Future as Seen Through the Eye of a Paleontologist Dougal Dixon
The future is unpredictable. Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to predict the future, but even the most advanced science cannot guarantee anything. Many people use fantasy to predict the future to fill this uncertainty. Dougal Dixon’s work may be the most intriguing.
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Dougal Dixon, a Scottish paleontologist, published over 100 books. He is best known for “After Man: A Zoology of the Future” (1981) and “Man After Man- An Anthropology of the Future” (1990). His books introduced “fictional evolution,” which has influenced dystopian science fiction since.
In “After Man,” Dixon describes fictional animal species’ hypothetical evolution over 50 million years, which he calls “Posthomic”. The book describes a world with over 100 new animal species and fused continents. The film “After Man” is acclaimed worldwide. Shizuno Nishimori made a 1990 stop-motion documentary of the novel.
“Man after Man” was released 9 years after “After Man” and focuses on human evolution from 200 years to 5 million years in the future. The book discusses human technological, social, and biological evolution. Dixon predicts that humankind will evolve into several species that can survive in space and underwater as he discusses parasitism, elective surgery, and technical progress. As technology disappears and humans’ descendants revert to animal-like instincts for food and survival, modern humanity will die out.
