Currently reading Evolution by Stephen Baxter which basically is an anthology series about humans/humanity in different stages of our evolution as well as some speculation about how we might change in the future.
One of the stories near the end is about a couple of soldiers who were cryogenically frozen and wake up at some unknown point of time in the future. It turns out that they have been asleep for over a thousand years. Humanity has been pretty much extinct for a long time and everything they've build is crumbling. The world has been taken over by nature and the soldiers have to come to terms with the fact that they are basically the last of their kind and have to revert back to the lifestyle of early humans (foraging/hunting/stone tools etc) if they want to survive.
This story gripped me immediately and it was way too short and has left me wanting more.
So yeah, I would really appreciate suggestions about what other books on the subject matter I could read. Could be a whole book or a short story or a sci-fic anthology series – I am open for all!
Thanks!
by Meck123
3 Comments
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time” explores the evolution of a species, and has space travellers who travel in stasus. It sounds like you’re after something more “Planet of the Apes” (realising an alien world is a future version of your own), but I still recommend giving it a go.
*Children of Time follows the remnants of the human race who have left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age – a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare. Now two civilisations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive.*
*Dr. Futurity* by Philip K. Dick.
The basic premise is a doctor is transported from 2012 (although the book was published in 1960) to 2405, where medicine and saving a life are considered crimes since the population is tightly controlled and people are genetically engineered. But it gets a lot more complicated from there.
The Devine Farce by Michael Graziano sorta hits this vibe. Short book but hits really hard. Three people wake up in a tube shaped cell. Slowly they break out and discover they’re in a much larger labyrinth of filth and pestilence. The MC goes on and tries to escape. Is it heaven or is it hell??