How will our species fare over coming ages? Will the human lineage survive, reasonably happily, into the far distant future? Indeed, will we survive another millennium in reasonably good shape? Will the next thousand years be just ordinarily difficult or, if the next ice age arrives suddenly, particularly difficult? Supposing we survive the next thousand years, will we eventually go extinct as most species do or will we evolve into a new species with which one might empathise? Or into a whole lineage of species as in Olaf Stapledon's great sci-fi novel, Last Men, First Men? And, supposing we continue to evolve, will that new species or its descendants survive the death of the sun as an energy and light source in five billion or so years? Not to mention a clutch of other cosmic challenges, from asteroids to 55 hour days. Beyond that, there is the ultimate question as to if, when and how the universe will end and whether, in some sense, life might best that challenge.
展开▼
