LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2009

 Jackie Baker

Reversal of Evolutionary Cycle from Human to Neanderthal

We tend to think that as humans we will evolve into a perfect and wise creature but what if we evolve in the opposite direction. What if physically we evolve into a more primitive creature and intellectually, we evolve into creatures were reading and speech becomes unnecessary? After being in this course, I realized that no future can be written out of the future equation of our world.

Callenbach’s Chocco shows us our evolution of humanity from Machine people to a more primitive society. This new society has reverted back to the use of hunting for survival and they strive to serve the community and not their individualistic selves.  This new society respects nature; while the machine people, trampled all over it with their big machines and cityscapes. This new society does not see us, the Machine people, as being smart. Rather, they see us as this primitive society who killed themselves off with unwise choices. It is comical because even though we would see this new society as being primitive, since they revert back to low tech use, they see us as being the primitive creatures.

Silverberg’s House of Bones gives us a glimpse of our possible evolution into everything primitive. Similar to Chocco, the characters in the House of Bones revert back to the use hunting and nomadic lifestyles for survival. There is really no technology available; rather, the people use their hands to create tools and weapons. We are introduced to the Scavenger, which could be a visual representation of our future evolution into Neanderthals. This Neanderthal is not searching for advancement in the world; rather he is searching for a place to rest his head. He is described as not being the “brightest color in the box”, and he is given animalistic qualities are he follows the main character back to the village.

 The Time Machine, further reiterates the fact that there could be a possible reversal in evolution from human to primitive in our future. When the Time Traveller traveled back in time, he expected to see a forward evolvement in the human species. Instead, he sees that the human species have evolved into two separate species. One of the species were the Eloi, angel like species with childlike qualities; while   the other species were the Morlocks.  The Morlocks were cannibalistic hairy creatures that live underground. I can just picture the Time Traveller touching his forehead and exclaiming, “What about progress?” As a society we tend to think that the human species will evolve into something magnificently bright but this might not be the case. Who told us that the future can only lead to progress and not regression?

Evolutionary narrative has always interested me. After taking this course, I have realized that our ideas of further evolvement might not occur in our future. Sure, the world evolves through evolutionary cycles but does evolution also lead to progression instead of regression?  We might not become these super humans who will need an entire room to house all of their knowledge. We might just evolve into this dumbed out society, who exists merely because they are breathing. Are you ready for that?