Customer Reviews

The Wild World of the Future

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

 

 

I bought this book after reading The Future is Wild.
This book is much the same, but adapted to younger tastes. It also expains that although they may look "silly" as the reviewer below remarked, but are proven body designs that would supposably accually work, or somethin or another. Please do not listen to the adjacent and dissilusioned reviewer. Althogh, you would probably appreciate the book better if you read the other first.

6 and 8 year olds love it. Adults too. We have the DVD so this is a nice companion book. Naturally, there are a lot of absolutely wild and impossible ideas in this book. But hey it is definitely thought provoking, and promotes out of the box thinking. Very entertaining and highly recommended for kids who love science and dinosaur.

Readers that disapprove of this book may be missing the point of their own biological present. How could agile gibbons and even homo sapiens have evolved from rodent-like mammalian ancestors? How could manatees have evolved from elephants? Birds from reptiles? Our biological present is just as wild as this book!

This is the book my eldest son, now 7, has enjoyed the most. It is not only imaginative but also true to the evolutionary trends observed in our fossil history. This book is thought-provoking and therein readers may find its value. The mostly computer-based illustrations are detailed and realistic, which adds to the reading experience.

There is also a DVD series, btw!

I bought this for my 5 year old after he saw The Future is Wild series (one time, he borrowed it from a friend).

From his love of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, he already had a good understanding of evolution and of change on this scale. The idea of taking it into the future is a fantastic one. He understands that these are just ideas, that these are not animals certain to live.

He absolutely loves it. He is always creating the creatures with his legos or making them from all sorts of odds and ends around the house. He also creates other creatures and discusses what their adaptations are and why and how they work. It is great for his imagination as well as his understanding of some scientific principles. We've read the book many times and he really wants a copy of the DVD series.

Many of the drawings of the creatures look like something out of H.P. Lovecraft. Speculation on what life on this planet will look like in the far future is kind of interesting, but many of the drawings looked silly to me...and the names -- "sharkopath?" ... "squibbon?"

Also what do Dougal Dixon and John Adams have to do with this book? I could not find them credited anywhere in the text or the verso page?

Still, this book is a great summary of the ideas that TFIW's scientists came up with, and provides tidbits of interesting info on animals of today that correspond with those guessed at for the far future. A glossary nicely rounds out this highly worthwhile, fascinating book. Give it a read.

I bought this book when I was 11 years old, and have owned it for three months. It already seems ridiculous. However, to give it some credit, I suppose that it does educate toung readers in evolution and other thing that are viewed as blasphemous or unholy by many people.
The author, Claire Pye, starts out with an introduction to plate tectonics, evolution, and the major habitats of today's world. This, unfortunately, is probably the only feasible part of the book.
The second section explores how the world might look in 5 million years. They imagine that the Polar Ice will advance again to cover about the same area that it did during the last Ice Age. This, of course, is unlikely to happen in a span of 5 million years, as it took about 40 million years for the last Ice age to reach that point. The Mediterranean Sea has turned into a vast salt flat, the middle of North America has become a desert, and the Amazon Rainforest has become hot, dry grassland.
The Fauna that they exhibit for this time period is not quite as unlikely as the rest of the book, but I have to take issue with one species: The 'Gannetwhale'.
Gannetwhales are large birds that have evolved to suit the place of the seals and sea lions. however, this is one of the many examples of creatures evolving too quickly.
If as their name suggests, they evolved from gannets, I doubt that the change from small, flying seabird to huge, ungainly gannetwhale could not happen in less than 10 million years.
The other creatures are mostly about as unlikely as the Gannetwhale. 100 million years from now, Mammals are almost completely extinct, and the major predators are wasps the size of seagulls which would obviously implode in our gravity.
200 million years in the future is, in my opinion the worst. All advanced species of vertebrate have died out. The major herbivores here are giant terrestrial Squid and hopping snails the size of rabbits, and the Birds have been replaced by 'Flish'.
A word about Flish. According to Claire Pye, Fish have somehow managed to come out of the water (without reevolving legs), have evolved nostrils, and have been able to fly using overgrown fins, all in about 50 million years.
One species, the Ocean Flish, has a pair of jaws that shoot out of its "beak".
Needless to say, this book is only plausible to the young reader or the person with no understanding of evolution, natural selection, and survival of the fittest.
However, for what it's worth, the pictures are interesting.