Customer Reviews

Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I must admit that I'm somehwat surprised by the controversy surrounding this book. It certainly isn't as good as his other works (the New Dinosaurs, After Man and the Future is Wild) but it certainly isn't a terrible book either. It seems that most people dislike it either because it leans so heavily towards sci-fi/paranormal (mainly via psychic powers and genetic engineering) or because it degrades humankind. Honestly, if you have no problem with sci-fi influences or with a pessimistic attitude towards human nature then you probably won't be too offended by this book.

Like all of Dougal Dixon's books, it starts out with a brief history of homo sapiens and our ancestors. The short accounts of us are given in a first person fashion, departing from his other works but I didn't find them to be hard to follow. He then gives an evolutionary chart for the various species in his book. The book then starts two hundred years in the future, as a rift develops between the upper and lower class humans, and the genetically modified servants. Another century later, their descendants are examined. Then it jumps ahead to 500 years from present, when genetically modified humans are created to repopulate the earth (from which most large animals have been exterminated) and upper class humans are kept alive through machines, while lower class humans resort to communal agriculturalism. Another five hundred years and we come upon an earth on the brink of disaster, as both the high-tech mechanical societies and agricultural communities fail while the genetically modified humans in the wilderness survive.

The book keeps going showing the various twists and turns taken by the genetically modified humans, as they evolve into strange new organisms. Psychic powers, symbiosis, parasitism, aquatic lifestyles and social colonies all evolve, and vaguely humanoid creatures colonize tundras, plains, jungles and other environments. Ultimately 3 million years into the future these creatures come closer to animals like mammoths, slothes, jerboas and sabretooth tigers than humans. The book closes out at 5 million years, when the descendants of upper class humans sent to space colonies return to earth, genetically modifying and exploiting their "cousins", and ultimately laying waste to the earth. But there is still survival, and life goes on in strange new forms.

Ultimately I found this book to be an interesting concept, though not on par with his other works. Still it was a nice experiment in sci-fi for Dixon, and if you're a fan of the genere then you will probably appreciate this book. If reading this review you decide that you wouldn't like it or would find it offensive, then don't bother tracking it down. Trust me, its out of print and usually expensive to buy. Thats about the best I can say for this book. I appreciated it, but others out there might not feel the same way, so just read my review and consider whether or not it sounds like you would like it.

The other reviews on this book are a mixed bunch. While most of Dixon's readers loved his other books - After man and the New Dinosaurs, most agreed that this book was a dissapointment in comparison to the other two. But a few reviewers loved it. I bought it anyway. When I first saw the cover, I didn't know what to expect. The book's start is a sort of review of all of man's ancestors, the same type of introduction in all of Dixon's two other books. Then it breaks into bizzare and implausible entries and drawings of genetically modified monsters that were disigned to repopulate the ravaged earth. The illustrations are often dismissed as "bad". And some are. I could have drawn them, if I wasn't too worried someone else would see them and wonder what twisted thoughts passed unseen through my mind. But many weren't so bad, it was just the content and design. Most were completely ridiculous. And the entries on each species. I don't even want to talk about them, but I have to, since I am writing this review. The entries make no sense. While reading the other reviews, I thought, "Poorly written? Dixon isn't capable of that". But he is. The entries start out at a completely random point. About nothing at all can be discerned about each species. If the author had just written straightfoward entries about each species, instead of random events in each creatures life. "Coffee table book"? Ha! I wouldn't leave this one on a coffee table if my life depended on it.

This book is a perfect marriage of art and science. It isn't like a typical 'textbook' science book at all. It's about how Man, using accelerated genetical engineering, could evolve in the future. We follow such specimens as 'The Hitek' who live in mechanical cradles because their bodies cannot withstand the elements of future Earth, to the Plain Dwellers, Aquamorphs, Vacumorphs etc. We follow our trails from genetically altered humans 50 years into the future all the way to the resulting generations as far as 50 million years ahead. An incredibly visually stimulating book, {the illustrations are wonderful} it also makes you wonder seriously what could lie in the future of 'Man' as a humanoid species, long after we, ourselves are gone. It took me forever to find this book because it's now out of print. If you're interested in the idea of future rather than traditional anthropolgy and you do happen to come across this book, Buy it!

Being a lover of history, Man After Man, really is something I enjoyed. It is about the changing face of mankind and future history, something I enjoy very much. Many people complain that timeline and stories seemed confusing and that the artwork is not that great. First off, I didn't find them at all confusing and the artwork was there to help the reader picture the beings that mankind have become NOT to win any awards or prizes. Don't compare the book to others, just enjoy it. It is NOT a serious piece of work.
I do wish it had been longer and had touched a little more on the changes to the other animals and the plantlife. It would of padded out the book more. I wanted more details!

This is definitely NOT Dixon's shining work...unlike After Man and The New Dinosaurs, the artwork AND story are seriously lacking here. Many of the drawings look just plain stupid, especially the mutated and engineered post-human species. Its as if Dixon took about 1/4 of the time he spent with the other books to crank out the illustrations for this one. The text that accompanies the illustrations is disjointed and doesnt make sense on the first read through. Each of the text sections is written from the point of view of one of the post-human individuals. Unfortunately, most of them sound like they were written by a 4th grader and do little to explain this fascinating new world. Dixon would have been wiser to stick to the field guide style for this outing as well. After i read this one a couple of times I began to see what he was getting at, but I still wasnt won over.

I love the concept behind this book and have loved Dixons other alternate future books, but overall the poor quality of most of the illustrations and the hokey text make this one a non-recommendation.

First of all, Dixon created his book by using Wayne Barlowes idea for a similar book. Read The Alien Life of Wayne Barlowe and you will know what I mean. Dixon managed to include imaginative text, but lacked interesting looking post-humans, some looking embarassingly stupid. To say it nicely, Philip Hood was not the right illustrator for this book. It's the only field guide type book I have found on the future of mankind, so if you wanted a book of this subject you might find it entertaining, but if you want great artwork look elsewere. If it helps, the book is not centered on very futuristic post-humans, but ones engineered to repopulate the earth in an animalistic style. There are a few technologically advanced humans at the beginning and end, but are far outnumbered by the "natural" ones. As a final note, I think the book would have been far superior to what it is now if it had been left in Barlowes hands.

In Dougal Dixon's latest "what if" book of hypothetical evolution, he explores the future of humanity when our current species is extinct and new, genetically engineered forms flurish and evolve. Although it isn't by any means a novel, this book is different from his others in the fact that Dixon tells us short annecdotes from the future through the eyes of characters. The illustrations are execellent, outlandish, and on exactly the right note. The entire premise of the book manages to be eerie as well as captivating. It is a vision, not of what our future might be, but what it is becomming.

This has been my favorite book since I was 14 years old. I have read it countless times, and still continue to this day. I have never read another science-fantasy book that has captured my interest as this book. It is very hard to find since it is out of print, but searching for it is well worth it.

While an interesting read, this book reflects badly both on Dixon and Philip Hood (the artist). The book shows Hood's lack of skill with drawing creatures at angles or in motion: The subjects are stiff and drawn with their faces either strait on or at an angle, animals are either stationary or in the mid stride of a leisurely pace rather than being animated, and the subjects feel flat rather than really three dimensional. The writing in mediocre and uses fanciful elements such as retrocognition without providing the reader with any suitable explanation. Worst of all, however, is the heavy implications that many of the creatures and ideas portrayed in this book were plagiarized from another writer and artist, Wayne Douglas Barlowe. This is particularly tragic because, from an artistic standpoint, Wayne Barlowe, who has been involved in numerous movie productions as a conceptual artist and is the author of such books as "Expedition" and "Barlowe's Inferno", would have made this book far more visually realistic than Philip Hood did. While a few of the ideas portrayed within this publication are entertaining on some intellectual level, the few interesting ideas cannot make up for everything else that is wrong with this book.

I really enjoyed this book and the illustrations were beyond what I'd expect!! It was like something coming from a dream of the future of humans! I recommend this book to futurist alike.