The novel has the capacity to encapsulate human existence, enabling us to interrogate our existing modes of being in the world, while imagining alternatives.

The Anthropocene accounts for a vast swath of human and natural history, but there are limits to its scope encouraging the proliferation of numerous other 'cenes. From the Chthulucene to the Anglocene, these terms explain our ecological present from a myriad of different perspectives. 

The ecomodernists envision a decoupling from nature founded on further integration into private markers and technical innovation.

Rather than marking the advent of "modernity," the year 1610 commemorates a wave of permanent human-induced changes to the Earth system.