Evolution is a collection of short stories that work together to form an episodic science fiction novel by author Stephen Baxter. It follows 565 million years of human evolution, from shrewlike mammals 65 million years in the past to the ultimate fate of humanity and its descendants, both biological and non-biological, 500 million years in the future.
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.
Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV is a 1990 speculative evolution and science fiction book written and illustrated by the American artist and writer Wayne Barlowe. Written as a first-person account of a 24th-century crewed expedition to the fictional exoplanet of Darwin IV, Expedition describes and discusses an imaginary extraterrestrial ecosystem as if it were real.
The Future Is Wild is a 2002 speculative evolution docufiction miniseries and an accompanying multimedia entertainment franchise. The Future Is Wild explores the ecosystems and wildlife of three future time periods: 5, 100, and 200 million years in the future, in the format of a nature documentary. Though the settings and animals are fictional, the series has an educational purpose, serving as an informative and entertaining way to explore concepts such as evolution and climate change.
After Man: A Zoology of the Future is a 1981 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Diz Wallis, John Butler, Brian McIntyre, Philip Hood, Roy Woodard and Gary Marsh. The book features a foreword by Desmond Morris. After Man explores a hypothetical future set 50 million years after extinction of humanity, a time period Dixon dubs the "Posthomic", which is inhabited by animals that have evolved from survivors of a mass extinction succeeding our own time.
Dougal Dixon is a Scottish geologist, palaeontologist, educator and author. Dixon has written well over a hundred books on geology and palaeontology, many of them for children, which have been credited with attracting many to the study of the prehistoric animals. Because of his work as a prolific science writer, he has also served as a consultant on dinosaur programmes.
The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution is a 1988 speculative evolution book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by several illustrators including Amanda Barlow, Peter Barrett, John Butler, Jeane Colville, Anthony Duke, Andy Farmer, Lee Gibbons, Steve Holden, Philip Hood, Martin Knowelden, Sean Milne, Denys Ovenden and Joyce Tuhill. The book also features a foreword by Desmond Morris. The New Dinosaurs explores a hypothetical alternate Earth, complete with animals and ecosystems, where the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event never occurred, leaving non-avian dinosaurs and other Mesozoic animals an additional 65 million years to evolve and adapt over the course of the Cenozoic to the present day.
Future Evolution is a book written by paleontologist Peter Ward and illustrated by Alexis Rockman. He addresses his own opinion of future evolution and compares it with Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future and H. G. Wells's The Time Machine.
Pantropy is a hypothetical process of space habitation or space colonization in which, rather than terraforming other planets or building space habitats suitable for human habitation, humans are modified to be able to thrive in the existing environment. The term was coined by science fiction author James Blish, who wrote a series of short stories based on the idea.
Natural History of an Alien, also known as Anatomy of an Alien in the US, is an early Discovery Channel pseudo-documentary similar to Alien Planet, aired in 1998. This pseudo-documentary featured various alien ecosystem projects from the Epona Project to Ringworld. It also featured many notable scientists and science fiction authors such as Dr. Jack Cohen, Derek Briggs, Christopher McKay, David Wynn-Williams, Emily Holton, Peter Cattermole, Brian Aldiss, Sil Read, Wolf Read, Edward K. Smallwood, Adega Zuidema, Steve Hanly, Kevin Warwick and Dougal Dixon.
A relatively common motif in speculative fiction is the existence of single-gender worlds or single-sex societies. These fictional societies have long been one of the primary ways to explore implications of gender and gender-differences in science fiction and fantasy. Many of these predate a widespread distinction between gender and sex and conflate the two.
All Yesterdays: Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals is a 2012 art book on the palaeoartistic reconstruction of dinosaurs and other extinct animals by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and Darren Naish. A central tenet of the book concerns the fact that many dinosaur reconstructions are outdated, overly conservative, and inconsistent with the variation observed in modern animals. This focus is communicated through an exploration of views of dinosaurs and related animals that are unusual and sometimes even confusing to viewers, but which are well within the bounds of behaviour, anatomy and soft tissue that we see in living animals.
"Living Fossil" is a science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, on the concepts of human extinction and future evolution. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for February 1939. It first appeared in book form in the anthology A Treasury of Science Fiction ; it later appeared in the anthologies Gates to Tomorrow, and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1. The story has been translated into Danish, Swedish and Italian.
Speculative evolution is a subgenre of science fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. It is also known as speculative biology and it is referred to as speculative zoology in regards to hypothetical animals. Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. Speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction because of its strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology.
All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man is a 2006 work of science fiction and speculative evolution written and illustrated by the Turkish artist C. M. Kosemen under the pen name Nemo Ramjet. It explores a hypothetical future path of human evolution set from the near future to a billion years from the present. Several future human species evolve through natural means and through genetic engineering, conducted by both humans themselves and by a mysterious and superior alien species called the Qu.
Children of Time is a 2015 science fiction novel by author Adrian Tchaikovsky. The novel follows the evolution of a civilization of genetically modified Portia labiata (arachnoid) on a terraformed exoplanet, guided by an artificial intelligence based on the personality of one of the human terraformers of the planet.
Biology appears in fiction, especially but not only in science fiction, both in the shape of real aspects of the science, used as themes or plot devices, and in the form of fictional elements, whether fictional extensions or applications of biological theory, or through the invention of fictional organisms. Major aspects of biology found in fiction include evolution, disease, genetics, physiology, parasitism and symbiosis (mutualism), ethology, and ecology.
Greenworld is a 2010 speculative evolution and science fiction book written by Scottish geologist and paleontologist Dougal Dixon and primarily illustrated by Dixon himself, alongside a few images by other artists. Greenworld features a fictional alien planet of the same name and a diverse biosphere of alien organisms. Greenworld has so far only been published in Japan, where it was released in two volumes.
Cevdet MehmetKösemen, also known by his former pen name Nemo Ramjet, is a Turkish researcher, artist, and author. Kosemen is known for his artwork, depicting living and extinct animals as well as surrealist scenes, and his writings on paleoart, speculative evolution, and history and culture in Turkey.
The future predator is a fictional future apex predator in the British science fiction television programme Primeval. The future predator was conceived by producers Tim Haines and Adrian Hodges and was designed by Daren Horley. Giant and flightless future descendants of bats, the predators are ruthless creatures that appear several times throughout the series. They were positively received and have been termed by some commentators as the "Daleks of Primeval" owing to their repeated appearances and how difficult they are to stop.
