There is a wonderful quote at the beginning of each of Joseph Campbell's books in the Masks of God series that nicely sums up his work and is applicable here to the creation of evolution ficiton. Campbell wrote that the result of his twelve years working on the books confirmed one of his long held beliefs:
"of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and, today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some kind of climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge."
This is a large piece of text to take in all at once, I know, but the point is that in the beginning, man was united. Meaning, for Campbell, and for those who believe in mitochondrial Eve, even those who believe in Genesis, back in the mists of time there was only one group of humans closely grouped together and sharing a mythology. From that point, and after years and years of exploration and adventures man inhabited the earth, but he always took with him biological marks of his common ancestry and, somewhere tucked inside, the memories and myths of his earlier people.
But what does this mean for the writer. And here it should be plain enough, but Campbell in the same passage gives the answer when he writes: "I can see no reason why anyone should suppose that in the future the same motifs already heard will not be sounding still..." His book, as he says, furnishes those motifs and suggests "ways in which they might be put to use by reasonable men for reasonable ends--or by poets to poetic ends--or by madmen to nonsense and disaster." This passage opens up the wonder and possibility of the past for the next stage of human life and mythology. It's only for the poets of the moment and in the future to take them and help to create the reality we live in.
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