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Speculative evolution

Speculative evolution is a subgenre of science fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology.[1] It is also known as speculative biology[2] and it is referred to as speculative zoology[3] in regards to hypothetical animals.[1] Works incorporating speculative evolution may have entirely conceptual species that evolve on a planet other than Earth, or they may be an alternate history focused on an alternate evolution of terrestrial life. Speculative evolution is often considered hard science fiction because of its strong connection to and basis in science, particularly biology.

Speculative evolution is a long-standing trope within science fiction, often recognized as beginning as such with H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine, which featured several imaginary future creatures. Although small-scale speculative faunas were a hallmark of science fiction throughout the 20th century, ideas were only rarely well-developed, with some exceptions such as Stanley Weinbaum's Planetary series, Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom, a fictional rendition of Mars and its ecosystem published through novels from 1912 to 1941, and Gerolf Steiner's Rhinogradentia, a fictional order of mammals created in 1957.


The modern speculative evolution movement is generally agreed to have begun with the publication of Dougal Dixon's 1981 book After Man, which explored a fully realized future Earth with a complete ecosystem of over a hundred hypothetical animals. The success of After Man spawned several "sequels" by Dixon, focusing on different alternate and future scenarios. Dixon's work, like most similar works that came after them, were created with real biological principles in mind and were aimed at exploring real life processes, such as evolution and climate change, through the use of fictional examples.


Speculative evolution's possible use as an educational and scientific tool has been noted and discussed through the decades following the publication of After Man. Speculative evolution can be useful in exploring and showcasing patterns present in the present and in the past. By extrapolating past trends into the future, scientists can research and predict the most likely scenarios of how certain organisms and lineages could respond to ecological changes. In some cases, attributes and creatures first imagined within speculative evolution have since been discovered. A filter feeder anomalocarid was illustrated by artist John Meszaros in the 2013 book All Yesterdays by John Conway, C. M. Kosemen and Darren Naish. In the year following publication, a taxonomic study proved the existence of the filter feeding anomalocarid Tamisiocaris.

– the interdisciplinary study of the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.

Astrobiology

– popular in the Middle Ages, bestiaries combined descriptions of real animals with descriptions of fantastical ones, sometimes likened to speculative biology.

Bestiary

– the scientific study of evolutionary outcomes differing due to differences in history.

Contingency (evolutionary biology)

– imagined future historical events and predictions.

Future history

and Human extinction – often tends to precede works featuring hypothetical animals that could one day inhabit Earth in the distant future.

Global catastrophic risk

– hypothesized life based on molecules other than carbon.

Hypothetical types of biochemistry

– artwork reconstructing prehistoric animals, often seen as closely related to speculative biology given the inherent speculation required to reconstruct long-dead organisms.

Paleoart

– a hypothetical scientific field that would study alien life, discussed mostly in science fiction.

Xenology

. A speculative evolution project by Finnish artist Ken Ferjik exploring the lifeforms of several fictional planets.

Encyclopedia Galactica

. A speculative evolution project by Dutch artist Gert van Dijk exploring the fictional planet Furaha and its lifeforms.

Furaha: Natural History of the planet v Phoenicis IV

. A speculative evolution project by Turkish artist C. M. Kosemen exploring the fictional planet of Snaiad and its lifeforms.

Life on Snaiad

. A speculative evolution project envisioning an alien planet in which all animals have descended from mundane and commonly-kept species, in particular the Common Canary.

Serina: A Natural History of the World of Birds

, the sequel to All Yesterdays and a free downloadable book featuring speculative renditions of extinct animals.

All Your Yesterdays

. A collaborative speculative evolution project exploring Earth's life as imagined 25 million years in the future.

The Neocene project

Archived site of . A speculative evolution project by Evan Black exploring the fictional planet Nereus and its lifeforms.

Project Nereus

Archived site of . A collaborative speculative evolution project exploring Earth as imagined if the K-T extinction event had not occurred. Also Russian translation of this project and saved English version are available.

The Speculative Dinosaur Project

. A collaborative speculative evolution project founded in 2006, in which a community of volunteers have worked together to develop thousands of species which all originated from a single cell.

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