Human Species May Split into Two: Life Imitates Art Again?

Here’s a zinger to mull over: The BBC has post­ed an arti­cle about a the­o­ry advanced by Oliv­er Cur­ry, an “evo­lu­tion­ary the­o­rist” work­ing out of The Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, who sug­gests that human­i­ty may split into two sub-species about 100,000 years down the road. And what we’d be left with is “a genet­ic upper class” rul­ing over “a dim-wit­ted under­class.” This is a sce­nario, of course, that HG Wells laid out in his 1895 clas­sic, The Time Machine (lis­ten to free audio­book on iTunes here). And, if Cur­ry’s the­o­ry holds water, Welles may offer the most extreme exam­ple of sci­ence fic­tion antic­i­pat­ing the shape of the future. Does Cur­ry’s the­o­ry have any­thing to it? We haven’t the fog­gi­est. But does it make for strange­ly com­pelling yet dis­turb­ing read­ing? It sure does.

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