One of the nicest things about the science writing racket is how many incredible people there are in the field, people who not only are ferociously intelligent and omnivorously curious but are also tirelessly generous and endlessly kindhearted.

Exhibit #1 is Annalee Newitz, the founding editor of io9, the Gawker Media site that covers science, science fiction, and the future.

io9 editor and all-around awesome person Annalee Newitz

If you’ve never read io9, do yourself a favor and rectify that, stat — it’s a great site. Today’s the publication date for Annalee’s latest book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and it’s a doozy. It’s not easy to pull off a serious work of speculative popular science, but Annalee manages to do it, surveying the history of Earth’s mass extinctions and taking a clear-eyed look at what the future might hold. But you don’t need to take my word for it — here’s a glowing Kirkus review, and, if you want to read some of the book for yourself, here’s an excerpt.

Today at 2pm, I’ll be hosting a live-chat with Annalee on io9 about her book — I’ll ask her some questions generated by the hoi polloi and some of my own. Stop on by and check it out – it’ll definitely be worth it. (Here’s the link, which is live now.) And who knows? You might learn something that’ll help humanity survive the future.

(News and updates about Scatter, Adapt, and Remember can be found on the book’s site, http://scatteradaptandremember.com/.)