"Not with a Bang" is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 short story written by Damon Knight

Damon Knight

Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...

. It first appeared in the winter 1949 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and has been reprinted a number of times, including in Far Out

Far Out (book)

Far Out is a collection of 13 science fiction short stories by Damon Knight. The stories were originally published between 1949 and 1960 in Galaxy Magazine, If Science Fiction and other science fiction magazines...

(1961), The Best of Damon Knight (1976), 50 Short Science Fiction Tales, and The Eureka Years (1982).

Synopsis

The story is an ironic, Adam-and-Eve tale. Humanity has been wiped out by a nuclear war, except for one man and woman, who meet in a restaurant in Salt Lake City. The man suffers from a disease that causes recurrent episodes of total paralysis. While in the bathroom, he has an attack, and dies with the realization that the woman is too prudish to enter and save him.

Background

Knight has written that this was the first of his stories that he considered to be of professional quality. He said that the idea for the story

came to me during the time it took for a men's-room door to close behind me in a Swedish restaurant in New York. I didn't have the characters or the setting, but I had the whole structure; all I needed was to find parts that fit.