To understand the depiction of future life in media, let’s start with the book that would set everything in motion.
Published in 1981, After Man: A Zoology of the Future by Dougal Dixon along with his following books, are considered the roots of the modern speculative evolution artistic movement. A movement which would go on to discuss both possible futures and alternative routes history could have taken, thus shaping the face of media, especially sci-fi over the last few decades.
About the Book
After Man depicts a world set 50 million years in the future, after the extinction of mankind. Showing how animals that we are familiar with today could evolve in this world set after our time. In 2018 a second edition was published, aimed to update the book to our current understanding on speculative evolution.
Content
While scientific in nature, the book doesn’t aim to be a firm prediction, but rather an exploration of possibilities. How evolution and natural selection can be used to flesh out a fictional future ecosystem. Showing how animals would adapt to changing environments through behaviour, physical form and their place in the food chain.
It goes over multiple different possible branches of evolution, asking questions like: What if rabbits eventually evolved to take over the niche of ungulates? How would baboons behave if they became hunter-predators? Could penguins evolve to the size of whales?
Structure
The book is built up like a scientific almanac, with full-page illustrations by Diz Wallis, John Butler, Brian McIntyre, Philip Hood, Roy Woodard and Gary Marsh. Showing both animals and their environment.
The introduction goes over the different processes responsible for evolution, as well as a short break-down of the development of life on Earth. The chapters explore life from environment to environment, ranging from Temperate Woodlands and Grasslands to Tundra and the Polar Region. It establishes the common animals of the region, which niche they occupy in the food chain.
The book makes use of binomial nomenclature, meaning it uses both generic and Latin names. Alongside are facts about the animals’ physical appearance and behaviour (hunting, social interaction, adaption to weather, …). These are often accompanied by smaller illustrations to visualize the information.
Further Works
The success of After Man showed, that there was a market for books that make use fictional examples and settings in order to explain scientific processes. In 1988 Dixon followed his work up with The New Dinosaurs, which aimed to explain zoogeography, by showing an alternate world where dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct. This was followed in 1990 by Man After Man, which focused on climate change; showing the future of a human species which was genetically engineered to adapt to it.
“Anyway, After Man, I feel, established the idea of world building as goes Speculative Zoology. Things being what they were prior to the age of the internet, I don’t think anybody during the 1980s or early 90s really tried to do what Dougal did […]” – Darren Naish
In 2002 Dixon would also be a consultant on the docu-miniseries The Future is Wild. The 13-episode series goes over speculative evolution of the next 5 million, 100 million, and 200 million years. Many of the designs reflect creatures from After Man, while also taking future environmental changes into account.
Sources
- Wikipedia. Die freie Enzyklopädie (23.07.2025), s.v. After Man, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Man (zuletzt aufgerufen am 16.11.2025)
- Dixon, Dougal: After Man. A Zoology of the Future. New York: St. Martin’s Press 1981
- Naish, Darren: Speculative Zoology, a Discussion. Of flightless future bats, alt–time line dinosaurs—a homage to Dixoniana… . In: Scientific American 16,07.2018, https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/tetrapod-zoology/speculative-zoology-a-discussion/ (zuletzt aufgerufen am 16.11.2025)
