Free (Kindle) Unto the Last Generation by Juanita Coulson [Sci-Fi Future Dystopia]

[ATDrake]

Unto the Last Generation by author and noted filksinger Juanita Coulson (ISFDB, Wikipedia, Science Fiction Encyclopedia) is her vintage dystopian science fiction novel set in a future version of the US where the pending problem of overpopulation has been solved, more or less, by all of humanity having been rendered sterile (presumably by accident), and the obligatory mysterious impossible child popping up, which sets off a race to find her parents and unlock the means by which they were able to reproduce, before it becomes too late, free courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press' Venture imprint, who are e-printing it from its 1975 edition originally out from Harlequin's Laser Books imprint, which was its short-lived (non-romantic) science fiction/fantasy line which, among other things, printed Tim Powers' first published novel.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else that Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

It'd probably be interesting to see how this compares, mysteriously dwindling population dystopia with survivors and society gone feral-wise, with Michaela Roessner's Vanishing Point, which we've also gotten as a Venture Press freebie, and which has some overlap in exploring the effects on the presumably last humans left behind, at nearly twenty years' remove.

Description
Fifteen years ago, Earth’s population ceased to mushroom.

Its people no longer reproduced.

Because they could not.

Wholesale application of population control technology has rendered man infertile.

It’s not long before society loses its mind. Rifts emerge, as the Young and Old begin to spar over whose rights are most important in a time of such catastrophic struggle. Leaders rise out of the darkness, channelling the animosity into political lecturings and creating more chaos and despair. Robbed of over more than half the population, urban America withered.

Food becomes a much fought-over commodity and luxury. Famine, plague and war spread like wildfire. And no children are born – anywhere. Two generations later, and the spread of the immuno-factor was complete.

A team of scientists, headed by Dr. Richard Parnell and his wife Therese, based at the Life Sciences headquarters works tirelessly to produce life artificially.

One day, a young girl walks into their midst.

“I’m eight,” the girl announces proudly.

Mankind has been sterile for more than fifteen years…

A living child could be the answer to humanity’s greatest problem.

How can she be alive, and so young, when not a single child has been born for two generations?

Parnell and his team are now on a mission: to find the parents of this young girl, named Ria, before the trail runs cold and humanity’s last hope disappears into the darkness.

Will they track them down in time?

Or is Ria to be humankind’s last generation?

‘Unto the Last Generation’ is a gripping technological sci-fi thriller set in a dystopian future America.