History Literature / ManAfterManAnAnthropologyOfTheFuture

* FormerlySapientSpecies: The Hitek create new species of animal from the only remaining genetic stock -- i.e. humanity -- in order to fill the numerous niches left empty by the anthropogenic extinctions. This results in four species of nonsapient humans being created -- large, hairy tundra-dwellers to take over the role of musk oxen and mammoths, ''Australopithecus''-like forest-dwellers meant to fill in the niches once occupied by deer and bears, digitigrade plains-dwellers to act as herding grazers, and apelike arboreal jungle-dwellers. Some of these species re-evolve sapience, but others remain animals. Notable are the tundra-dwellers, who evolve into numerous megafaunal herbivores; numerous predatory and even parasitic forms descended from the forest-dwellers; and the jungle-dwellers, who secluded in unchanging canopies filled with food and without dangers never had reason to develop into anything other than placid, mindless beasts.

** Later on the Memory People refuse to use ''any'' kind of technology, thanks to their GeneticMemory reminding them of the consequences of the waste and destruction that ancient humanity perpetuated.

* SpeculativeBiology: One of the most [[BodyHorror disturbing]] examples.

* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: The Aquatics can be best described as UncannyValley manatee-people with hands and gills.

* UncannyValley: ''Definitely''. Between the hideously deformed yet still recognizable human form being twisted and reshaped into mindless animals or bizarre aberrations and the anguished expressions in some of these posthumans, those with a particular aversion to this trope will surely have a hard time reading this book.

** Due to all sections of ''Man After Man'' focusing on either humans, their ancestors, or their descendants, the story has several narrative arcs, while its predeccesors lacked even on.

* LuddWasRight: Various groups of normal, non-genetically modified humans are noted to have reverted to a pastoral lifestyle of hunting, farming and fishing, with various "civilized" enclaves of original humans, known as "Andlas," coexisting with the Hitek and the Tics. However, despite their embrace of this simple lifestyle, they're just as hard-hit by the reversal of the poles and go extinct at the same time as the Tics.

** This also includes the Vacuumorphs, exoskeletal humans that are used as [[OrganicTechnology living space scouting probes]] that have all of their vulnerable parts sealed up so they can survive the natural elements of outer space without the need of a ship. [[OffscreenInertia And since it's never mentioned]] no one from Earth retrieves them. In other words Vacuumorphs are [[BlessedWithSuck cursed]] with staying in space without any way of directly seeing or communicating with the outside universe (except through their surgically attached planetary surveying equipment) and are ([[FridgeHorror presumably]]) forced to consume nothing but their own recycled natural waste until finally accidentally falling towards and burning up in a random planet's atmosphere. They cannot even travel through space -- it's stated that they are high-orbit spaceship engineers only. Their bodies cannot operate or even survive in gravity at all -- and that includes the artificial gravity of an accelerating space ship. They're stuck in near-Earth space.

* HumansArePsychicInTheFuture: Well, technically they're not humans anymore, but the "water sense" and race-memories of some post-human species arguably made this one a JumpTheShark for Dixon.

* TokenAquaticRace: The Aquamorphs are humans modified with gills and look vaguely froglike, but are unable to reproduce, and go extinct after they have served their purpose. Genetic engineers later create the Aquatics, which are able to reproduce, and evolve on their own after the collapse of civilization. The oceans overall get much less focus than the land in this book. [[Spoiler: However, a descendant of the Aquatics is ultimately the last human species left on Earth]].

* TokenAquaticRace: The Aquamorphs are humans modified with gills and look vaguely froglike, but are unable to reproduce, and go extinct after they have served their purpose. Genetic engineers later create the Aquatics, which are able to reproduce, and evolve on their own after the collapse of civilization. The oceans overall get much less focus than the land in this book.

** This also includes the Vacuumorphs, exoskeletal Humans that are used as [[OrganicTechnology living space scouting probes]] that have all of their vulnerable parts sealed up so they can survive the natural elements of outer space without the need of a ship. [[OffscreenInertia And since it's never mentioned]] no one from Earth retrieves them. In other words Vacuumorphs are [[BlessedWithSuck cursed]] with staying in space without any way of directly seeing or communicating with the outside universe (except through their surgically attached planetary surveying equipment) and are ([[FridgeHorror presumably]]) forced to consume nothing but their own recycled natural waste until finally accidentally falling towards and burning up in a random planet's atmosphere. They cannot even travel through space -- it's stated that they are high-orbit spaceship engineers only. Their bodies cannot operate or even survive in gravity at all -- and that includes the artificial gravity of an accelerating space ship. They're stuck in near-Earth space.

* BigfootSasquatchAndYeti: The tundra-dwellers are essentially genetically-engineered yetis

* GenreShift: After civilized humanity and its offshoots go extinct, the book's tone shifts into that of a nature documentary. Justified in part due to many of the hominids barely having any substantial resemblance to Original Human. [[spoiler:And then it shifts ''again'' following the return of mankind's spacefaring descendants...]]

* HorseOfADifferentColour: The Symbionts, and their descendants, the Hunters ride around on larger tundra-dwellers.

** This also includes the Vacuumorphs, exoskeletal Humans that are used as [[OrganicTechnology living space scouting probes]] that have all of their vulnerable parts sealed up so they can survive the natural elements of outer space without the need of a ship. [[OffscreenInertia And since it's never mentioned]] no one from Earth retrieves them. In other words Vacuumorphs are [[BlessedWithSuck cursed]] with staying in space without any way of directly seeing or communicating with the outside universe (except through their surgically attached planetary surveying equipment) and are ([[FridgeHorror presumably]]) forced to consume nothing but their own recycled natural waste until finally accidentally falling towards and burning up in a random planet's atmosphere. They cannot even travel through space -- it's stated that are high-orbit spaceship engineers only. Their bodies cannot operate or even survive in gravity at all -- and that includes the artificial gravity of an accelerating space ship. They're stuck in near-Earth space.

** [[spoiler: Piscanthropus profundis.]] About one sentence is given to a population of aquatics [[spoiler:that colonizes the deep ocean]] and are never heard from again. 5 million years later, we learn that [[spoiler:their descendants have still survived and [[AWorldHalfFull may one day re-colonize the surface of the ravaged Earth]]]].

* DisabilitySuperpower: The water-finding telepaths blind and completely helpless without their symbiotes.

-->'''Speculative Fiction Wiki:''' Only the presence of a few identifiable organs (shriveled pulsing limbs and blind, gaping faces) show that these food-generators have been transformed from something that was once more noble. Eventually, centuries later, they die out.

* AndIMustScream: Mainly the Food Creature (see Let's Meet the Meat, below), a grotesque mountain of flesh and fat with distorted, but still human-like features, and many of the book's altered humans that have become worker drones, maintenance units or transportation. While some do indeed have actual faces and eyes, they don't appear to be able to react to the general external world in any way.

* HordeOfAlienLocusts: [[spoiler:The descendants of Mankind (more specifically that of Jimez Smoot) are this, as they strip the Earth of it's resources in a matter of a few centuries.]]
* HorseOfADifferentColour: The Symbionts, and their descendants, the Hunters ride around on larger tundra-dwellers.

* AWorldHalfFull: See ChekhovsGunman below.

* BladeBelowTheShoulder: The plains-adapted hominid has a horn-like blade on the side of its hand for cutting grass, and this evolves into a weapon as its species becomes communal and caste-based.

* [[ChekhovsGunman Chekov's Species:]] [[spoiler: Piscanthropus profundis.]] About one sentence is given to a population of aquatics [[spoiler:that colonizes the deep ocean]] and are never heard from again. [[spoiler: 5 million years later, we learn that their descendents have still survived and [[AWorldHalfFull may one day re-colonise the surface of the ravaged Earth.]]]]
** Jimez Smoot also qualifies. Early on in the book, he is one of the humans to [[spoiler: leave Earth to find another planet suitable for containing life. 5 million years later, his descendants return to Earth and kill all life anywhere except in volcanic vents deep within the ocean.]]

* DisabilitySuperpower:The water finding telepaths are not only blind but completely helpless without their symbiotes.
* EyelessFace: The water-sensing species carried and cared for by desert Hivers.
* FromBadToWorse: By or near the book's end, the remains of Humans left on Earth bear either little to no resemblance to what they were or even what their evolutionary ancestors were. Aliens have taken over the planet and enslaved every living thing on it. Original Humans -- if there even are any left at all -- are now doomed to nearly eternally roam the universe [[Franchise/BattlestarGalactica in search of a new home]]. And the Hitek probably acted more machine than man. It doesn't help matters that those aliens also happen to be [[spoiler:descendants of those Original Humans to fled to space]].
** [[spoiler:Additionally, while the Hitek and the Tic were reclusive and more than a bit racist towards normal humans, what we get from the book tells us that their civilization was sustainable (more so than than that of normal humans centuries ago) and if it weren't for the polar shift, who knows what could have come out of it. Now, mankind's extraterrestrial descendants however, after 5 MILLION years of development, are actually worse in those terms than either the Hitek/Tic or regular humans, stripping the planet bare in just a century and then moving on like lowly parasites.]]