It’s a speculative evolution book from 1990 about how mankind might evolve in the next 5 million years. Basically the premise is that due to climate change, new species of humans are engineered to survive in a more hostile world. And then it follows these new species and their further evolutions.
The creatures in the picture above are both descended from humans.
It’s weird, bleak and very far fetched.
A small gallery of the various species:
Question about the years if someone knows: is “years hence” a fancy british way of saying “years in the future” or is it some antiquated large non-SI unit of time since I find any of the species described in shorter timeframes, the Vacuumorph beimg an egregious example (“200 years hence”) very hard to imagine “evolving” only 200 years in the future, even with the 90s outlook on technology (since it seems they said these earlier examples at least are engineered species in the book).
I wouldn’t know about the hence part, but I always read it as “years from now”. A bit like the opposite from “years since”.
As for the other thing, it started out with deliberately engineered beings for specific tasks like the vacuumorph.
About a hundred years later the remaining people would create new humans with the specific goal of being able to survive the harsher environment of a ravaged earth. It was these that evolved further into different creatures.
It’s a pretty far fetched story either way, I just like it for the weird pictures :)
I posted a link in one of the other replies. You can read the whole thing there if you’re interested, there’s a timeline on page 20 if you just want a quick overview.
