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The Only Living Girl on Earth
From the genre-defying, critically beloved author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown and one of the creative minds behind HBO’s Westworld comes a sweet and searing, unexpected and delightfully absurd vision of life on Earth a thousand years in the future.
Jane is the only person left on the planet, minding the only business left: a gift shop. She wasn’t born on Earth, but her ancestors were; they lived there before the AI in charge of geoengineering failed and the oceans got too hot to sustain the terrestrial food web and before humans took off to colonize other planets.
She’s heading to college on Jupiter in the fall of 3020, so her days on the home planet—selling “American Epoch” postcards, “History: The Poster!” and “War: The Soundtrack” to tourists from the suburbs of Europa—are numbered. But as the looping promotional ad for Earth details, in the planet’s more recent past there was an amusement park, a museum, and even a model American town to draw visitors: all shuttered now, abandoned. When a man and his son crash-land their rocket and need assistance, as well as some diversion, Jane learns that the other attractions on Earth are not so defunct after all and may have taken on a life of their own.
Told, fittingly, in interconnected fragments, The Only Living Girl on Earth captures a place where only fragments of its landscape remain. At once dead serious and playful, recognizable and as otherworldly and unsettling as Yu’s other sci-fi reinventions, it is a cautionary tale about all that we could lose—are losing—by failing to live sustainably and about what we hope to leave behind for future generations. It is also a love letter to what it means to be human, how connected we are to a place and one another, and how we must fight to preserve these gifts. In this, Yu expresses his unique brand of cosmic humanism, that even in the face of dire circumstances, when we feel the most estranged from who and what we are, there is still hope.
Jane is the only person left on the planet, minding the only business left: a gift shop. She wasn’t born on Earth, but her ancestors were; they lived there before the AI in charge of geoengineering failed and the oceans got too hot to sustain the terrestrial food web and before humans took off to colonize other planets.
She’s heading to college on Jupiter in the fall of 3020, so her days on the home planet—selling “American Epoch” postcards, “History: The Poster!” and “War: The Soundtrack” to tourists from the suburbs of Europa—are numbered. But as the looping promotional ad for Earth details, in the planet’s more recent past there was an amusement park, a museum, and even a model American town to draw visitors: all shuttered now, abandoned. When a man and his son crash-land their rocket and need assistance, as well as some diversion, Jane learns that the other attractions on Earth are not so defunct after all and may have taken on a life of their own.
Told, fittingly, in interconnected fragments, The Only Living Girl on Earth captures a place where only fragments of its landscape remain. At once dead serious and playful, recognizable and as otherworldly and unsettling as Yu’s other sci-fi reinventions, it is a cautionary tale about all that we could lose—are losing—by failing to live sustainably and about what we hope to leave behind for future generations. It is also a love letter to what it means to be human, how connected we are to a place and one another, and how we must fight to preserve these gifts. In this, Yu expresses his unique brand of cosmic humanism, that even in the face of dire circumstances, when we feel the most estranged from who and what we are, there is still hope.
120 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 8, 2021
7 people are currently reading
737 people want to read
About the author
Charles Yu
58 books1,856 followersCHARLES YU is the author of four books, including his latest, Interior Chinatown, which won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for Le Prix Médicis étranger. He has received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, been nominated for two Writers Guild of America awards for his work on the HBO series Westworld, and has also written for shows on FX, AMC, Facebook Watch, and Adult Swim. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a number of publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, Time and Ploughshares. You can find him on Twitter @charles_yu.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 163 reviews
August 25, 2021
I’m way too high for this !!!!! The hike by drew magary meets black mirror meets the Truman show… must immediately re listen. Obsessed kinda
February 5, 2025
a fragmental thought experiment set a thousand years in the future, when humans have colonized outer space and earth, addled with climate disasters, has been reduced to nothing more than a gift shop.
i love the worldbuilding, and the book is conceptually fantastic - very bittersweet and tearjerky and humanist. maybe it didn't click with me because right now i don't feel like reckoning with our collective existential failures and our possible futures.
i love the worldbuilding, and the book is conceptually fantastic - very bittersweet and tearjerky and humanist. maybe it didn't click with me because right now i don't feel like reckoning with our collective existential failures and our possible futures.
December 29, 2021
Earth getting turned into a measly gift shop is definitely what we deserve
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December 29, 2020[Gifted]
A short novella about a far-future Earth that's been abandoned by humanity, and now serves as simply a theme park. This had the most amazing world-building, and I wanted to explore this world utterly - but it's so short that there's nothing really beyond that world-building set-up. There was no real plot, it was just an introduction to the world of the future. A pessimistic look at the effects of climate change, that still manages to be uplifting.
A short novella about a far-future Earth that's been abandoned by humanity, and now serves as simply a theme park. This had the most amazing world-building, and I wanted to explore this world utterly - but it's so short that there's nothing really beyond that world-building set-up. There was no real plot, it was just an introduction to the world of the future. A pessimistic look at the effects of climate change, that still manages to be uplifting.
January 13, 2021
My first audiobook y'all!!! And I'm still uncertain about narrators and having other voices in my head.. but let's discuss this peculiar and fragmented short story by Charles Yu. It took me a minute to get into this as we are listening to promotional ads, Jane's voice and learning about what it's like in 3020 after humans have consumed the earth. What are we actually leaving behind for our younger generations? How are we living sustainably? Real issues and a future that is all too realistic of what it could be. College on Jupiter anyone?
I appreciate the story and the lesson learned within but I did feel it was a bit choppy and all over the place.
I appreciate the story and the lesson learned within but I did feel it was a bit choppy and all over the place.
February 16, 2021
The Only Living Girl on the Earth by Charles Yu is a novella-length novel consisting of three interrelated short stories. The stories have featured Jane, the customer service representative/short-order cook/hotel manager of the Earth's only gift shop. Well, the Earth's only "anything" as everything else was destroyed a thousand years ago. Mostly from vaguely referenced devastating climate change and a rueful AI robot that scorched the skies.
Jane is like most 18 years old's in many ways. She is trying to figure out what to do with herself—thinking about college. She is dealing with the after-effects of very grown-up issues with her father and the general futility of being the only girl on an entire planet.
In the first story, Jane talks about the history of the Earth's giftshop and how it started as a museum, then an amusement park, and finally became just a gift shop selling souvenirs of a time gone by. There is a specific tone that Wu takes during the story the belies the solemn subject matter. Jane is funny as a character and allows for fun while still maintaining the deep subject matter. Without that, this collection of stories would be too much.
The first story talks about how human history has been boiled down to something consumed at a gift shop or an amusement park. Oddly enough, the first story reminded me a bit of Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias."
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The second story is from a different perspective of someone living in a Smalltown, USA type before the decline of civilization. It is from the standpoint of people trapped on an amusement ride that makes all choices for them from birth to death. There are obvious nods to the problem of mass consumerism and the hamster-wheel-like existence people get trapped in, birth, learn, work, consume, end. This story treads no new territory as this topic is a huge one in science fiction of capitalism run amok. Still, the imagery that Yu creates as people trapped on an amusement ride is actually pretty horrific.
The third story is from Jane's perspective again, except this time it is how two travelers had to stop at the Earth because their spaceship was malfunctioning. This story reminded me of the bygone era of people traveling on freeways and having to get off and end up on route 66 in a town that had seen its heyday. But, now it was a bit past its prime because no one stopped there anymore. All three of the characters, Jane, the dad, and son, end up inside the boarded-up amusement park/Smalltown USA and discover something sinister and rather sad. Again, the story nods to much deeper topics than the dialog and bantering.
The Only Living Girl on Earth is an unusual take on the decline of civilization. All of the stories unite to make this a cohesive narrative and a with Yu's exceptional writing skill, a definite worthwhile read.
Jane is like most 18 years old's in many ways. She is trying to figure out what to do with herself—thinking about college. She is dealing with the after-effects of very grown-up issues with her father and the general futility of being the only girl on an entire planet.
In the first story, Jane talks about the history of the Earth's giftshop and how it started as a museum, then an amusement park, and finally became just a gift shop selling souvenirs of a time gone by. There is a specific tone that Wu takes during the story the belies the solemn subject matter. Jane is funny as a character and allows for fun while still maintaining the deep subject matter. Without that, this collection of stories would be too much.
The first story talks about how human history has been boiled down to something consumed at a gift shop or an amusement park. Oddly enough, the first story reminded me a bit of Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias."
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
The second story is from a different perspective of someone living in a Smalltown, USA type before the decline of civilization. It is from the standpoint of people trapped on an amusement ride that makes all choices for them from birth to death. There are obvious nods to the problem of mass consumerism and the hamster-wheel-like existence people get trapped in, birth, learn, work, consume, end. This story treads no new territory as this topic is a huge one in science fiction of capitalism run amok. Still, the imagery that Yu creates as people trapped on an amusement ride is actually pretty horrific.
The third story is from Jane's perspective again, except this time it is how two travelers had to stop at the Earth because their spaceship was malfunctioning. This story reminded me of the bygone era of people traveling on freeways and having to get off and end up on route 66 in a town that had seen its heyday. But, now it was a bit past its prime because no one stopped there anymore. All three of the characters, Jane, the dad, and son, end up inside the boarded-up amusement park/Smalltown USA and discover something sinister and rather sad. Again, the story nods to much deeper topics than the dialog and bantering.
The Only Living Girl on Earth is an unusual take on the decline of civilization. All of the stories unite to make this a cohesive narrative and a with Yu's exceptional writing skill, a definite worthwhile read.
December 26, 2021
I just don’t think this author is for me. It’s pitched as whimsy, but it’s not, unless your definition of “whimsy” would be: bitter sarcasm used as a survival mechanism against the bleak reality of our capitalist, classist, consumerist American society. I don’t disagree with the author, but just don’t care for his style. Not for me, but plenty of others may like it
December 31, 2020
This novella length book consists of three fragments/inter-related stories. In each we are with Jane, from the Earth Gift Shop, which is all that remains of an ecologically decimated Earth. The tales are pointed and rueful, and would come across as fairly heavyhanded but for the author's playful and wryly deadpan approach. Tourists visit empty and destroyed Earth mostly to see where it all began and to be able to say, when they return home to their planets and colonies, that they have been there.
In the first story we look at the souvenirs available in the gift shop. The second story follows a family as it takes a Disney-style ride through an Earth history amusement. The final story is a visit to the abandoned Earth Theme Park. The stories are stylistically different, but linked, and the metaphorical weight varies in each. All three, though, are entertaining and thought provoking. The Disney ride in particular is both brutally apt and heartbreaking.
More to the point, Yu can offer the reader more insight, social and cultural commentary, and subtle humor in a single short story than most of his contemporaries can stuff into a 400 page doorstop book; that alone makes this an excellent find.
(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
In the first story we look at the souvenirs available in the gift shop. The second story follows a family as it takes a Disney-style ride through an Earth history amusement. The final story is a visit to the abandoned Earth Theme Park. The stories are stylistically different, but linked, and the metaphorical weight varies in each. All three, though, are entertaining and thought provoking. The Disney ride in particular is both brutally apt and heartbreaking.
More to the point, Yu can offer the reader more insight, social and cultural commentary, and subtle humor in a single short story than most of his contemporaries can stuff into a 400 page doorstop book; that alone makes this an excellent find.
(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
February 12, 2021
The earth has become uninhabitable, the only place left is a Gift shop/Museum/Park with one person working the place, Jane. The only reason why humans even come to earth is to visit the gift shop and reminisce about life on earth or feel a closeness to their ancestors but really its just to pick up a trinket and say hey look where I went.
This is the first story I've ever read by Charles Yu and I was a bit disappointed especially knowing that he's worked on HBO's Westworld. I'm not like a huge sci-fi fan but I don't mind it. However, the synopsis of the story claims that these chapters (I hesitate to call them stories because the first three sections are about Jane and the origin of the gift shop) are connected but by the fourth section I'm not really sure what's going on. It feels scattered and like there's no point to the chapters. A little boring as well. I don't know. I really liked chapter iv America, I thought that was interesting, even poetic in a way. Then I'm lost again. I guess the last chapter brings everything together but honestly it just feels unfinished or like something is missing. Just kinda disappointed in this one.
This is the first story I've ever read by Charles Yu and I was a bit disappointed especially knowing that he's worked on HBO's Westworld. I'm not like a huge sci-fi fan but I don't mind it. However, the synopsis of the story claims that these chapters (I hesitate to call them stories because the first three sections are about Jane and the origin of the gift shop) are connected but by the fourth section I'm not really sure what's going on. It feels scattered and like there's no point to the chapters. A little boring as well. I don't know. I really liked chapter iv America, I thought that was interesting, even poetic in a way. Then I'm lost again. I guess the last chapter brings everything together but honestly it just feels unfinished or like something is missing. Just kinda disappointed in this one.
July 31, 2021
This was confusing as hell, I’m still not even sure what I read, but the concept was cool, so I think this one is on me
December 18, 2023
Charles Yu ma fantastyczne wyczucie formy i satyry. A poza tym kocham książki o ostatnich kobietach na ziemi.
September 23, 2025
A waste of time. 1 hour of my life i cant take back... i'll leave it at that
December 27, 2021
I love sci-fi that makes you go 😧
June 19, 2023
Three interlinked short stories set in a far future apocalyptic dystopia. The first and last stories follow Jane, a teen running Earth the gift shop. As in, the earth is just a gift shop. That's all that's left. It doesn't even appear to be a popular gift shop and for some reason, Jane is left there by herself.
The middle story is some kind of fever dream where we follow a family trapped on an amusement park ride. So we've stepped back in time a bit to before there was just Earth the gift shop. It was highly experimental/metaphorical. Feeling trapped by consumerism, but in a literal sense where you live your entire life trapped on a ride. At least, that's what I got out of it, but who knows?
I was hoping that after I'd sat with this story for a bit, it would settle out into something, but no such luck. That was a wild ride.
The middle story is some kind of fever dream where we follow a family trapped on an amusement park ride. So we've stepped back in time a bit to before there was just Earth the gift shop. It was highly experimental/metaphorical. Feeling trapped by consumerism, but in a literal sense where you live your entire life trapped on a ride. At least, that's what I got out of it, but who knows?
I was hoping that after I'd sat with this story for a bit, it would settle out into something, but no such luck. That was a wild ride.
September 18, 2022
I have no clue what this was about... But I enjoyed it :)
June 12, 2021
Full review will follow later!
December 11, 2024
Composé de 3 nouvelles suivies d’un entretien avec l’auteur, ce court recueil m’a malheureusement laissé assez dubitatif.
⠀
La nouvelle qui donne son nom au recueil ne m’a vraiment pas intéressé alors que le pitch était plutôt vendeur : dans un futur éloigné, l’espèce humaine a quitté la planète Terre qui est devenue une boutique de souvenirs. Intrigant, c’est vrai, mais l’exécution ne m’a pas du tout convaincu : j’ai trouvé ça long, confus et je me suis franchement ennuyé.
⠀
La deuxième nouvelle était extrêmement courte mais je l’ai trouvée assez scandaleuse puisque pendant une dizaine de pages, l’auteur nous liste des recherches Google pendant la période Covid. Ni plus ni moins. Aucune intrigue et aucun intérêt d’après moi.
⠀
Petit point positif quand même, j’ai vraiment beaucoup aimé la dernière nouvelle que j’ai trouvée vraiment efficace et touchante. La narration était intéressante et il y avait de vrais messages. Maintenant est-ce que ça suffit à rattraper le reste ? Je ne crois pas.
⠀
Concernant l’entretien avec l’auteur, je ne peux rien dire puisque je ne l’ai pas lu. N’ayant pas été convaincu par le reste du recueil, je n’ai pas tellement eu envie d’en savoir plus sur l’auteur.
⠀
La nouvelle qui donne son nom au recueil ne m’a vraiment pas intéressé alors que le pitch était plutôt vendeur : dans un futur éloigné, l’espèce humaine a quitté la planète Terre qui est devenue une boutique de souvenirs. Intrigant, c’est vrai, mais l’exécution ne m’a pas du tout convaincu : j’ai trouvé ça long, confus et je me suis franchement ennuyé.
⠀
La deuxième nouvelle était extrêmement courte mais je l’ai trouvée assez scandaleuse puisque pendant une dizaine de pages, l’auteur nous liste des recherches Google pendant la période Covid. Ni plus ni moins. Aucune intrigue et aucun intérêt d’après moi.
⠀
Petit point positif quand même, j’ai vraiment beaucoup aimé la dernière nouvelle que j’ai trouvée vraiment efficace et touchante. La narration était intéressante et il y avait de vrais messages. Maintenant est-ce que ça suffit à rattraper le reste ? Je ne crois pas.
⠀
Concernant l’entretien avec l’auteur, je ne peux rien dire puisque je ne l’ai pas lu. N’ayant pas été convaincu par le reste du recueil, je n’ai pas tellement eu envie d’en savoir plus sur l’auteur.
January 26, 2025
I feel like this would have been better if the two stories had been separate books. They didn't really flow together the way I think Yu intended for them to
January 25, 2021
This story was inspired by Ray Bradbury's, There Will Come Soft Rains. The author created a vision of an Earth suffering from climate change in the year 3021, where only the remnants of our human civilization was an amusement gift shop with souvenirs and tchotchkes. Jane's job is to sit there all day and wait for the occasional tourist in their spaceship to fly by so she can sell keychains. I like that the author also found a way to weave in some mother-daughter drama right from the beginning, pushing the limits with fighting and real-life dialogue, except, of course, the limits are outer space.
If you would like to hear my interview with the author, go to my podcast at: https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/cha...
If you would like to hear my interview with the author, go to my podcast at: https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/cha...
January 25, 2022
This was everything I hoped it would be. Charles Yu is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.
December 12, 2022
Can’t say much really about it since it’s a very short story but I guess it was okki
April 30, 2021
I really don't know how to rate this because I'm honestly not sure what I read, and I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Just maybe I'm too dumb to fathom what the author was trying to tell the reader. I get the vague feeling the message is powerful, but it's lost on me beyond the general premise of humanity dooming our planet into extinction. However, there were moments that made me stop reading and file them away for deeper thought, but my overall enjoyment reading this was low. Maybe I'll re-read it at some point in the future.
April 29, 2021
117 - 2021
November 11, 2021
Excellently narrated, this was an interesting read that I will save to listen to again all at once on one hour trips. I don't think I have gotten everything I can yet out of Yu's commentary on society.
May 20, 2021
Neat concept, though I did like the Jane sections better than the more omnipotent narrative sections. It was quite short, which made for an easy read but also left a lot of questions unanswered. (The unanswered questions may have been part of the point of this story. It is certainly thought-provoking.)
April 20, 2021
This was originally a 4.5 star rounded down but the more I thought about chapter IV, I just needed to round it up. I think this is my favorite short story of the year if not all time.
September 7, 2024
Charles Yu has been on my TBR for a while, so when I realised there was a short one I could blast through I went for it - but I was not impressed. I found this too realistic, accurate, and depressing, like so much near-future dystopian social commentary sci fi is these days. Like, we're living it. That's us under one of the mushroom clouds in the snowglobe on the cover. We're all the last girl on Earth, engaged in meaningless consumptive tasks for the money we need to live in the system that's actively destroying us all. There's not much imagination involved in that.
As the one reviewer "way too high for this right now" said, it's basically a Black Mirror episode. A weak 3.
As the one reviewer "way too high for this right now" said, it's basically a Black Mirror episode. A weak 3.
March 8, 2021
In the last book I read by this author there was a thoroughly ordinary service economy worker going through life in a world that resembles ours in some relatable ways, but differs in some major ones. In this novella we have a protagonist in much the same situation, eking out a life as the last girl living on Earth while planning for college near Jupiter and dealing with unsatisfactory family dynamics. The Earth has suffered some big setbacks due to mismanagement and is now only a gift shop catering to tourists wishing to have "the Earth experience" in order to feel connected to their ancestors. In the middle section, we ride along with a family on the farcical theme park rides associated with the gift shop purporting to depict history as it was. I did notice in some places how there was this strange awareness of what happened round our own stretch of history as opposed to centuries before or since then.
This story has built its world following the principle of "If this keeps going on..." extrapolating to a time where all the cataclysms we are learning about now have already taken place and made the planet uninhabitable. The prose is dry and distant, and that is I think part of why I couldn't develop much of a strong attachment to the characters. The other part is that I believe the author didn't intend for the reader to grow attached, either. Instead, the main feeling I came away with was one of sadness over what our home planet has become, mixed with some light comedy along the way. I would classify this story as being closer to slipstream than as solidly science fictional, with its main preoccupations centering on the characters' lives.
This story has built its world following the principle of "If this keeps going on..." extrapolating to a time where all the cataclysms we are learning about now have already taken place and made the planet uninhabitable. The prose is dry and distant, and that is I think part of why I couldn't develop much of a strong attachment to the characters. The other part is that I believe the author didn't intend for the reader to grow attached, either. Instead, the main feeling I came away with was one of sadness over what our home planet has become, mixed with some light comedy along the way. I would classify this story as being closer to slipstream than as solidly science fictional, with its main preoccupations centering on the characters' lives.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 163 reviews