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 #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!