"Till A' the Seas" is a

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

short story by American

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writer H. P. Lovecraft and

R. H. Barlow Robert Hayward Barlow (May 18, 1918 – January 1 or 2, 1951Joshi & Schultz (2007): p. xx.) was an American author, avant-garde poet, anthropologist and historian of early Mexico, and expert in the Nahuatl language. He was a correspondent and f ...

. The title is a reference to the poem "

A Red, Red Rose "A Red, Red Rose" is a 1794 song in Scots by Robert Burns based on traditional sources. The song is also referred to by the title "(Oh) My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose" and is often published as a poem. Many composers have set Burns' lyric to m ...

" by

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Plot

The story consists of two parts. The first describes the events that took place on

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

from a few thousand years to a few million years after the present day. The climate on Earth is getting warmer and warmer, oceans are slowly disappearing. People are gradually moving towards the poles, becoming more and more barbaric. Mankind is steadily dying out because of the lack of water, until there are only a few decades left. The second part starts in a small village in the desert. There is only one man left in the village: young Ull. A very old woman, the only company for the man, died just before. Ull starts a journey in search of other people using his knowledge of old legends. In a few days, extremely thirsty and tired, he finds a small settlement. Ull enters one of the houses and finds nothing but a dried-up old skeleton. Depressed, he starts searching for water and finds a well with a little water in it. Trying to reach the string to pull up a dip-bucket, he falls into the well and dies. And after the death of the last man, mankind totally has vanished.

Creation and publication

The short story was a literary collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and R. H. Barlow (who was only 17 years old at the time). It was written in January 1935 and published in Summer 1935 in ''The Californian''.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Till A'the Seas Short stories by H. P. Lovecraft Works originally published in American magazines 1935 short stories Dying Earth (genre) Collaborative short stories