Whither Mankind?

Will human beings:

devolve into Morlocks and Eloi;

evolve through many species;

evolve into Danellians;

become extinct soon;

be replaced by post-organic intelligences;

remain human and build a mature civilization?

(Wells, Stapledon, Anderson x 3, Heinlein.)

In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, the First Empire was:

"A dream the whole race had once had.

"And now we're waking up."

-"The Chapter Ends," p. 209.

It will seem like waking up when fundamental motivations change:

"Men rarely built that big nowadays, they didn't need to; and the whole human spirit had changed, become ever more abstract, finding its treasures within itself." (p. 210)

Both possible and desirable, in my opinion.

Of course, there is always a backward glance:

"But there had been an elemental magnificence about early man and the works he raised to challenge the sky." (ibid.)

Few planets still keep cities. Most people, able to control the cosmic energies, dwell far apart. On Jorun's planet, there are dark nights, no other dwellings nearby, "...hills and tundras and great empty seas." (p. 211)