Nazis show up in interesting wasy. The Tersai defense against the Carcasillan assault (under influence of the Alien) is explicitly compared to the Allied defense against rising Nazi barbarism. Two of the four humans flung into the future are Nazis, anad Nazis are described as supremely self-confident and ruthless and courageous and deeply disturbed when his confidence is undermined -- indeed well-nigh psychotic. The setting -- a dying Earth of fantastic ruins, remanants of alien genetic engineering, and a river whose tides surge around the globe in a canyon -- was mournful and eerie and not played up enough.