Updated: August 11, 2026

In Paul Di Filippo's 2006 novel Time's Black Lagoon ( ISBN 1-59582-033-7 ), which takes place 60 years after the events of the films, the Gill-man is depicted as descending from a race of extraterrestrials who came to Earth during the Devonian period on a giant spaceship called The Mother, which crashed on Earth. The Gill-People have the ability to communicate telepathically among themselves and among the human characters. Alphas such as "Flesh molders", "Mud shapers", and "Fish callers" are highly telepathic individuals in their tribal communities, who each choose a successor from among their respective tribes children to take their place and title when they die.

The Gill-man itself is a degenerate member of this race, descended from an individual who explored deep in the ocean and became exposed to archaeobacteria, becoming deformed and insane, driven to infect others with the disease. Eventually, there were no healthy Gill-People left, and the race's numbers dwindled over the epochs to one individual in the 1950s, which is the one that appears in the original films.