For September’s theme we’ve gone with EVOLUTION – or at least, the sci-fi take on it. So books dealing with alterative evolutionary paths, mutant offshoots, fantastical ecosystems.
Sci-fi oftens focuses on speculative evolution, with hypothetic biological futures for humans or other animals - so stories about humans evolving webbed-feet to survive a water-world etc, or another species founding civilisation in a post-human earth.
Both sci-fi and fantasy can also feature fantastical alien environments where the world-building gives some serious thought to how the geography has impacted the animals. Horror can also come into play here eg ecosystems full of monstrous evolutionary offshoots.
Uplifting is also a common sci-fi trope by which humans or aliens artificially “evolve” non-sentient species to our level of intelligence. This also overlaps with fantasy where gods or magicians turn animals into intelligent beings.
There’s also transhumanism, by which individuals or a population “evolve” superhuman abilities via technology, superhuman serum, fiction super-power giving genes, bitten by radioactive animals etc.
And of course, there’s the completely fictional concept of de-evolution, whereby people can revert back to an earlier ape-man stage in the evolutionary tree (Star Trek loves this one).
So I think the evolution theme should off a lot of choice. As always you are free to read whatever you like as strictly or loosely it adheres to the theme, and turn up on the day and tell us what you think or it and whether you’d recommend. However, below some examples to set the scene.
Examples
- The Time Machine (1985), by H.G.Wells – far future depicts one way humans could evolve.
- The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), by H.G Wells – Mad scientist uplifting animals.
- Planet of the Apes (1963), by Pierre Boulle – Astronauts from earth visit a planet where the other great apes living in cities and humans are the ones grunting in the forests
- The Descent (1999) by Jeff Long – horror, mutant offshoots living underground
- Hominids (Neanderthal Parallax book 1) (2002), by Robert J. Sawyer – a parallel world where Neanderthals survived instead of us
- Leviathan Wakes (Expanse books 1)(2012), by James S.A. Corey – without trying to go into spoilers, mutation plays a part. Additionally, the humans on Mars and The Belt have genetic differences from Earth Humans due to gravity.
- A Natural History of Dragons (2013), by Marie Brennan – yes I recommended this for last month under Dragons theme, but it does feature a natural historian travelling the world studying dragons and their evolution and getting into adventures as she does so. And I still need to reread books 3-5 of the series :p
- Annihilation (2014), by Jeff Vandermeer – group of female scientists explore a part of Florida where an alien force is mutating animal and plant life
- Children of Time (2015), by Adrian Tchaikovsky – humans mess around with accelerating evolution on animals, particularly spiders
