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From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.
Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.
On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.
Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.
But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.
And the clock is ticking.
PROLOGUE
"Is there no other way?" asks a horrified Niema Mandripilias, speaking out loud in an empty room.
She has olive skin and a smudge of ink on her small nose. Her gray hair is shoulder length, and her eyes are strikingly blue with flecks of green. She looks to be around fifty and has for the last forty years. She's hunched over her desk, lit by a solitary candle. There's a pen in her trembling hand and a confession beneath it that she's been trying to finish for the last hour.
"None that I can see," I reply in her thoughts. "Somebody has to die for this plan to work."
Suddenly short of air, Niema scrapes her chair back and darts across the room, swiping aside the tattered sheet that serves as a makeshift door before stepping into the muggy night air.
It's pitch-black outside, the moon mobbed by storm clouds. Rain is pummeling the shrouded village, filling her nostrils with the scent of wet earth and cypress trees. She can just about see the tops of the encircling walls, etched in silver moonlight. Somewhere in the darkness, she can hear the distant squeal of machinery and the synchronized drumbeat of footsteps.
She stands there, letting the warm rain soak her hair and dress. "I knew there'd be a cost," she says, her voice numb. "I didn't realize it would be so high."
"There's still time to put this plan aside," I say. "Leave your secrets buried, and let everybody go about their lives as they've always done. Nobody has to die."
"And nothing will change," she shoots back angrily. "I've spent ninety years trying to rid humanity of its selfishness, greed, and impulse toward violence. Finally, I have a way to do it." She touches the tarnished cross hanging around her neck for comfort. "If this plan works, we'll create a world without suffering. For the first time in our history, there'll be perfect equality. I can't turn my back on that because I don't have the strength to do what's necessary."
Niema speaks as if her dreams were fish swimming willingly into her net, but these are murky waters, far more dangerous than she can see.
From my vantage in her mind—and the minds of everybody on the island—I can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy. It's a confluence of probability and psychology, which is easy to chart when you have access to everybody's thoughts.
Streaking away from this moment are dozens of possible futures, each waiting to be conjured into existence by a random event, an idle phrase, a miscommunication, or an overheard conversation.
Unless a violin performance goes flawlessly, a knife will be rammed into Niema's stomach. If the wrong person steps through a long-closed door, a huge, scarred man will be emptied of every memory, and a young woman who isn't young at all will run willingly to her own death. If these things don't happen, the last island on earth will end up covered in fog, everything dead in the gloom.
"We can avoid those pitfalls if we're cautious," says Niema, watching lightning tear through the sky.
"You don't have time to be cautious," I insist. "Once you commit to this plan, secrets will surface, old grudges will come to light, and people you love will realize the extent of your betrayal. If any of these things disrupts your plan, the human race will be rendered extinct in one hundred and seven hours."
Niema's heart jolts, her pulse quickening. Her thoughts waver, only to harden again as her arrogance takes the reins.
"The greatest achievements have always brought the greatest risk," she says stubbornly, watching a line of figures walking stiffly in the darkness. "Start your countdown, Abi. In four days, we're either going to change the world or die trying."
107 HOURS UNTIL HUMANITY'S EXTINCTION
1
Two rowboats float at world's end, a rope pulled taut between them. There are three children in each with exercise books and pencils, listening to Niema deliver her lesson.
She's at the bow of the boat on the right, gesticulating toward a wall of black fog that rises a mile into the air from the ...
Excerpted from The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton. Copyright © 2024 by Stuart Turton. Excerpted by permission of Sourcebooks. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Sourcebooks Landmark. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.
The island is the only safe place left on Earth. Since a deadly fog overtook the planet, the vestiges of humanity have not only survived but worked together to create a picturesque existence under the oversight of the elders. These three, who were alive before the fog arrived, are the only ones with the scientific knowledge to keep the other 122 humans alive. When Niema, the head elder, is brutally murdered, the island's security system begins to fail. Prior to her death and fearing the likelihood of violence, Niema programmed the security system so that only the death of her murderer would stop the encroaching fog, for reasons that will later become clear. But Niema's death also triggered an island-wide memory wipe, making the case seemingly impossible to solve by anyone except one villager, Emory. Emory has always asked too many questions, a trait that, combined with her excellent observational skills, allows her to conduct an investigation that will reveal dark secrets with implications for the survival of the human race. Stuart Turton's The Last Murder at the End of the World is a twisted, ingenious mystery with a strong science fiction basis and a shocking ending.
The story's tension starts with the first sentence: "Is there no other way?" Readers are immediately aware that the stakes are high, with everything hinging on a plan—one that risks the total extinction of the human race—set into motion by Niema and a mysterious first-person narrator. Further increasing the tension are the pages at the beginning of every section indicating the number of hours until humanity's extinction and the short, snappy chapters that jump between different characters. These varied perspectives allow for greater understanding not only of each individual's personality but also their motives for killing Niema. New clues implicate different people, but since not even the murderer themself can remember exactly what happened, the mystery plays out until the story's final sentence.
One character knows exactly what happened, however: Abi. Abi is the story's narrator, the mysterious, omniscient intelligence who inhabits the mind of every islander. Abi's full nature is slowly revealed over the course of the story, showing exactly how she's connected to everyone's mind and revealing her ultimate purpose. Although she appears to care for each villager by answering their questions, giving them advice and keeping a record of their memories to be shared after death, Abi is also responsible for the memory wipe following Niema's murder, leading Emory in particular to question Abi's control. Although Abi observes and considers the villagers' feelings and desires, she will exert control over them if they attempt to violate her directives. Abi's narration provides an all-encompassing point of view, but her adherence to her directives firmly grounds this character in the realm of science fiction.
The story overall is a satisfying blend of genres. Many advanced technologies and futuristic developments based on the standards of the pre-apocalyptic society play important roles in the story. Some of these, such as Abi, are immediately obvious, while others are gradually introduced as the mystery unfolds. Turton uses the villagers' ignorance to introduce the tech and ideas to his readers; as such, the sci-fi elements aren't confusing or unbelievable. In fact, our present-day technology is working to develop several of the technologies seen in the novel, including devices that use artificial intelligence to produce images from brain waves (see Beyond the Book). These technologies are used or revealed almost exclusively in the process of solving Niema's murder, with each genre supporting the other without taking precedence. The mystery plot reads much like a Sherlock Holmes novel, with all the clues introduced in bits and pieces but with only the main detective—Emory—able to truly put everything together.
Much like his detective, Turton also poses several questions that, while not necessarily important to the plot, are interesting to consider and provide a bit more context for the elders and for Emory. How much can a person grow or evolve outside of what's expected of them? What things would you miss most after the end of the world as you've always known it? How would someone who lived prior to the apocalyptic event relate to those who were born or grew up after? And if you could remake the world, what would you change? As Emory discovers more of Niema's secrets, it becomes clear that the elder was especially motivated by that final question, setting into motion a plan to recreate the world as the best version she could imagine—even at the cost of the islanders' safety and her own life. These questions will also have readers wondering how far they'd be willing to go to do what they think is right.
Carefully constructed, clever and fast-paced, The Last Murder at the End of the World will be enjoyed by fans of sci-fi and murder mysteries alike.
Reviewed by Jordan Lynch
Rated 3 out of 5
by kdowli01
Just wasn't for me
Points for creativity, but ultimately I didn't really enjoy the experience of reading this book. There was a lot going on, and I felt lost almost the whole time, and when you finally learn what's going on it just wasn't worth the lead up.
Basically...a woman is found murdered, and another woman has to figure out who murdered her, or everyone on the island will get killed by a poison gas. The twist is that all their memories have been wiped. There's a whole lot more going on the background, but it felt like it was just filler to set up a murder mystery that's based entirely on evidence and no memories or witnesses.
I was not a fan of Evelyn Hardcastle, but I REALLY tried to give this a chance. But I honestly felt like I struggled through it. It felt long and at times it was repetitive, going over the same basic suspects over and over again. But then at times it would skip ahead several hours and I would be totally lost.
As one final point, the characters all seemed somewhat one-dimensional (ultimately that made sense for some but not all)
I went with 3 stars because it was completely unique and I never would have predicted where it was going. But it sadly wasn't for me.
In The Last Murder at the End of the World, a small group of people have survived the deadly fog that destroyed mankind. These survivors have managed to create a peaceful, productive society on their small island, benefiting from the sense of community bestowed by Abi. Abi is a mysterious intelligence that is part of the minds of all the islanders; she can not only read everyone's thoughts and communicate with them, but also exert control over the islanders' minds and bodies as needed. Although mind control in this sense doesn't exist in the real world, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have shown how this technology can be used to help scientists better understand the brain.
The process through which the brain takes input from the eyes to create a mental image is not fully understood by current science. However, a recent study from scientists at Japan's Osaka University used a new AI algorithm (a set of instructions used in calculations and operations) to read brain scans and recreate an image of what the scanned individual was seeing. Four study participants viewed 10,000 images of common items such as clocks, teddy bears and airplanes while their brains were being scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These scans mapped the blood flow to active regions of the brain and were then used to train the algorithm—named Stable Diffusion—to recognize certain scans as related to specific images.
Once trained, the algorithm was tested using additional scans, and although Stable Diffusion could initially recreate the layout and perspective of the image based on the scans, it couldn't recreate objects and instead placed abstract figures into the image. This changed, however, once photo captions were included during the training phase. The text and visual information together made it easier for the algorithm to decipher the brain scans in the testing phase and create the image more accurately. Although Stable Diffusion currently only works with the scans from which it was trained, there is hope that future iterations could be used on unscanned brains, with conceivable applications including recording human dreams, studying how animals understand the world and even communicating with people with paralysis or in comas.
Other AI-based technology has been used as a form of non-invasive mind reading. Researchers at the University of Texas used fMRI data to translate brain activity from participants into a continuous stream of text. Three individuals listened to podcasts for sixteen hours while undergoing fMRI scanning, and the scans were used to train an AI-based decoder built using a large-language model (an AI construct that looks at wording in a high number of examples of language and then predicts the next word or phrase). The individuals then listened to a story or imagined their own story, and the decoder was tested using the corresponding scans. The decoder was able to reconstruct the thoughts with a high degree of accuracy, although due to an inherent time lag between the thought and the duration of the measured blood flow, the outcome only gave the gist of the original material rather than exact words or phrases. The custom nature of the models also limited the decoder's utility in the short term, but researchers nonetheless hope that additional research could allow this technology to be used for speech restoration in unscanned individuals who have suffered a stroke or are suffering from neuron diseases such as Alzheimer's.
Other AI-based brain technologies are less academically based. Launched in 2016, Elon Musk's Neuralink is an AI-enabled chip that, once implanted in the brain, could record and potentially stimulate brain activity. Musk hopes to use this technology to allow humans to "join" supercomputers and allow users to play games or send messages with only their thoughts, but he also envisions his chips could allow individuals who have lost the use of their limbs to control their phone or computers just by thinking. Additionally, scientists hypothesize that if Neuralink could stimulate brain activity, it could increase mobility in paralyzed individuals or help blind patients regain their sight. Neuralink was implanted in the first human subject in January 2024, so additional research is needed to determine whether it has broad medical uses or if it is more of a science fiction novelty.
Although Abi in The Last Murder at the End of the World is a far more advanced form of AI than anything that currently exists, AI-based technology is a quickly growing field. Despite many ethical concerns about its broader use, AI's potential to restore communication in individuals affected by disease or injury could well improve both individual lives and society as a whole.
Artificial intelligence re-creations of images based on brain scans (bottom row) match the layout, perspective, and contents of the actual photos seen by study participants (top row), courtesy of Science
Filed under Medicine, Science and Tech
By Jordan Lynch
In a world of constant winter, only the citizens of the climate-controlled city of Snowglobe can escape the bitter cold—but this perfect society is hiding dark and dangerous secrets within its frozen heart. A groundbreaking Korean novel translated into English for the first time!
An urgent warning of the unprecedented risks that AI and other fast-developing technologies pose to global order, and how we might contain them while we have the chance—from a co-founder of the pioneering artificial intelligence company DeepMind
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