A few months ago, my brother lent me his five hardback volumes of Y: The Last Man. The volumes sat on my mantle until this past week when I was finally in the mood to tackle a whole new universe, and I ended up reading all five of them in under two days.
Here’s a quick synopsis:
[spoiler]In one instant, all male mammals - from sperm to fetus to fully developed adult - die, falling over and bleeding out of every orifice. There are only two male mammals left, Yorick, a 22-year old amateur escape artist/English major and his pet monkey, Ampersand. He sets out for Washington DC where his mom works as a US Senator. It takes him two months to get there, and when he does, the newly appointed President sends him off to the one remaining geneticist/biologist who might be able to save the human race by cloning him. Madame President assigns a super secret society member, Agent 355, as his body guard. They find the doctor, but her lab is burned down, and they have to go to San Francisco where her backup lab is.
There’s an Israeli commando bent on his capture, so that she can use him to secure her country’s preeminence. There’s a growing cult called the “Daughters of the Amazon” who are hell bent on making sure the “gendercide” is complete by destroying all sperm banks and preventing any attempted remasculinization of the remaining human race. They’d be happy to kill our hero on sight. There are occasional crazy women and many, many other obstacles in their journey.
In the meantime, his fiancee (kind of), Beth, is in Australia. The doctor has major daddy issues. The bodyguard is often the only sane woman. Yorick’s sister, Hero, starts off as a member of the Daughters of the Amazon, but defects and redeems herself. We also get a Russian woman hitchhiking to Kansas in order to save the two male and one female astronauts left in the International Space Station. There are a couple of false starts to romance for Yorick, and then he runs into a second Beth, whom he impregnates and then leaves behind.
They make it to San Francisco, but a ninja-for-hire steals Ampersand, and the monkey may hold the key as to why it and Yorick survived the gendercide. Yorick and the gang follow the trail to Japan, then Hong Kong, and finally end up in Paris for the denouement. [/spoiler]
I liked it. Don’t get me wrong - I did like it. The main character is sympathetic and funny, and while he may be an author expy, he’s not a Marty Stu. The overall storyline was well plotted and didn’t go haring off in some bizarre direction. The main conflict and all the minor plotlines were pretty much tidied up at the end.
But . . . it could have been so much more.
After all, how do you tell a story in which you kill off an entire gender of an entire class of life and not touch on deeper issues of how this changes the world?
[ul]
[li] the military is written off with the exception of the Israelis (mandatory service for both men and women, and women serve in combat troops) and Australia (one of the few countries where women served aboard submarines, thus Australia rules the Pacific Ocean). The reason given is that only a handful of countries allowed women to participate in combat, completely overlooking the hierarchy and infrastructure of the military, how useful the support roles are, and how the members are trained in leadership.[/li][li] only one suicide is shown to be directly caused by instantaneously losing every single man - father, brothers, friends, husbands, sons, teachers, neighbors, co-workers, ministers, et cetera.[/li][li] there is nothing given to how the women would have grieved for all the deaths they experienced[/li][li] religion is ignored. There is one theological discussion, a host of people blaming God or Gaea for killing off the men, and the highest ranked woman in the Catholic Church has a cameo.[/li][li] Yorick, literally the last man on Earth, is allowed to wander off without even leaving some tissue and sperm samples behind.[/li][li] Yorick is usually in disguise, but when he’s found out, the response is either “Kill him!” (only when the Daughters of the Amazon are involved) or “Oh, well, . . . that’s nice.” Yorick is put forth as commendable for not having sex with women just because they desperately want children and/or are desperately lonely for the touch of a man. It was the perfect opportunity to consider some very touchy topics like female-on-male rape, whether or not Yorick’s individual rights are outweighed by an entire species’ right to survive, and if his decision is commendable or not.[/li][li] how an all-female society re-organizes itself, determines its priorities, and carries on while trying to find a way to either clone men to restore their presence or clone women to continue the human race without men is never addressed. We see only a tiny bit indicating that it’s happened at the very end.[/li][li] the vast majority of women portrayed are hot, heterosexual females in their 20s and 30s. There are some older women as supporting cast. A handful of teenage girls show up to provide a little contrast. Near the end, we see a nursery full of female clones, and there’s one female baby. That’s it.[/li][li] we are never given a satisfying reason for what caused the gendercide. We have choices - a cursed amulet, a biological weapon gone wrong, a plot by a select few men in power to take control away from the states, the Y chromosome spontaneously committing suicide when the first female clone is successfully brought to term, Gaia taking revenge on the men for poisoning the planet, God Rapturing the men but leaving the women behind because of Original Sin, and even death-by-chick-flick. The author specifically stated that one of the above reasons was the real one and promised to reveal it during the course of the series, but never did.[/li][/ul]
There were plenty of little things as well.
[ul]
[li] no, you can’t stab a woman through-and-through the lower abdomen on the left hand side and managed to cut through both her fallopian tubes without harming her uterus or causing her to bleed out internally before help arrives.[/li][li] no, an abortifacient does not turn a healthy, near-term fetus into a “collection of organs and skin”. Not without doing the same to the mother who ingested it.[/li][li] no, it’s not going to take two months for presidential succession to find the Secretary of Agriculture and appoint her President of the United States, and even if it did, someone would be appointed to run the country in the meantime.[/li][li] no, the White House and Capitol building are not going to be almost completely deserted even during the daytime. There are still 150 million humans in the US left to govern, and even if special elections are not held by then, staff will take over and keep the cogs turning.[/li][li] no, a fanatic cult of radical feminists is not going to be able to burn down and destroy every single repository of frozen sperm on the entire globe. They’re not even going to be able to get all of them in their home town. Most doctors’ offices are run by women, and most women are going to instantly understand how much that resource needs to be protected.[/li][li] no, women won’t be cowed by a fanatical cult of radical feminists intent on destroying the only chance to bring men back into the world. Not only will they resist, they will either kill the cult members in pitched battle, or they will capture and then execute them - probably by some suitably horrific method. We don’t take it kindly when some mad, pissy bitch celebrates the deaths of our husbands, sons, fathers, brother et cetera.[/li][/ul]
You know, I wouldn’t have bothered writing so much if I hated the story. Like I said, I enjoyed it, and I thought it had some good stuff. I just thought the author wrote his project based on an interesting premise without really exploring all the implications of that premise or considering that telling the story from the man’s point of view misses the majority of what’s going on. It was a shallow story, concerned only with secret agents, occasional sight gags and grossouts, and whether or not the main character was going to get his girl back. It could have been so much more.
