An entertaining review by Darren Naish of a strange French book in the "speculative zoology" genre: "Demain, les Animaux du Futur". I haven´t seen the work, but it seems the future is *really* wild in this scenario.
10 million years into the future, all mammals except bats have disappeared. Together with birds, they have taken over land and air. Mega-bats gliding around in the upper atmosphere, enormous geese with four legs, and parrots looking like theropods are some of the evolutionary monstrosities "described" in the book. The front cover shows a flightless terror bird descended from the Lammergeier! The oceans are dominated by 40 meters long tadpoles, squids in various sizes, and whale-like penguins (here we go again).
"Demain" pays tribute to other works of Spec Zoo, including Dougal Dixon´s classic "After Man: A Zoology of the Future". Apparently, speculative zoology is big in Japan, so a Japanese version of "Demain" actually exist, but no English translation. At one point, Naish (clearly a big fan of this genre) quips: "I, for one, welcome our new gargantuan marine tadpole monster overlords." Dude!
Not sure if this is of any interest except to a certain kind of super-nerds, but...there you go.
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