Why humans became extinct

It’s circa 2210. Life on Earth is extinct.

But one type of earthlings, humans, have left behind a fat tome, which falls in the hands of creatures from another plant. Its chapters are in textbook style, yet are funny commentary on what it means/meant to be a human on this planet. The posthumous story is the premise of Earth, The Book.

The book’s authors are well-known TV comedians. Five years ago, they had composed a similar posthumous account for the US, America, The Book. The book under review is funnier.

Underlying the wit, Earth, The Book is a critique of modern lifestyle. It says: “We went from being exposed to one or two ads a day (1900) to 5,000 (2010). It wasn’t easy for the human brain to process this quantity of information, but we found space for it in the cranial regions earlier occupied by our capacity for introspection, wonder and joy.” There is more; the use of fork (“a way to hurt food one last time before eating it”) to wearing pants (“We put these on one leg at a time.

You may require a different approach”). There is a chart “Time We Were Willing to Wait for a Baked Potato”. According to the authors, it was eight hours in 1900 and about a second in 2010. There is a handsomely illustrated Periodic Table of the Synthetic that includes such elements as DD (Silicone). The book ends with a plea to aliens to reconstruct the hu man race from DNA in the hope that with guidance from visitors “we overcome the baser aspects of our nature”.

Robi Chowdhuri is a playwright

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