Millions of years hence the sun is dead and the last men live in a metal pyramid surrounded by watching things, and one of them goes out into the dark to find a woman who has called to him. Hodgson wrote it in an archaic prose that defeats some readers entirely; those it does not defeat consider it one of the strangest visions in English. Fifty-four plates by painters including John Martin and Giovanni Battista Piranesi supply the vaults, arches and sunless vistas Hodgson's dark pilgrimage demands.
