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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 ]
A major theme of science fiction and of speculative biology is to convey a message of optimism or pessimism according to the author's worldview. [5] [6] Whereas optimistic visions of technological progress are common enough in hard science fiction, pessimistic views of the future of humanity are far more usual in fiction based on biology. [4]
From the early 1960s, molecular biology was increasingly seen as a threat to the traditional core of evolutionary biology. Established evolutionary biologists—particularly Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and George Gaylord Simpson, three of the architects of the modern synthesis—were extremely skeptical of molecular approaches ...
The creation of speculative fiction in its general sense of hypothetical history, explanation, or ahistorical storytelling, has also been attributed to authors in ostensibly non-fiction modes since as early as Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fl. 5th century BCE), for his Histories, [25] [26] [27] and was already both practiced and edited out by ...
In total, over a hundred different invented animal species are featured in the book, described as part of fleshed-out fictional future ecosystems. Reviews for After Man were highly positive and its success spawned two follow-up speculative evolution books which used new fictional settings and creatures to explain other natural processes: The ...
While the authors, who included experts in immunology, plant pathology, ecology, evolutionary biology, biosecurity and planetary sciences, had initially been skeptical that mirror bacteria could ...
Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution.
The authors wrote that the pathogen, which first popped up in North America in 2021, is just a “single mutation” away from being able to infect humans with the same efficacy it can currently ...