Assuming we don't blow ourselves up, get fried by climate change, or obliterated by an errant asteroid, what will humans look like ten thousand years from now?
How about in a million years? Two million? Five million? In what ways will our anatomy and physiology evolve in response to environmental changes here on Earth? How might we scientifically modify ourselves to meet the demands of space travel, or even underwater survival?
In his book, Man After Man: A Future Anthropology, Dougal Dixon offers some wild possibilities in answer to these questions. With its highly speculative future timeline and exceedingly strange, sometimes even disturbing illustrations by Philip Hood, this book is one of my favorite works of science fiction.
Man After Man was published in 1990 and never became a huge success. It's now out of print, but you can buy a used copy on Amazon for under $40, or read it on your device for free on Scribd.
While researching for this post, I came across quite a few disparaging reviews. Most of them had the same complaints: Dixon's future chronology is highly unlikely, and Hood's artistic style seems flat and the posthuman creatures, unanimated.
Actually, these two complaints are exactly what I like best about the book. I recognize that most of Dixon's predictions for the human race are ridiculously implausible--but it gets my imaginative wheels turning, and I enjoy the distant, scientific tone with which he introduces these creepy heirs to the homo sapiens bloodline.
And to me, the style of the illustrations is reminiscent of color plates in an old zoology or botany reference, which adds to the pseudo-scholarly feel of the book. The sheer absurdity of some of these characters is what makes it such an enjoyable book to slowly leaf through on a rainy day.
The book is organized by a timeline, and Dixon has made evolutionary predictions for the human race and its subspecies at different points from 200 to 5 million years hence. Each new iteration of the human genome is seen as through the perspective of an individual representative. Each representative is given a fanciful name, and life on Earth or off it is shown through its eyes.
For instance, at the one-million-year mark:
Ghloob peers through the watery film and the gelatinous envelope over his eyes. This work is dangerous and unpleasant, but the days of easy and pleasant life disappeared long before his birth. It is said that once the sea, their home, supplied all their needs, but then their numbers became too many, and all the food was gone. Famine raged. Whole populations perished and sank into the dark deeps. Sometimes after famine, the fish, krill and plankton would return, but this food source was never enough. As soon as it came back it was exploited and destroyed once more. Nothing could be done about it: if they want to survive they have to eat; if they eat they lose what they have and die.
It's not the most optimistic, or even the most realistic vision of humanity's future, but evolution never has adhered to popular conceptions of realism. If nothing else, Man After Man is undeniably intriguing. And, if you're a science fiction writer like I am, it will serve as rich fertilizer for your idea incubator.
I definitely recommend that you check it out.
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Hi! I'm Leslie Starr O'Hara, but my friends call me Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I am a FULL TIME WRITER who doesn't wait for the muse to show up before getting to work! I write humor, essays, and fiction here on Steemit and elsewhere.
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