b'What if We are theLast Humans?Author Lee Bacon says thats okayBY ABBY SHERT hese days, its all too easy to get sweptsame day. (Rarely is it [that I get] that clear an in-upinpredictionsabouttheendofspiration, he confesses.) theworldasweknowit.Direfore- Bacon has put in an extraordinary amount of time castsfloodedthenewsevenbeforeand effort into finding his voice as a writer, starting COVID-19 and social distancing. Butwhen he was very young. He grew up in College Sta-therearesomeextraordinarypeopletion, Texas, where his parents both worked at a uni-whohavetakenontheseforebodingversity. From there, he moved up to New York City prophecies and made art.to see what he could learn in the publishing industry TakelocalMaplewoodian,LeeBacon.Iwasand did an internship at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, listening to an interview, Bacon says, with Yuvalwhere he met his wife. The two of them lived in Mu-Noah Harari [the author of A Brief History of Hu- nich while she was finishing a university degree, and mankind and Homo Deus] and he was asked, Doit was there that Lee started focusing on childrens you think humans will be the dominant life form onliterature.the planet in 300 years? And without a beat, he said,He calls this a very fortunate accident, though No. Well either destroy ourselves or be surpassed byitsoundsmuchmorelikeadeliberate(andas-our own creationthat is, technology. tute)sortofdiscipline.BaconwasnewtotheMaplewood resident Lee Bacon is the Bacon took that idea, ran home and started writ- Germanlanguage,sohestartedtoreadbooksauthor of several book series and audio ing his wildly successful book, The Last Human, thatin German that were written for kids because hestories geared to young people.20/ matters magazine / spring 2020'