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roanoke9 wrote

It is about a catastrophe that leads to only a handful of humans surviving and the present (I think the 1960s) being constantly contrasted with a future 1 million years later. The present events are a critique of the ridiculousness of modern civ as well as just funny circumstances that lead to the catastrophe. The future is humans have evolved from the few survivors to be smaller mammals with smaller brains and flippers instead of hands with thumbs. The quote I remember best is something about overpopulation used to be a problem but we don't worry about that now because now enough people get eaten by sharks to keep us from ever messing up the world again. He goes on about how we used to work horrible jobs and be depressed and hopeless and kill each other. Now we mostly play and fuck and eat fish (they future humans are kind of like seals) and don't use weapons because of our lack of thumbs. It's a vicious/hilarious rebuttal to the idea that evolution is a linear procession towards superiority with humans being some kind of apex. Edit: the seal like humans are presented present tense and the world wrecking humans are presented as the distant past, making it more of an inversion. It was 20 yrs ago I read it.

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