- [<] Status Log - created:: 2021-07-31 - status-updated:: 2022-03-13 - [S] Marketing - purpose:: #articleseed/afterword for a story that takes place after another story but has less advanced technology. I was checking out [this reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/4i9ov6/book_suggestions_for_scifi_novels_with_a_focus_on/) and came across the phrase "4000 years more advanced than earth biology" and I got so frustrated I just had to vent. Evolution doesn't WORK like that. I explained why history isn't purely progressive when I discussed the [role of women in hypermasculine cultures](https://eleanorkonik.com/women-militaristic-culture/), but given that I've spoken about terraforming HERE and plant biology HERE, I think now is a good time to make the point that evolution is not linear either. Plants change as the world changes. Plants of now are not "better" than plants from 500 years ago, they're different because there was an ice age 500 years ago and now we're dealing with global warming. If we were trying to colonize continent with an average temperature of 50 degrees F, instead of 70 degrees F, we'd want the older plants from northern Europe that died out on Earth when the temperature rose. Civilizations are not inherently better because they've "lasted longer." They've just lasted longer. This is true of ancient human civilizations and it's true of alien civilizations. The Children of Time series by Adrian Tchaikovsky in particular does a wonderful job of addressing this, because while most SF (like the Foundation series, Battlestar Galactica) that deals with this topic have an "old Earth civilization" that's practically mythological less as an acknowledgment of the way civilizations rise and fall and more so they can write off having to deal with Earth itself while still having "humanity," Earth's children makes the fall of civilization a relevant plot point and actually shows it happening in real-time.