Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: The Problem of Human and Other Destinies Macrocosmic Impacts Humans and ELFs The Passenger Pigeon Precedent Other Evolutions Endless Times and Timeless Ends One. Fossils and Fossil Collectors Wanted: One Time Machine Stones, Tools, Talismans, and Gods Giants in the Earth We Are Devo? Two. Poets, Philosophers, and Disasters Vestiges Prelude to the Tangled Bank--The Penultimate Paragraph Last Tangle in Bankside--The Final Paragraph Darwin Among the (Natural) Philosophers Adventures in Disaster World Darwin, Lamarck, and Alice Three. Liminal Species, Liminal Spaces Monkeys Gone Bananas Only Superficially Adult Really Immature Hypermagical Ultraomnipotence Here There Be Chimeras Wrestling with Beowulf The Monstrous Other in Ourselves Four. Creatures of an Island Oasis in the Desert Ocean of Space From Tempestuous Island to Forbidden Planets Montaigne and the Cannibals of Antarctic France Socrates, Swift, and the Problem of Writing Once More to the Island, with War and Population and Evolution The Language of Living Fossils, the Living Fossils of Language Five. Blank Spaces and Blind Spots, Dark Places and Lost Races Journey to the Center That Cannot Hold The Curse of King Solomon's Ruin Machine The Dark Heart of the Imperial Romance Misplaced Worlds and Misremembered Times Losing the World by Gaining It Six. A Course in Crashes Many Ways to Be Last Humans The Original Doomsday Preppers Inundations Upon the Indigenous Mythic Proportions Homelands Hyperobjects Cycles and Canticles Parables and Parallels Last Parables and Parallels Parables That Might Have Been Afterword Chapter Notes Bibliography Index.