Quarantine entry #111 - July 10

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, so we are finishing our discussion of Dougal Dixon’s speculative zoology instead.

Now, ‘Anthropology of the Future’ is a book of a different sort from the other two – it is presented not as a book of fact, but of fiction, straightforward, not unlike Stephen Baxter’s ‘Evolution’, just with fewer pages, much more illustrations, and fewer semiotics or whatever you want to call it. Instead, what we got in ‘Anthropology…’ are echoes of Jules Verne’s ‘Time Traveller’ novella, in particular – the social division aspect.

Let us elaborate. In the latter, Jules Verne showed how the ‘haves’ became the eloi, and the ‘have-nots’ – the morlocks. It was more intricate than that, true, and had plenty of references/influences/what-else-have-you regarding Jules Verne’s own social philosophy, reflected in plenty of his other novels, from the ‘War of the Worlds’ to ‘Anna-Veronica’, but what Dougal Dixon took for his own ‘Anthropology…’ what that split. Throughout ‘Anthropology…’ we constantly see class/social class distinctions and the various genetic manipulations only made it all worse. The single species – Homo sapiens, aka us – got split into dozens of new species, all adapted, or pre-adapted, to existence in different environments – plains, jungles, temperate woodlands, underwater, and so on – with the only main distinction being the presence of a mind/sentience/intelligence… pause.

No. My bad. The actual distinction was whether the ancestral humans were able to go into space to colonize new worlds, or not – they stayed on Earth, humanity’s home planet, and survived/evolved/existed/etc. there instead. Anything else proved to be secondary, as the descendants of the initial space colonists eventually came back to Earth and took over it. In their defence, it must be said, that the descendants of humans that stayed on Earth by that time had evolved, or rather devolved, into being nothing more than ‘mere mammals’, no more sentient and advanced than their counterparts from the ‘Zoology of the Future’ had been, so this is less of a ‘War of the Worlds’, and more of ‘humanity coming to a natural ecosystem’, (think New Zealand or Australia), ‘and buggering it all beyond recognition’. There is not much difference between the two, true, but there is. Where were we?

…Stephen Baxter’s ‘Evolution’ was written among similar lines though much more semiotic and pro-feminine. Sadly, because it is not a good book, all the drama tends to be overwhelming at best of times, it is not really ‘woke’ either, more like annoying and tiresome and pessimistic. So’s ‘Anthropology of the Future’, of course, but at least it ends on a more positive note – after the ‘new eloi’ finished with the ‘old Earth’ and left, there is a single species of human descendants left on the planet – a hardy deep-water dweller, so who knows? Maybe sentient life will come back to the world of ‘Anthropology…’ once again.

…Baxter’s take is different – he claims that sentient, or semi-sentient, life will survive on Earth until the very end, when the sun itself will explode/implode/etc., and destroy the Solar System. Somehow, he still makes it sound depressive as anything – does he want humanity to die? Well, maybe, but this does not mean that we have to agree with him… Anything else?

Well, in regards to Jules Verne, it can be pointed out that his ‘Time Traveller’ also ends on a similar note – his titular hero goes even further into the future, and he arrives at a time where there’s no sentient life, and the only life period are some plants and small mammals – less of a bang and more of a whimper, put otherwise, but there are similarities to Dixon and Baxter too.

…Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #110 - July 9

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, though there’s a species of giant extinct dormouse discovered as well, apparently. Sadly, I know little of it for now, so let us get a move on. What shall we talk about?

Well, people feel that this week’s AoS episode was kind of a filler, as everything was about ‘Mack and D’ – and yes, Deke probably deserves an episode to himself and his skills, but this is the final season, so this decision feels kind of undercut, plus…

…Plus the odds that ‘his crew’ that he had brought on board of the Time Bus alongside Mack may end up being the analogue of ST’s ‘red shirts’ is reasonably high; last season, MCU’s ‘Sarge’ had brought his own crew – and they all died before the S6 finale, and no one remembers them now; (at least Kasius and Sinara from AoS’ S5 are still remembered, sometimes). Therefore, why should we become attached to those new characters as well? People may point out that they are ‘full S.H.I.E.L.D.’ agents now, but AoS’ final season is gearing towards the end ever faster, so odds are that they will not appear in MCU after AoS ends, period.

…I am being serious here: AoS’ main cast, throughout the seasons, numbered from 6 to 10 people – that’s a lot, even by standards of Whedon’s TV series, such as AtS & BtVS… which got referred directly a few times, especially in S4, which is just shameless plugging… but the point is that even by Disney’s standards, AoS was an expensive TV show, and the real reason as to why it lasted for so long is because it was really the only Disney/MCU show that didn’t belong to Netflix and which didn’t end prematurely either. Pause.

No, seriously. Marvel’s ‘InHumans’ were an insipid flop. ‘Most Wanted’ failed to launch, period, (and team DC snapped Palicki, who played ‘Mockingbird’, cough). AC ended because Hayley Atwell decided to go back to the U.K., only then she came back and starred in the ‘Endgame’ film… so it’s a mess in real life too.

…Actually, AoS was always a mess in real life, as we have talked about this, repeatedly. These days it is no different – we are half way to the series’ finale, and half of the regular cast is missing with no indication that they will be back before the very final episode at all. I love AoS, but I cannot help but to feel that the show’s cast and crew did not. Do not. Whatever. Now that the gravy train ride is over, and Disney is about to launch its’ new MCU shows on Disney+, AoS’ cast and crew are abandoning it like crazy, in an act unprecedented since the AoS S2 finale. Anything else?

…AoS still appears to have a solid fan base, with the latter enjoying the question of whether or not Daisy will end up with agent Sousa or with Deke more than anything else. They also have largely abandoned following the canon, which I cannot blame them: AoS has developed too many flaws, too many damaged twists, and let too many people down too often over the years. It will be missed once it has gone, true, but nothing more. Where were we?

Right, I wanted to finish talking about Mr. Dougal’s speculative zoology trilogy, when the talk of AoS/MCU/Disney/etc. has arrived and distracted me. Yes, this is on me, fair enough, and I admit that I was also distracted by Edith Hamilton’s take on the Greek myths – and it is one of the worst takes ever! …Ms. Hamilton, clearly, does not like Greek myths as much as she would have you believe… but that is another story.

For now, though, this is it. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #108 - July 7

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and it looks like my quarantine will last for two more weeks rather than just one. Ah well, this is life – you keep your hopes up and you get disappointed for certain; what next?

Let us get back to Dixon and his ‘Zoology of the Future’. This may be the best-known Dixon book, and the most popular, but right now let us focus on its’ more literary aspects, to wit – its’ semi-nihilism. In the first part – the one that talks about the wildlife of temperate woodlands – we learn that not just humanity died out, but also its’ domestic animals as well as deer. Here we have an echo of a more U.K.-style reality: the wildlife of Great Britain has gone noticeably to smaller animals, usually not much bigger than a red fox or a European badger; any species of a physically bigger beast usually needs human assistance to survive – in a zoo, a nature preserve, etc. Fair enough, but it should be noted that outside of U.K., especially in North America, but also in the mainland Old World – the picture is not so grim… Pause.

That is actually one of the Achilles heels’ of Dougal’s universes: they are so visibly… custom-made. Can rabbits evolve to replace deer, llamas, and so on? Yes, but it is very unlikely: they live and reproduce in burrows; their young are born blind and helpless, unlike the young of the ungulates…and of their closest cousins the hares. No offence to the members of team Rabbit, but if ungulates would die out, my money is on the team Hare to replace them instead… Pause.

The ungulates actually have not died out; aside from some ‘old-fashioned’ species on some specialized island, the world of the ‘Zoology of the Future’ also features ‘hornheads’ and ‘gigantolopes’. Question: how did the rabbits (and/or hares) get the opportunity to evolve into ungulates and the like if the ungulates were right there instead?

…The same goes for the carnivorous mammals. There are various predatory descendants of rats – but there are also ‘true’ carnivorous mammals, (fissipeds), and while some do live on islands, (for example, the descendants of the mongooses live on South America, which is an island continent once more in the future), some of them don’t – they live right on the mainland, alongside giant carnivorous rats (Eurasia?), carnivorous primates (Africa), and so on. Is that possible? Yes, but in that case, the end result shouldn’t be too different from what we have right now – ‘true’ carnivorous mammals dominate, while carnivorous rodents, insectivores, and etc. just scurry in the undergrowth instead, decidedly not their equals. But-?

But nothing. If ‘The New Dinosaurs’ are actually a very educational book, the ‘Zoology of the Future’ aimed more to shock and awe, and given how we discuss it still decades after it was released, then it had certainly succeeded at that. Here, I just wanted to point out that it got faint echoes of Jules Verne’s ‘Time Traveller’ novel instead – remember it? The main character, a contemporary of the author, goes to a far-off future and discovers that the humanity had split into two species – the eloi and the morlocks, and the rest of the wildlife apparently died-out… Pause.

…Yes, unlike Verne’s novel in question, Dixon’s ‘Zoology of the Future’ has no humans…and its’ apes are decidedly odd: they are carnivores of the African savanna…and they got tails. How and why apes lost their tails in our RL past – is another story, but lose it they did completely, and so, it is evolutionarily and anatomically impossible for them to have it back. Pause.

Here is the thing. In many ways, Dixon’s beasts from the ‘Zoology of the Future’, are not quite natural or realistic, but they are still very enjoyable, (the night stalkers or whatever the giant carnivorous flying bats of the Batavia Island aside). For many people, they were THE introduction to the world of speculative zoology, (me included), and so they should be treated with respect!

Well, this is it for now. See you all soon!

Quarantine entry #107 - July 6

Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, but sometimes it also changes, through conflict or otherwise, and it seems that this is the last week of my quarantine entries. Yay! Or, well, not, if you’re actually enjoying following my blog – in which case, can you write a response for me so that I would know about this fact?.. Where were we?

Ah yes, we have finished talking about the birds of prey – all of them – for the moment. So, let us talk about something else – Dougal Dixon’s book ‘The New Dinosaurs’ instead, since the birds are dinosaurs, cough.

Why are we talking about this book? Because birds are dinosaurs, according to most accepted versions, especially in the West. In other parts of the world, such as RF, this P.O.V. is not fully accepted yet, but since the dinosaur-bird evolution is a very complex subject… this brings us to ‘The New Dinosaurs’ instead.

This speculative evolution book is the second in Mr. Dixon’s ‘After Man’ trilogy. The first is the ‘Zoology of the Future’, the second is this one, and the third is ‘Anthropology of the Future’. All three books are different, and I am not talking here about just the obvious.

Let me clarify. Leaving the ‘Anthropology of the Future’ aside, the first two books are more similar to each other than to the former, but whereas ‘Zoology of the Future’ focuses on the animals themselves and on their potential evolutions in the future, ‘The New Dinosaurs’ discusses the evolutionary processes themselves – how they work and how the environmental factors affect them. 

To wit, the pages of the ‘The New Dinosaurs’ constantly talk about and depict both taxonomic relatives that’d acquired different traits and looks, as well as complete strangers, (genealogically speaking), who look very similar to each other because of reasons, usually environmental ones. Hence, the partition of the titular subject into several zones – Africa & the Arabian Peninsula, North America, South America, Eurasia, (save for the Arabian Peninsula and the south-east), the south-east Asia, (including India), Australia, and the oceans. Each section discusses several animals, primarily dinosaurs and pterosaurs, but also marine reptiles, invertebrates, and birds & mammals, among others, and shows how they were shaped… see above. Pause.

…When put like that, ‘The New Dinosaurs’ sounds very modern, professional, and serious. Unfortunately, even by 1990, this book did not age well. Why? Because of the dinosaurs and co. Even as ‘The New Dinosaurs’ were published, their image in both the public area and among the professionals continued to change – a process that goes even now, just look at the Jurassic Park franchise, or the King Kong one. Where were we?

…Yes, the depictions of ‘The New Dinosaurs’ didn’t age well, and their names – such as Lank, Plunger, and Kloonk didn’t help. I.e., at that time – late 1980s – people still thought that the pterosaurs were bipedal rather than quadrupedal, and it shows – we got wingless moa-like pterosaurs with teeth. Facepalm. In Paleoarctic, (aka northern Eurasia) we got wingless birds that don’t have teeth, (and keep in mind that birds give up their power of flight very reluctantly, even on the islands, and for every avian that became flightless there are hordes of those who didn’t), and in New Zealand – pterosaurs.

However, it must be kept in mind that at that time paleontology itself was more backwards than it is now, (no duh, Captain Obvious), and for its’ time, ‘The New Dinosaurs’ was quite cutting edge – Dougal Dixon also brought an impressive bibliography to the table, though it is probably ignored, (some things haven’t changed with time, sadly). Anything else?

No, this is it for now. See you all soon!