Voyagers: Our Journey into the Anthropocene

by Lauren Fuge

From the beginning, humans have been wanderers. Our feet carried us out of Africa and propelled us to far-flung corners of the world, often through incredible feats of innovation and imagination. These explorations yielded great land and resources, food and knowledge.


But in every landscape we have explored, we have become a force of change. Our appetites have pushed planetary systems to breaking point—yet still we seek new seas to fish, new oil deposits to drill, new forests to fell.


Award-winning science writer Lauren Fuge takes the reader on a journey from the dramatic fjords of the Pacific Northwest to the shifting coastlines of Norway, from the ancient geology of outback Australia to the outer reaches of the known universe, and what drives our urge to explore? How has it changed our relationship with the planet? And, in the face of imminent environmental collapse, can we find in our voyaging history the tools to reimagine our future?


Voyagers is an electrifying adventure through history, a compelling personal narrative, a hymn to the Earth—and a call to action at a defining moment in human history.


Lauren Fuge is an award-winning science writer who is currently undertaking a PhD exploring creative forms of climate communication. She won the magazine category of the 2023 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards and the 2022 UNSW Bragg Prize for Science Writing. Her writing features regularly in the Best Australian Science Writing anthology. Fuge holds a Bachelor of Creative Arts in Creative Writing and a Bachelor of Science in Experimental and Theoretical Physics.

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Nature, Natural History

Kindle Edition

Published July 30, 2024

Reviews

[Robert Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Climate activism is a very competitive space, and Lauren Fuge does a great job of personalising the urgency of the crisis we are experiencing. I found the chapters set in Lutruwita and in the Gammon ranges most compelling. Her call for passive resistance and blockade is a challenge to be wrestled with, particularly with governments all over the planet writing harsh, new laws to shut it down.

[Erin Reads The World · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you made a Venn diagram of my interests in active travel, sustainability and our impact on the Earth, and my climate anxieties, VOYAGERS by Lauren Fuge would fall right in the centre.

Fuge is a scientist, a writer, and both a curious and restless person by nature. She's Australian and grew up in South Australia but has travelled widely around the world, spending time hiking and kayaking and learning along the way.

VOYAGERS is part travelogue, part climate book, part science writing, part memoir. In it Fuge explores the impacts that humans have on the planet, both now and in the future, and also in the past.

As a reader, I find I learn best when a topic is discussed through stories and through bigger picture contextualisation. Facts without context are quickly forgotten but stories linger. And I really enjoyed the big picture framing and the smaller stories woven throughout the book.

If you're interested in nature writing, in reading more about climate change, and like your science and history mixed with personal stories, put this one on your radar. This is a book full of passion, urgency and hard-hitting truths, and it's one I want to see more people reading.

[Gnaeus Agricola · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book I so wanted to like. However, many of the interludes about Lauren’s life, like kayaking in a bay in Canada, as beautiful as it is supposed to be, were uninteresting to me. Where this book shined was in the chapters about collective action and some of the Antarctic chapter when she talks about the history of the continent. Whenever, Lauren tells a story or history in the 3rd person this book shined. That is where the 3 stars stem.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't often write reviews, but this book really moved me. It is such a beautifully written narrative of hope for a better world. The author done a wonderful job of using her outdoor adventures to express her deep grief of environmental collapse. History, appreciation for the natural world and solastalgia are woven together in a beautiful and compelling story.

[Philippa Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book seamlessly combines personal anecdotes, history, culture and science. The descriptions of the authors travels and nature are captivating. In a book that speaks to the impact of capitalism and colonialism, the author is not despairing but energised and hopeful that change can occur. Beautifully written and highly recommend

[Alayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and a half stars. Lyrical writing, but a very polemical essay on the wrongs of the colonial system and the problems of climate change. This was nothing like what I expected it to be, and I found it so depressing after half the book that I just skimmed the rest.

[Rikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully written, brutally honest, incredibly brave, and absolutely necessary. Everyone should read this and take the time to reflect deeply on the messages Lauren shares. This is a book for building a better world.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very special book. History, Science, Nature, Memoir. I was sad when it came to the end.

[Text Publishing]

The following book reviews have been shared by Text Publishing – publisher of Voyagers

‘A beautiful, important book, charged with the questing rigour of science and the poetic hauntings of a restless spirit.’
Kim Mahood

‘Moving effortlessly from the immensity of planetary time to profoundly human questions about love and hope, Voyagers is a remarkable achievement.’
James Bradley

‘Brilliant. This book holds questions that must be addressed as matters of physical urgency. Please read it. And please take up fighting for those questions as you can.’
Ashley Hay

‘Voyagers is a journey worth taking for readers interested in humanity’s interaction with nature, a history of exploration, or a memoir of one woman’s quest to embrace her own restlessness.’
Books+Publishing

‘Gorgeous…Expertly observed, intimately inhabited and gorgeously written…’
InReview

‘Fuge is an accomplished science writer with a literary sensibility, both of which she demonstrates in this intriguing book…This is no airy-fairy travelogue, but an activist’s call for us to stop and reconsider how we travel now.’
Guardian

‘Award-winning science writer Lauren Fuge seeks answer to the innate human compulsion for exploration and discovery, asking profound questions about how we can navigate the future, as we look beyond the precipice wrought by relentless human consumption.’
Australian

‘I admired Lauren Fuge’s stunning exploration of deep time and our uncertain future.’
James Bradley