Category:FarFuture

In "The Shadow Out of Time", Lovecraft projects a future in which Australia might be a dominant world power (though this is unclear from the limited description), in the 26th Century, the "Cruel Empire" of Tsan-Chan arises the 51st Century, humanity seems to fall into savagery among the "Dark Conquerors" of the 161st Century, and is eventually replaced by a "hardy coleopterous (beetle)" civilization at some indefinite point afterward which appears to dominate earth longer than mankind (as hosts for the Yithians, who transfer the Beetles' minds to Yith to suffer in the Great Race's stead from the catastrophe that world faces), until supplanted in their turn by the "arachnid denizens" of "Earth's Last Age". Venus seem to be home to life (perhaps including the descendants of man, though unlikely) at least for "incalculable epochs to come", while the minds of the Great Race steal the bodies of "bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury", where the Great Race will remain until fleeing for points unknown from the dying sun, leaving Mercury as the Solar System's last outpost of warmth for whatever pathetic remnants of solar life are left to burrow into the dying world's "horror-filled core", before the Utter End of the Sun and its planets....

I seemed to talk... with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system. There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come... two from the arachnid denizens of earth's last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity. I talked with the mind of Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in A.D. 5000; ...with that of Nug-Soth, a magician of the dark conquerors of A.D. 16,000; ...with that of the Australian physicist Nevil Kingston-Brown, who will die in A.D. 2518; ...and with so many others that my brain cannot hold the shocking secrets and dizzying marvels I learned from them.... After man there would be the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook the elder world. Later, as the earth’s span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space — to another stopping-place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury. But there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.
— H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)

Timeline of the future of Earth's Solar System:

• Australian physicist Nevil Kingston-Brown, who will die in A.D. 2518 (Shadow Out of Time)
• Yiang-Li, a philosopher from the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, which is to come in A.D. 5000 (Shadow Out of Time)
• Nug-Soth, a magician of the dark conquerors of A.D. 16,000 (Shadow Out of Time)
• hardy coleopterous (beetle) species immediately following mankind... the mighty beetle civilisation, the bodies of whose members the cream of the Great Race would seize when the monstrous doom overtook Yith (Shadow Out of Time)
• arachnid denizens of earth's last age (Shadow Out of Time)
• Venus, incalculable epochs to come (Shadow Out of Time)
• later, as the earth’s span closed, the transferred minds would again migrate through time and space — to another stopping-place in the bodies of the bulbous vegetable entities of Mercury (Shadow Out of Time)
• there would be races after them, clinging pathetically to the cold planet [Mercury] and burrowing to its horror-filled core, before the utter end.... (Shadow Out of Time)