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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| After Man | 2/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Man | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:11:16.243451+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Later editions === In March 2018, Breakdown Press published a new edition of the book, updated to reflect modern science relating to evolution. The updated version also features new artwork for some of the animals, created by Dixon himself. The release of the new edition was celebrated with an event hosted at Conway Hall in London on 11 September that same year, which included a joint talk with Dixon and British paleontologist and science writer Darren Naish. The event also included showcases of original sketches and models and a showing of the Japanese stop-motion adaptation of After Man. A 40th Anniversary Edition of After Man was published by Breakdown Press in February 2022, featuring 18 additional pages of production material and previously unpublished sketches as well as a new afterword written by Dixon.
== Reception == The first review of After Man was one made by Professor Barry Cox of King's College London in a science-based radio programme. Cox's review was extremely negative, but subsequent reviews were highly positive. Peter Stoler's review in Time called the animals in the book "variously amusing or appalling" but "perfectly logical". Dan Brothwell, writing for the British Book News stated that the world depicted in After Man is not one "of absurd monsters", since Dixon had carefully derived his animals from "the biological reality of the past and present" and had "taken careful note of the biological factors that account for the evolution of lifeforms". The review by Redmond O'Hanlon in The Times Literary Supplement particularly praised the introductionary essays on natural selection, genetics and various other natural processes. Reviews in New Scientist and BBC Wildlife also praised the book and Dixon went on publicity tours in the United States and the United Kingdom. After Man was at the time of its release portrayed in reviews as a book about the extinction of mankind, though Dixon has stated that mankind's end was simply an excuse to discuss evolution, humanity having very little do with the "plot" of the book. Following its success, the book has been translated into a number of different languages. In 1982, the book was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Related Work.
== Legacy == Following the success of After Man, Dixon realized that there was a market for popular-level books which use fictional examples and settings to explain factual scientific processes. While After Man had explained the process of evolution by creating a complex hypothetical future ecosystem, the "sequel" The New Dinosaurs (1988) was instead aimed at creating a book on zoogeography, a subject the general public was quite unfamiliar with, by using a fictional world in which the non-avian dinosaurs had not gone extinct to explain the process. The New Dinosaurs was followed by another project in 1990, Man After Man, which focused on climate change over the next few million years through the eyes of future human species genetically engineered to adapt to it. Although ideas about future creatures had been explored since H. G. Wells's The Time Machine in 1895, After Man was the first large-scale project that went into detail on several species. The fact that Dixon created an entire fictional world, which was then made easily accessible through a book with color illustrations printed by mainstream publishing companies had a large impact and effectively laid the foundation of speculative evolution, which in recent years has been increasingly popular on the internet through various personal projects. Many of the animals presented in the book remain plausible even in the light of more modern discoveries, with particular examples including the rise of animals that were transported around the world by humans (for instance the rats) to prominent positions within worldwide ecology and that corvids and rodents could evolve into various predatory roles. Other ideas are seen as somewhat less likely, such as the theropod-like gait used by predatory descendants of baboons (though predatory baboons as an idea isn't considered as unlikely) and the evolution of penguins into huge, whale-like filter-feeders. Some of the animals featured in the book, in particular the popular "night stalker" (a giant and flightless predatory descendant of bats), have inspired numerous similar designs through speculative evolution projects since. Future flightless predatory bats are perhaps most famous for their inclusion within the ITV series Primeval (2007–2011) in the form of the "future predators". The Future is Wild, a 2002 miniseries, features future animals evolving over the course of several million years. Early in its development, Dixon was brought in as a consultant. Dixon designed many of the creatures featured in the programme, some of which are similar to creatures in After Man (such as the "gannetwhale", a bird similar to the whale-like penguins of After Man), and co-authored the companion book with the producer of the series, John Adams. The Future is Wild also focused considerably on future environmental changes, something Dixon avoided in After Man so that readers would at the very least recognize the background inhabited by the various future animals.
== Adaptations == Japanese markets were highly interested in After Man, and Japanese adaptations were made of the book, including both a 1990 stop-motion documentary and an animated film. To date, Dixon's 2010 speculative evolution book Greenworld, exploring humanity's impact on an alien ecosystem, has only been published in Japan. The Future is Wild was unable to use Dixon's original creatures as DreamWorks SKG had bought and owned the rights to After Man. DreamWorks eventually abandoned the project, and the rights were then bought by Paramount, though no potential movie adaptation has yet materialized.