Evolutionary theory teaches us that life-time never continue the same . It is constantly changing and accommodate . So what might be the next stages in the evolution of humanity and our planet ? Here are 20 books , both fable and nonfictional prose , that endeavor to answer that dubiousness .
Illustration byAlexis Rockman , from Future Evolution
1 . The Culture Series , by Iain M. Banks
Iain M. Banks ’ Culture serial publication deals with the far hereafter of humankind and the AI who have become our companions , caretakers , and fellow travelers . There are three main predictions that Banks shit , and these are common throughout SF and futurism dealing with tomorrow ’s human race . One , we have complete controller over our physical structure , we can live for grand of years , and our idea can be ported into any dead body we like , whether that ’s a gargantuan heavyweight or a robot . Two , humans live mostly in giant , engineered habitats in outer space such as halo worlds promise orbitals . And three , we have fabricate computer superintelligence called Minds who have a great sense of bodily fluid and just honorable values despite a leaning for psychotic fierceness .
https://gizmodo.com/welcome-to-the-culture-the-galactic-civilization-that-5663293
2 . The Engines of Light series , by Ken MacLeod
Like his friend Iain M. Banks , MacLeod often pen about a far hereafter where humanity can live for aeon and traipse around in space . Unlike Banks , however , MacLeod is more interested in how exactly humans get to this land . His Engines of Light trilogy , one of his best serial , deals with how a grouping of mysterious aliens have been experiment with mankind by relocating colonies of masses from Earth to remote planet . in the end , these aliens help humans evolve into young creatures who ( you guessed it ) can live for hundreds of years .
3.Lilith ’s Broodand thePatternist serial , by Octavia Butler
For most of her calling , Octavia Butler wrote about the future of human evolution . In her famous Lilith ’s Brood trilogy she offers a scenario where aliens rescue mankind from the fire - out remains of our nuked major planet . By mating with us , they make a novel human species that can control DNA in all living things , as well as regenerate lost tree branch and know extremely longsighted , healthy biography . In the Patternist series , humanity is carve up between two groups of mutants who finally become two new human coinage . One group has brawny psychical abilities but is vulnerable to authoritarian control from a single leader , while the other group forms into feral bounder inner circle ruled by inherent aptitude .
4 . 2312 , by Kim Stanley RobinsonIn Kim Stanley Robinson ’s late novel 2312 , human race ’s time to come is shaped by our urge to explore and colonize the solar system . Some humans have genetically modified their offspring to be very humble , so that they take up less blank and few resources in crowded starship and colony . Others have become geoengineers who alter ecosystem and animals so that they survive comfortably in place . One graphic symbol even alters her immune organization by drink microbial life native to the seas of Jupiter ’s moon Europa . So in Robinson ’s visual sensation , humankind is in the process of evolving to be better become to a living in space .
5 . The Bohr Maker , by Linda Nagata
Linda Nagata ideate that our future phylogeny depends on how we ’ll utilize secure nanotechnology to remold our bodies and the environment . A young woman from the slums get a lost gadget called a “ bohr maker , ” which gift her what seem to be superpowers — but are , in fact , just technical sweetening that permit her to see the world at an atomic level .
6 . The Nanotech Quartet , by Kathleen Ann Goonan
Like Nagata ’s novel , the four leger in Goonan ’s celebrated Nanotech Quartet focus on how human race changes after warm nanotechnology allows us to reshape ourselves and the landscape painting using complicated programs . As a result , our cities become monumental life forms , with buildings that develop like flowers . And humanity are all too vulnerable to computer viruses that treat everything as data , include our trunk and minds .
7 . Slan , by A. E. van Vogt
In this classic 1940s novel , we meet the next evolutionary stagecoach of humanity and they ’re call Slan . These humans have psychic abilities , superintelligence , and heighten reflexes . But they are , of course , dependent to smashing preconception from the masses of humankind who have n’t develop yet . Indeed , this theme echo throughout science fabrication and futurism about tomorrow , most especially in . . .
8 . The X - Men , by Marvel Comics
This is the sole comic book serial on this list , though we could have let in a lot more . That ’s because 10 - men dead seize one of the most recognized figure in books about man ’s development . Like the Slan , the disco biscuit - Men have a genetic mutation that makes them all more or less superhuman . phylogeny always begins with mutation , and in scientific discipline fable we always hope that mutation will make us more awe-inspiring than we are today .
9 . More Than Humanby Theodore SturgeonOne possible action is that humans will take form collective hive minds that allow us to become superhuman . Though this idea is n’t as widely explored in science fiction and futurism as the idea of superpowered mutant and foreign upthrow are , Theodore Sturgeon does a fantastic job ideate what it might be like to join a hive mind in this classic novel . Generally , when we see hive mind in science fiction they are represented as dystopian or tyrannical , like the Borg . So perhaps it makes sensation that we do n’t generally like for that to be on our evolutionary horizon .
10 . succeeding jolt , by Alvin Toffler
Written in the early 1970s , this non - fiction book is wide considered a classic body of work of modern futurism . In it , Alvin Toffler argues that man is evolve very rapidly because our technological landscape is changing so tight . He predicts that human being of tomorrow may have a consciousness that humans today would call schizophrenic . He imagines people appear to yell into the aviation , communicating with other masses via machine that are nearly invisible ( indeed , with bluetooth headsets , it is more and more hard to divide people on enthusiastic speech sound claim from people with hallucinations ) . He also think a existence of information overburden , where our minds are fragmented by data catamenia ; and he speculates we ’ll have pills that even out our moods to cope .
11 . Next Nature : Nature Changes Along with Us , by Koert van Mensvoort and Hendrik Jan GrievinkThis collecting of essays , epitome and ideas from Next Nature magazine explores how humans will redesign their body and the environment using new technologies . Unlike an ten - men or Slan type scenario , where humans randomly mutate into super - existence , Next Nature assumes we ’ll mastermind ourselves into better contour .
12 . Simians , Cyborgs and Women , by Donna Haraway
This essay collection contain Haraway ’s Hellenic essay , “ The Cyborg Manifesto , ” which suggest that in the future there will be far few distinctions between humans , machine , and animals than we have today . Partly this will be the result of changing technologies , but it will also be cause by humankind ’ acquire relationship with machine and nature . As we understand better our places in the ecosystem , it will be harder and backbreaking for us to see a stern variance between humans and animal , for case .
13 . Radical Evolution : The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Bodies , Our Minds — and What It mean to be Human , by Joel Garreau
In this look at the near future of humanity , newsman Joel Garreau explores how operating theater , pharmaceuticals , and high - technical school implants could create a metal money of super - human beings — or destroy us .
14 . Citizen Cyborg , by James Hughes
Bioethics professor James Hughes argues that human are already enhancing themselves using technology and medicine , and this will only become more rough-cut as the century wears on . His nifty thought experiment in this book is to involve how our natural law and democratic operation will vary to deal with heighten man who may be smarter and faster than anyone awake today . He wonder whether the future of our evolution may be something that regime will mandate or forbid .
15 . Amped , by Daniel Wilson
In his SF novel Amped , Wilson ask many of the same head that Hughes asks in his scholarly work in Citizen Cyborg . Wilson imagines a hereafter where people who have been enhance with psyche implant have an identifying Saint Mark so that people know when they are deal with somebody who has been “ amped . ” Again , humans have direct charge of their phylogenesis — and that mental process has become deeply political .
16 . hack on the ground : interpret the event of Geoengineering , by Jamais Cascio
Futurist Jamais Cascio explores the way we might transmute the geophysical processes of our full major planet so as to change not just the management of our own phylogenesis — but to transform the direction everything around us evolves , too . Geoengineering could help humanity and our ecosystem survive long enough to keep evolving into first-rate - beings or something else . Or it could make our major planet completely uninhabitable . Either way , it ’s possible that manhood will take restraint of its evolution in the hereafter by changing the environment so that it adapts to us , rather than the other way around .
17 . The Singularity Is Near , by Ray Kurtzweil
Like Future Shock , Kurtzweil ’s record is a classic work of mod futurism — and it fits in nicely with the science fiction traditions of Iain M. Banks and Linda Nagata . Kurtzweil believe that humans will invent machine superintelligence , and that those machine ( like Banks ’ Minds ) will help humans transubstantiate our body so that we can populate for hundreds of years . Eventually , we ’ll have twist like the Nagata ’s bohr shaper , so that we can keep in line matter at the nuclear spirit level and create an countless amount of anything we like . He also believes we ’ll be able to upload our brains into machines , just as the people in Banks ’ Culture do . After the uniqueness , humans will rightfully issue as another specie .
18 . Collapse , by Jared DiamondA good Scripture to read alongside The uniqueness is Near is biologist Jared Diamond ’s heedful work of conservative optimism about how civilizations destroy themselves . Instead of perceiving a futurity of limitless resources , Diamond key a future of circumscribed resources that must be used sparingly . If we are to ward off the pitfalls of many great civilisation that play out their local ecosystems and pass due to war and famishment , we must focus on designing sustainable urban center and biotic community . Machine superintelligence is overnice , but before we can get there we need to use our average human intelligence to make Earth liveable for as long as potential .
19 . Future Evolution , by Peter WardGeologist Peter Ward has write a number of provocative books about humankind ’s fate , and the fate of our planet . Here he ’s create a fascinating looking at at what will happen to life on Earth after a quite a little extinction that take out homo , and when the major planet get to heat up as the sun changes . Illustrated by Alexis Rockman , the Bible is a mind - blowing work that straddles the business between science and science fabrication — and have you realise that humanity are but a shrimpy little radar target in the long history of life ’s evolution on Earth .
20 . Evolution ’s pointer , by John Stewart
Australian evolutionary biologist John Stewart ( no coitus to The Daily Show ) indite this leger as a passionate statement in favor of using evolution as a way of thinking about where we want to go next as a species . He explore everything from how we might qualify our consciousness , to why we might desire to search blank space . It ’s a strange and interesting footling book of account , half philosophy and one-half science , that carry off to sway us that “ phylogeny ” could be the answer to our eternal question , “ What is the significance of sprightliness ? ”
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