Speculative biology resource list
Works marked with ֎ are especially recommended. Works marked with † do not appear to be available online (outside of sites such as Library Genesis).
There are far too many excellent amateur projects to share here in full. I try here to focus on the ones that are formally published or that have had an exceptional influence on later works. See the sections 6 and 7 to find everything else.
What is speculative biology?
0. General references
- ֎ Laws of Evolution (Pavel Volkov, 2005): a brief description of the trends and rules the evolution of organisms tends to follow
- Spec Evo Wiki Tutorials (Concavenator, ca. 2014): a collection of advice, references, and useful info for spec-bio projects
- Worldbuilding Resources (collective, 2009-15): a collection of useful links
- Chase for a Blue Chimera (Volkov & Kilyachkov, 2019): a general treatise on spec-biology, its themes and manifestations
- ֎ Furahan Biology and Allied Matters (Gert Van Dijk, 2008-ongoing): a blog covering several issues of making spec-bio projects, focusing especially on biomechanics
- Alien Biosphere Evolution (Phrenotopia, 2018-ongoing): an excellent series of videos explaining how complex organisms evolve
- ֎ Alien Biospheres (Biblaridion, 2019-ongoing): a series of videos constructing an alien biosphere step by step
- Exocosm (Abyddon, 2020-ongoing): a blog covering many aspects of the habitability of alien planets
- Biological Strategies (ongoing): >1700 examples of evolutionary adaptations and their physical and chemical mechanisms
0a. Naming of species
0b. Planets and climate
1. Future evolution
Extending evolution into our future, imagining descendants of the species that live now on Earth; often the extinction of humanity is assumed to clear way to natural processes.
- ֎ After Man (Dougal Dixon, 1981): the seminal text on future evolution, describing life on Earth 50 million years after the human age
- Future Evolution (Peter Ward, 2001): a look at the biological, ecological, and technological factors that might affect evolution in the next future
- The Future is Wild (video) (multiple creators, 2002): a TV "documentary" showing life on Earth 5, 100, and 250 million years from now
- † Evolution: A Novel (Stephen Baxter, 2003): the novelized evolution of the human lineage from the end of dinosaurs to the distant future
- The Life and Death of Planet Earth (Ward and Brownlee, 2004): a reconstruction of the distant future of Earth and the end of its habitability
- Our future Earth: how the planet will change in the next 100,000 years (Curt Stager, 2011): changes in Earth's climate in the near future
- Demain: Les Animaux du Futur (Boulay & Steyer, 2015): life in three biomes on future Earth (in French)
- Supercontinent scenarios (EarthSky, 2019): scenarios for the next supercontinent
- Life Under a Dying Sun (Concavenator, 2020): possible evolution of life near the end of Earth's habitability
- ֎ Neocene (Pavel Volkov, 2005-ongoing): the most detailed future evolution project yet, set 25 million years from now (only partly translated from Russian)
- Future of Earth (Wikipedia)
1a. Terraforming/seed world
Earth species brought onto another (usually empty) world, and let free to evolve naturally there.
- Serina (Sheather, 2005): an Earth-like world inhabited by the descendants of canary birds.
1b. Posthuman evolution
Future descendants of the human species, often involving artificial genetic manipulation.
- Last and First Men (Olaf Stapledon, 1930): the history of future human species on Earth, Venus, and Neptune, repeatedly gaining and losing intelligence
- Man After Man (Dougal Dixon, 1990): the story of human species genetically altered to fill empty ecosystems, and then evolving from there
- All Tomorrows (C. M. Kosemen, 2006): the history of human species before and after being maliciously modified by an alien species
- ֎ Successors of Mankind (Pavel Volkov, 2018): a relatively conservative look at what purely natural posthuman species may look like
2. Alternative evolution
Descendants of species from Earth’s past, following a course of history alternative to our own.
- This Simian World (Clarence Day, 1920): an early meditation on non-human intelligences
- The Squamozoic (Darren Naish, 2013): an Earth that, after the extinction of dinosaurs, was taken over by squamate reptiles
2a. No-KT scenario
Non-avian dinosaurs do not go extinct at the end of the Cretaceous.
- The New Dinosaurs (Dougal Dixon, 1988): a beautiful-but-dated description of Earth, continent by continent, where dinosaurs never went extinct
- ֎ The Speculative Dinosaurs Project (multiple authors, 2001): a more modern and detailed look at the above
- Dinosauroids Revisited Revisited (Darren Naish, 2012): reflections on the possibility of sapient dinosaurs
- Dinosauroids (C. M. Kosemen & Simon Roy, 2008-19): the art, culture, and technology of dinosaurs with human-like intelligence
2b. Lost World
Members of historically extinct or imaginary groups survive, and keep evolving, in isolated regions of Earth.
- ֎ The Snouters (Gerolf Steiner, 1957): a semi-serious monography on a fictional group of mammals defined by nose morphology
- The World of Kong (Weta Workshop, 2005): a lost island inhabited by dinosaurs and other "prehistoric" creatures
- † Fragment (Warren Fahy, 2009): the remains of a supercontinent where life evolved independently since the Cambrian
- Diyu (Troll Man, 2014): deep caves where life has been evolving independently since before the Cambrian
- R'lyeh (Troll Man, 2016): as above, on islands
2c. Spec paleontology
Speculation about organisms that might have existed in Earth’s past (or hypothetical features of those that did).
- ֎ All Yesterdays (Conway, Kosemen, & Naish, 2012): speculative reconstructions of known prehistoric species, and speculations on how modern life might be known in the future
- All Your Yesterdays (Conway, Kosemen, & Naish, 2017): as above, with contribution by fans
- Prior indigenous technological species (Jason Wright, 2017): a paper considering hypothetical traces of past advanced civilizations in the solar system
- The Silurian Hypothesis (Schmidt & Frank, 2018): a look at how an advanced civilization might be known in the distant future
2d. Cryptid spec
Giving a realistic and biologically plausible description of creatures from human myth, folklore, or fiction (Nessie, Bigfoot, and the like).
- On the Track of Unknown Animals (Bernard Heuvelmans, 1955-1995): an early treatise on cryptids, best taken with a grain of salt (link to 1970 edition)
- Compendium of Dragonology (Dugald Steer, 2009): a semi-serious interpretation of the biology and diversity of dragons
- †֎ Cryptozoologicon (Conway, Kosemen, & Naish, 2013): an attempt to reinterpret creatures from folklore in the light of evolutionary biology
- List of cryptids (Wikipedia)
3. Xenobiology/astrobiology
Independent origin and evolution of life on worlds (planets, moons, &c) other than Earth.
- ֎ Star Maker (Olaf Stapledon, 1937): an exploration of an immense diversity of sapient alien life
- ֎ Xenology (Robert Freitas, 1979): an early treatise on all topics relevant to life on other planets
- Expedition (Wayne Barlowe, 1990): life on a distant, oceanless planet (link to a Russian translation)
- ֎ Epona (multiple authors, 1993): an excellent though short-lived natural history of a fictional planet
- Natural History of an Alien (BBC, 1997): an early documentary on imagining alien lifeforms
- The Science of Aliens (Clifford Pickover, 1999)
- What Does a Martian Look Like? (Cohen & Stewart, 2002)
- Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints (Schulze-Makuch & Irwin, 2004): focusing on the physics and bioenergetics of extraterrestrial life
- Alien Planet (Discovery, 2005): the TV adaptation of Barlowe's Expedition
- Extraterrestrial, part 1 and part 2 (National Geographic, 2005): a CGI documentary showing life on red-dwarf Aurelia and high-gravity Blue Moon
- † Life as we do not know it: the NASA search for (and synthesis of) alien life (Peter Ward, 2005)
- ֎ Snaiad (C. M. Kosemen, 2007): detailed description of a clade of pseudo-vertebrates on a planet settled by humans
- Plants Under Alien Suns (Sol Company, 2007)
- † Greenworld (Dougal Dixon, 2010): history of 1000 years of human settlement on a distant planet (published only in Japanese!)
- ֎ Cosmic Biology (Schulze-Makuch & Irwin, 2010): scenarios for evolution on other planets in the Solar System
- Ilion (Emily Holland, 2012)
- Darwin's aliens (Levin & al, 2017): considerations on the mechanisms of evolution and the origins of complexity on other planets
- † Convergent Evolution on Earth: Lessons for the Search for Extraterrestrial Life (George McGhee, 2019): a study of forms and strategies that are likely to arise independently on other worlds
- The Museum of Alien Life (melodysheep, 2020)
- † The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy (Arik Kershenbaum, 2020)
- Habitats for Life in the Solar System (Concavenator, 2020)
- ֎ Alien Bodies (Winchell Cheung, updated 2021): a massive collection of links and quotes about extraterrestrial biology
- Sagan 4 (multiple authors, 2006-ongoing): a massive cooperative project evolving the biosphere of a planet step by step
- Furaha (Gert Van Dijk, 2008-ongoing): a fictional fieldbook to the wildlife of planet Furaha
3a. Alternative biochemistry
[also addressed in several sources above]
3b. Spec planetology
Focusing more on the planet itself (geology, geography, climate) than on the life that inhabits it.
3c. Life As We Don't Know It
Organisms living on celestial bodies other than rocky planets or moons, often based on processes fundamentally different from Earth’s biochemistry.
4. Alternate universes
Development of life in worlds governed by different physical laws (e.g. fantasy settings).
- Life in the Multiverse (Jenkins & Perez, 2010): possibilities for life in universes with different fundamental particles
4a. Two-dimensional universes
4b. Sci-fantasy
Evolution in worlds where a form of “magic” is present and detectable; often imagining species based on creatures from human myth or fiction.
4c. Portal universe
A self-contained world with its own physical laws colonized by organisms from our universe.
- Sheatheria (Sheather, 2013): a world in which life from all ages of Earth has mixed together
5. Multiple/combined types
- ֎ Tangent Worlds (C. M. Kosemen, 2016): a sketchbook of fantastic life of every type, from dream demons to parallel evolutionary lines
6. Other masterlists:
7. Communities