Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future is a 1990 speculative evolution and science fiction book written by Scottish geologist and palaeontologist Dougal Dixon and illustrated by Philip Hood. The book also features a foreword by Brian Aldiss. Man After Man explores a hypothetical future path of human evolution set from 200 years in the future to 5 million years in the future, with several future human species evolving through genetic engineering and natural means through the course of the book.
First Edition cover. The cover depicts "Jimez Smoot's descendant", a spacefaring human descendant living five million years in the future.
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.
The Time Machine (1895) by H. G. Wells is seen by some as an early instance of speculative evolution and has been cited as an inspiration by later creators within the field.
A four-armed "Green Martian" riding a "thoat" from Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, a fictional version of the planet Mars. Illustration by James Allen St. John (1920).
A mock taxidermy of a rhinograde, using its nasorium to catch fish. Rhinogrades, created by Gerolf Steiner in 1957, are one of the earliest concrete examples of speculative zoology.
Author Dougal Dixon with a model of a "Strida", one of the creatures featured in his 2010 book Greenworld.
