Brave New Wild

A cohort of corporations and governments insist that geoengineering, nanotech and AI can solve our environmental crisis. But by bending nature to our will, could we break ourselves in the process?

Almost a century ago, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World imagined a society founded on a radical idea. Using eugenics and powerful pharmaceuticals, its rulers would engineer humans to fit the society they wanted to see, rather than build a society based on the needs of humans. The result was a rational and efficient system. And the crushing of the human spirit.

Today, faced with an environmental crisis, our economic and political leaders are responding in the spirit of Huxley’s rulers. Rather than building societies that respect the natural world, they are developing the means to remake nature itself. Yet channelling the same instrumental thinking that caused this crisis will only deepen it. We must examine that future, to challenge its assumptions and propose alternatives, predicated on a different vision of nature and humans’ place within it. From the nuclear industry’s careless mining of uranium, through to the centuries-old traditions of some of the world’s first peoples, history is layered with insights into how humans have treated the natural world, and how this can guide us forward.

Inscribed in the ecological crisis is a mandate for a radical rethink. Cogent, insightful and bold, Brave New Wild rises to that challenge. It will make you think about the planet, and our existence on it, in a new way.

'Brave New Wild is both a fascinating and provocative exploration of the unspoken assumptions underpinning many of our ideas about nature and the environment and a roadmap to a new and better future.' – James Bradley

‘This book tackles a terrifying subject: the possibility of technoscience conquering both nature and humanity. King's genius is to turn this into an entertaining as well as thought-provoking read. His humour and folksy erudition reminds me at times of the late Stephen Jay Gould. This is a book that comes thoroughly recommended. Timely and confronting. A brave new work.’ – Dave Witty

‘A book frightening and inspiring in almost equal measures.’ – Raimond Gaita

‘In Brave New Wild Richard King charges headlong at the biggest crises of our time: runaway technology, political polarisation and the gathering storms of climate change. Somehow he manages it with wry humour and determination, a perfect companion on an increasingly uncertain road.’ – Scott Ludlum