"Earth Is Dead."

Poul Anderson, After Doomsday (New York, 1962), 1.

Shrieking, skirling winds scour black stone continents that had run molten. The crust shakes, rumbles and bellows. Mountains break open. New volcanoes are born. Boiled oceans cool, seethe and hiss. Sulfurous clouds shed ash, smoke and acid rain. Lightning cracks and booms. Cities are engulfed. Ships are sunk. Human beings, trees, grass, deer, whales - all things remembered - are dissolved in lava.

This is a beginning. I have paraphrased one paragraph. The opening sentence is:

"'Earth is dead.'" (p. 5)

So who says it? Well, there is a returned interstellar spaceship and, contrasting with the noise on Earth, there are the hums and whispers in the ship:

air renewers

ventilators

thermostats

electric generators

weight maintainers

instruments

nuclear converter

- all the details that I would not have thought of if I had been asked to describe such a scene.

So what happens next? Some men go to pieces and one man takes charge. Given a group of human beings, responses will differ and hopefully some of the responses will meet the challenge.