Resetting the Timeline for the Dying Earth

Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series was said to take place in “the 21st Aeon, when the Earth is old and the Sun is about to go out.” Well, we probably don’t have that long. An Aeon is a billion years, and we are in the 5th Aeon of the Earth’s life (it was born 4.54 billion years ago). The temperature of the Sun is steadily increasing, and in 600 million years, photosynthetic life will be dead on Earth. In 800 million years, all complex life will be dead. In 1.1 billion years (the end of the 5th Aeon), the temperature on Earth will be so hot that liquid water will not be available. By the 8th Aeon, Earth will be similar to modern Venus. When the sun goes red giant, it will swallow Mercury and Venus. Then it will become a white dwarf, and the Earth’s distance from it will expand to 1.9 AU because of the dwarf’s reduced gravity. Earth will freeze.

So I reset the timeline for the Dying Earth. Mankind leaves for space in the 5th Aeon. In the 12th Aeon, aliens reshape the planet and its orbit, then plant new life there. Or humans do, for they also return in that Aeon. The Dying Earth becomes a weird mix of alien and human life, and totters on until the eventual fizzling out of the Sun in the 14th Aeon, the time when the players reach it (and also the time of Cugel the Clever).