Dougal Dixon: Man After Man

[Sliver Slave]

The last book I read, even though it was a re-read was Man after Man by Dougal Dixon.

Synopsis: This book takes place on a scale of 200 years to 5 million years into the future. In 200 years, the environment is getting worse, and genetically engineered humans are being used to build giant space ships to launch people into space to colonize other planets. Advances in medicine cause humans to get weaker, needing machines to keep them alive. The machine people take genes from the last healthy people to engineer new organisms. Conventional humans die out, and the genetically engineered start evolving. After 5 million years, something very unexpected happens.

A very pessimistic book, it doesn't have the nicest world view, saying humans are transient and not forever. I have heard something about plagiarism of another author, but I don't have any solid references. I would reccomend it to sci-fi fans only.

 

[Algr]

I really hated this book; I'm sure it must have been written by a creationist.

The science in it makes absolutely no sense, and the creatures seem to exist just to be disgusting, and disgusted with themselves.

The book has natural evolution happening in 100 years, and has massive and blatantly maladaptive changes happening for absurdly trivial reasons. Take the cover for example. A human has been genetically twisted up to function as a horse. If you wanted to create a horse, wouldn't it be easier to start with, say, a HORSE?! And if you can do genetic engineering, why can't you build a car? (And don't blame environmentalists - even gas powered cars are more benign then widespread use of horses.)

Real evolution causes selects life forms that are well suited to their environment. But the human environment is created to suit humans as they are now. So while improvements to intelligence, sociability, and health are possible, dramatic physical changes would reproduce far less often, and so could not alter humanity as a whole.