A million years in our future, human beings have evolved into Danellians who found the Time Patrol.
Two thousand million years in our future, the Eighteenth and Last human species lives on Neptune and some of its members mentally time travel through the lives of the earlier species on Earth, Venus and Neptune.
Three future visions, each involving time travel.
I have not been (re)reading so I reiterate: Wells, Stapledon and Anderson forever.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I question whether it is possible for an intelligent race to "de-evolve." But I can see either the human race or other races managing to destroy themselves. Or could we say the Zolotoyans of "The High Ones" is a speculative example of an intelligent species de-evolving?
Sean
Sean,
I think so.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And that is an alarming thought! And there's also the octopodidae seen in Anderson's not quite story "In Memoriam." That intelligent race, unable (due to living in the ocean), to advance beyond a Stone Age level of technology, eventually became so ossified that intelligence was lost and it became extinct.
Sean
"De-evolving" incorporates the fallacy that "evolution" is "progress"; it's a form of the teleological fallacy. But evolution through natural selection is not improvement, and it's not going somewhere -- it's just a process whereby chemicals make copies of themselves.
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