A Bestiary of the Anthropocene: On Hybrid Plants, Animals, Minerals, Fungi, and Other Specimens

by Nicolas Nova (Editor), Geoffrey C. Bowker (Contributor), Alexandre Monnin (Contributor)

Equally inspired by medieval bestiaries and observations of our damaged planet, A Bestiary of the Anthropocene is a compilation of hybrid creatures of our time. Designed as a field handbook, it aims at helping us observe, navigate, and orientate into the increasingly artificial fabric of the world.

Plastiglomerates, surveillance robot dogs, fordite, artificial grass, antenna trees, Sars-Covid-2, decapitated mountains, drone-fighting eagles, standardised bananas… each of these specimens are symptomatic of the rapidly transforming “post-natural” era we live in. Often without us even noticing them, these creatures exponentially spread and co-exist with us.

A Bestiary of the Anthropocene seeks to capture this precise moment when the biosphere and technosphere merge and mesh into one new hybrid body. What happens when technologies and their unintended consequences become so ubiquitous that it is difficult to define what is “natural” or not? What does it mean to live in a hybrid environment made of organic and synthetic matter? What new specimens are currently populating our planet at the beginning of the 21st century?

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Science, Theory, Architecture, Ecology, Environment

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2021

About the author

Nicolas Nova (PhD) is Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Art and Design (Switzerland). His work lies at the intersection of ethnography, interaction design and futures research, with a particular interest in ubiquitous and mobile technologies and the cultural practices surrounding new media.

Reviews

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A unique book, one of it's kind, an illustrated guide to the hybrid bios of the Anthropocene. Exquisite drawings with just about the right descriptions, this is a tool to think outside the binary matrix of nature and culture, a book that dares us to look at the face of what we've done, and get along with it. I wish it had been longer, with lots more of philosophy, but I can't complain. Great piece of work.

[Camille · Rating 4 out of 5]

very funny to read a book that is clearly a table-top book and enjoy and learn from it

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Bestiary of the Anthropocene is an aesthetic delight. It’s a pleasure to look at, printed in bold silver ink on heavy black paper. The book even feels nice in your hands; the thick pages are downright enjoyable to turn. I want all of my books to have silver text on black paper now—it was such a great reading experience. It took me back to my “coloring in a black notebook with gel pens” days. This book is worth it for the look and feel alone.

Aesthetics aside, this is a deliciously unsettling book. It will be unlike any other book on your bookshelf or coffee table. It’s difficult to describe exactly what A Bestiary of the Anthropocene is: it’s part art book, part field guide, part classification exercise, part social commentary. This book is primarily a catalog of “hybrid” animals, plants, rocks, and other things. It’s an ethnography of the weird, wonderful, horrible things that happen when technology and nature collide. It covers everything from COVID-19 to nuclear craters. The book mostly consists of standalone single-page descriptions, so it’s easy to pick up whenever you have a few minutes to spare—though I couldn’t put it down and flew through it.

If you are a classification nerd like me, you will enjoy this book. The “Animals” section features biological oddities like military dolphins and caterpillars that eat plastic, but it also contains Tamagotchis and Roomba vacuums. Are they animals? Are they not animals? Does it matter if they are not technically animals if we treat them like pets anyway? I liked how this book stretches and pushes on the boundaries of our conventional classification system, winking at the reader with categories like “artificial insects, “software companions,” and “standardized nature.” These categories would perplex (and delight) any taxonomist.

Bestiary of the Anthropocene is written in a neutral, almost disinterested tone. When reading this book, I imagined myself as an alien learning about humanity and its strange practices for the first time. This book helped me step outside the everyday and think critically about how humans bend and twist the world to our preferences. In highlighting the strangeness and perniciousness of many of the weird hybrids we’ve created, this book shows just how tremendous (and often negative) our impact on the planet is. It manages to give you a low-key dread about the environment without coming across as preachy or “tree-hugging” (unless you count antenna trees to improve cell service). The entries in this book are both fascinating and disturbing.

The last third of the book is a series of philosophical essays, most of which are boring and skippable. A few of the essays were excellent (especially "On Temporalities" by Geoffrey Bowker), but most were so full of navel gazing and pretentious jargon that I didn’t finish them. This book would have been perfect as a standalone catalog of weird human-molded mutants. It didn’t really need the pseudo-intellectual fluff at the end.

Pretentious essays aside, this is a really cool, unique book. It’s lovely to look at and an unnerving delight to read.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

“At the same time as we’re terraforming the Earth, so too is life itself adapting to and changing every specific individual life form all of the time. So the correct unit of analysis here is not nature here, humans there, inside our body here, outside our body there. But it’s an understanding of the dance of life and the way in which this dance works.”

[daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Påminde mycket om att läsa Monsterböckerna till Drakar och Demoner eller något annat rollspel. Fast med väsen och mytiska ting från antropocene.

Mycket fint illustrerad och väl noterade små stycken, varje uppslag är en illustration och en kort beskrivande text med källhänvisningar för vidare läsning.

[bald · Rating 3 out of 5]

i do not care for most of the essays in the back, i think it would have been a better book without them cuz some of them genuinely felt like u were reading a parody 😭😭 i love black paper though 😍

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bulk of the book which explores flora and fauna of the Anthropocene is quirky, fascinating and uncanny; a beautiful and unnerving look at out contemporary world the final pages of the book contain essays that are redundant and try to reiterate the thesis in these pretentious, academic drolls which is a real shame, the final third of the book totally undermining the preceding portion.

I listened to Jeff Parker's Forfolks and Jon Hopkins Music for Psychedelic Therapy while reading this one.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book porn design, the illustrations of the species we affect are beautiful and disturbing. Those of us not in denial will still find this educational - "new ways to sense and make sense of extremely slow, large, diffuse, or weak signals."

[Evan Greenwald · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the actual bestiary section of this book. Great examples of purely modern life, land, & material forms that are the result of human disruption. I want to make this stuff into something I can show my students because I think they would be really into it

The back half of the book is all essays by various people involved with this disnovarion.org project, of which I know next to nothing. Almost all of the essays are totally useless, full of pseudo-intellectual jargon. But two essays are a cut above the rest: ‘On Negative Commons’ by Alexandre Monnin, which discusses the effects & possibilities of urban decay, & ‘On Anthropogenic Landscapes’ by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, whose book The Mushroom At The End of the World I am currently reading & loving.

[Mike Dettinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing book/work in a unique form. Black construction paper with silver type and illustrations, and sort-of trippy perspective, together communicate a sense that this is as much an artwork as a reference or book of philosophy. And, yes, it does tend to make you look at everything around you in a new way. Initially I was expecting the "beasts" to essentially be "things that we are leaving behind that will become the future's fossils" (it took me a while to even understand that that was how I was reading this book). But, in time, I realized that this book is about a different way of looking at everything, especially natural-technological hybrids, around us. For that reference and for that realization, I am thankful.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The physical book is a work of art-bounded in black paper, printed with bright silver ink, & illustrated with etchings and other block related prints making. The book feels divided with its lighthearted encyclopedic front half & bleak essay driven second. Overall though this book feels summed up from this quote on page 221 “Any bestiary made by these hypothetical future collectors of our vestiges would be principally a catalogue of objects. A sort of obituary for recording the remains…” Its almost romantic??

[Luca Cendón · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, stylish, and comprehensible. I struggle reading non fiction, especially the kind that info dumps on its readers. I devoured this book and was eager to learn about every subject presented. I highly recommend reading, if not to reflect on the toll of humanity over nature, then at the very least for its jet black pages and glowing illustrations.

[patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this book, lots of essays at the end that are dense but great, the book itself helps bring into focus many of everyday and some unique beasts that have been changed because of our presence, both intentional and unintentional.

[Louisa Georgia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Die Horror sci-if-novel unter den Sachbüchern (nur das leider alles schon real ist)
schön & unheimlich-gruselig zu gleich.
Liefert gutes Schocker Partywissen.

Zum Ende unheimlich einfühlsam & beflügelnd, ein modernes Bestiarium, das auch zeigt, wieso wir wieder mehr Mythen gebrauchen könnten.

[Yamir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute beauty of a book, printing it in black paper was a beautiful choice. The bestiary ranges from humorous to fascinating to horrifying entries, but the real treat are the essays after the bestiary. Each one gets better than the last.

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved the art, the printing, the references, and the concept -- one of those rare coffee table books that is fun to flip through and you actually want to have it around. Bought the hard copy.

[Camila Ausente · Rating 5 out of 5]

Increíble diseño, muy buenos textos, mucha onda.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really cool glimpse into the world of organisms formed in various ways by human involvement. Some are fascinating, some are terrifying. I'm a big fan of the style as well.

[Cianán Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the bestiary itself but the essays after were hit or miss. Some were quite unpleasant to read.

[Nataliia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild

or should I say feral

[Max Goldberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

My biggest complaint is that there wasn’t more of this book. Extremely unique and leaves a craving for more of this niche.

[Javier Garcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ecologia, tecnología y birra fría. Lo primero muy guay, lo segundo ya no me da el coco pa' tanto.