The Mystery of Qu
Honestly it’s bizarre… yet so fascinating. It’s sickening yet uplifting. Unflinchingly brutal yet hopeful? An interesting piece of literature, not only because of its content, but also the structure, the surrealism, the detailed artwork, and the idea that future of humanity is contingent and our existence could in fact just be a passing blip in the universe adds on to how incredible the work of imagination on this one is.
So this week I stumbled across Turkish paleoartist C.M. Kösemen’s All Tomorrows: A Billion Year Chronicle of the Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man, a cult favourite speculative evolution sci fi classic.
What really got me hooked to this book is that it’s of course comprehensive in it’s narrative, yet vague in it’s scenarios it presents us. So many details are rather unfinished and I think that’s what makes it special. As if they were supposed to be left that way for the readers to comprehend it the way they want and that’s why I’m here today, with my laptop and coffee researching fan favourite conspiracy theories for this read.
One of the most repetitive questions that we’ve all thought about is who exactly this “Qu” is? Referred to as the “Space nomads” by the author. The dark mysterious antagonist (or perhaps antagonists?) in this story who using their implausibly advanced bioengineering methods twists star people into various different subspecies. Could the Qu perhaps be something that humanity created? Maybe humanity themselves? Or aliens? The theories are endless and it’s rather hard to trace Qu’s ancestors. But the most plausible one to me is probably the one I’m going to talk about (Caution: spoilers ahead).
Now think about it in this way, what if the Qu isn’t actually supposed to be the bad people here? What if they are the actual heroes? Now this may sound absurd since it’s clearly mentioned in the book that the Qu are essentially at war with the humans and that they invade planets colonised by the star people and all those sorts, but why are we supposed to interpret it from the point of view of the author who’s writing this after billions of years any of these events. From a completely different timeline to these events. So there clearly is a possibility that things probably played out differently than how they were reported. Maybe they were the peace-keepers of the universe, putting these star people to test to see who lasts the longest to become the true heirs of the Qu. Hear me out before exiting please.
Now think about it in this way, when the only two subspecies left in the universe were the “Bug Facers” and the “Astereomorphs”, the author refers to the Bug Facers as the “last biological humanity”. Which is quite strange, isn’t it? What about the Astereomorphs? In fact, being untouched by Qu, they were probably more human than the Bug Facers. Or maybe the Astereomorphs didn’t consider themselves human? Also the Astereomorphs were pretty successful in defeating the Gravitals but why didn’t they do anything when the Gravitals were wiping out every other post-humans? The creation of the terrestrials, and more genetic manipulation? Do you see a pattern here? In fact, when the earth was rediscovered, they didn’t even care as much, as if they weren’t really bothered much about their human ancestry.
Now look at these two pictures. Can you see any resemblance? Coincidence? Maybe.
The Qu were a billion-year-old race and with time comes wisdom and knowledge, so they would most likely have encountered many other advanced species in the galaxy in that time that they needed to genetically alter back into primitive forms and had seen first hand just how much damage these types of species could cause. It must be mentioned that while the Qu did seem to wreak havoc on these human worlds and did cause much suffering as is the case with the Colonials and the Mantelops, they did seem to have some respect for human life and also allowed some of the future human species to enjoy their lives and live peacefully, such as the “Hedonists” and the “Finger Fishers”.
Perhaps this was an effort by the Qu to create different evolutionary paths of which perhaps one could potentially grow to become the next Qu, to find which world could truly overcome all these hurdles and give up on their human greed whilst avoiding a galactic cataclysm. (Sounds a bit like our present timeline humans, does it not? We kill animals to control their population because if their numbers grow too large, they’ll cause much damage but the Qu were just doing a similar thing.)
This argument can actually be supported by time travel. Having so much power in hands, wouldn’t one instead of changing things how they are, would prefer to change how things are supposed to be, before they even take place. This would probably explain the unclear ending to the story as well, since these events just take place in a loop. And remember the random creature found on an alien world with three limbs and copper bone natives, that was related to an extinct earth dinosaur? But we had absolutely no clue why this was mentioned in the story. Well, we still don’t, but maybe the Astereomorphs did that too.
Well then were Qu human? Maybe. They were probably human descendants who didn’t exactly consider it themselves, but who knows. What you wish to believe is left to your own imagination and that’s the beauty of this book.
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