News You Can Bruise for 2004 May 29

Permalink [Comments] (4) Sat May 29 2004 20:54:

Oh, hey. Does anyone (like Kevan) remember a book or something that hypothesized wildly about what kinds of creatures would have evolved from current stock one billion years in the future? I mention Kevan because when people were talking about it a year or two ago, the canonical example everyone liked was the Paul Bunyan-esque giant forest squid.

I bring this up because in the odd "randomly placed bookcase" exhibit at the dinosaur museum in Utah, and then in the same used bookstore where I bought Infinite Jest, I found a 1981 book called After Man. It takes the relatively short view of 35 million years in the future, but it's a nice book because it's imaginative, illustrated with watercolored line drawings and written like any other zoological monograph. I can't find any information on this kindred spirit, but I know it exists and it's preventing me from doing a proper NYCB about After Man. Does anyone remember this?

biology/organisms literature

Comments:

Posted by zztzed at Sun May 30 2004 00:17

There was a miniseries on the Discovery Channel like that a while back. It only went 200 million years in the future, though. It was called The Future is Wild, and they're selling it on DVD here. I'm pretty sure this is what you're thinking of, because as I recall, it did feature a giant land-squid.

Posted by Tim May at Sun May 30 2004 06:44

IIRC, Dougal Dixon, who wrote After Man, was involved with The Future is Wild. Googling, looks like he also produced a companion book to the series, which might be what you're thinking of. Appears there's additional similar books by the same author.

Posted by Brian Danger Hicks at Sun May 30 2004 15:38

I think the show itself was on Animal Planet, but you could be thinking of the Companion website.

Posted by Pthag at Sun May 30 2004 17:32

I like the same author's /The New Dinosaurs/. I'm told his other books aren't as good as these two, though.

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