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All Tomorrows
Part of a series on Speculative Evolution. [View Related Entries]
About
All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man is a 2006 speculative evolution and science-fiction book written and illustrated by the Turkish artist C. M. Kosemen under the pen name Nemo Ramjet. All Tomorrows explores a hypothetical future path of human evolution set from the near future up to a billion years from the present, with several future human species evolving separately through natural means and through genetic engineering.
History
In October 2006, Turkish writer and artist C. M. Kosemen, using the pen name Nemo Ramjet, published All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man, a work of speculative evolution in science-fiction format.[1] The book, written from a point of an alien being cataloging the billion-year history of human evolution, details the story of several human species evolving separately both through natural means and genetic engineering, conducted by humans themselves and by a hostile alien species called the Qu (artworks from the book shown below).
The book has not been physically published and was spread online for free in the form of a PDF.[2]
Bone Crusher
…One lineage led to a profusion of human herbivores. These were preyed upon by a variety of enamel-beaked raptors, each evolved to deal with a specific prey. Among these generalized niches were entire assemblages of specialized animals, resembling anything from ibis-billed swamp sifters to splendorous forms with bizarre crests that flared out of their toothy beaks.
There were even secondarily sentient forms, in the shape of the ogre-like bone
crushers. To an observer of today they would indeed be the stuff of nightmares; three
meters tall and hairy, sporting vicious thumb claws and enormous beaks that suited their
scavenging diet…
Colonials
Their world had given the toughest resistance against the Qu onslaught. So tough,
in fact, that they had turned back two successive waves of the invaders, only to succumb
to the third.
The Qu, with their twisted sense of justice, wanted to make them pay. Even
extinction would be too light a punishment for resisting the star gods. The humans of the
rogue world needed a sentence that would remind them of their humiliation for
generations to come.
So they were made into disembodied cultures of skin and muscle, connected by a
skimpy network of the most basic nerves. They were employed as living filtering devices,
subsisting on the waste products of Qu civilization like mats of cancer cells. And just to
witness and suffer their wretched fate, their eyes, together with their consciousness,
were retained…
Gravital (Descendants of the Ruin Haunters)
…The origin of this modification lay in an earlier catastrophe. The Ruin Haunters’
sun was undergoing a rapid phase of expansion, and the species, advanced as it was,
could do nothing to stop the process. So the Haunters did the next best thing, and
changed their bodies.
The infernal conditions of the solar expansion meant that a biological
reconstruction was totally out of the question. Thus, the Haunters replaced their bodies
with machines; floating spheres of metal that moved and molded their environment
through subtle manipulations of gravity fields. In earlier versions the spheres still cradled
the organic brains of the last Haunters. But in successive generations, ways of containing
the mind within quantum computers were devised, and the transformation became
absolute. The Ruin Haunters were replaced by the completely mechanical Gravital.
…
Reception
Prior to June 2021, the book saw a minor presence in memes online. On October 11th, 2017, Tumblr[3] user drrockso20 posted one of the earliest memes referencing the book, illustrating all human species described with images from SpongeBob SquarePants. The post received 48 likes and reblogs. On September 15th, 2019, DeviantArt[4] user Vanga-Vanrog posted an It's Goofy Time! meme that received 289 favorites and over 11,000 views in two years (shown below, right).
The book saw a massive surge in popularity in June 2021 after on June 10th, the YouTube channel Alt Shift X posted a 40-minute abridged retelling of the work. The video, recommended to viewers by the YouTube recommendation algorithm, accumulated over 3.8 million views in one month (shown below).
Starting approximately on June 21st, 2021, the newfound internet popularity of All Tomorrows found reflection through memes. For example, on that day, YouTuber[5] Dat dumb guy posted a video in which they recreated several species described in the book in the video game Spore, with the video gaining over 58,000 views in one month (shown below, left). On the same day, YouTuber[6] NicD4vis posted a meme that gained over 18,000 views in the same period (shown below, right).
In the following weeks, memes referencing the book achieved notable popularity online, primarily on YouTube and Twitter. For example, on June 30th, YouTuber[7] arkhamcycle posted a video in which he ranked all 42 species listed in the book by their sex appeal.
On July 14th, Lessons in Meme Culture posted a video about the viral popularity of All Tomorrows memes (shown below).
Various Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1] Wikipedia – All Tomorrows
[2] Speedrun Wiki – All Tomorrows
[3] Tumblr – drrockso20
[4] DeviantArt – It's OUR turn!
[5] YouTube – Trying to Recreate the Future Humans from All Tomorrows, in Spore
[6] YouTube – All Tomorrows Meme
[7] YouTube – ranking all tomorrows species by sex appeal
[8] YouTube – Why The Weird World Of All Tomorrows Evolved Into A Meme
Top Comments
Cheeky Mountain Parrot
Jul 16, 2021 at 08:40AM EDT
hexcaster
Jul 16, 2021 at 09:43PM EDT