This month, Blue Lab director and co-founder Allison Carruth is embarking on a limited book tour to promote her new book, Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech, out from University of Chicago Press.
Novel Ecologies investigates a distinctly California paradigm shaped by the tech industry—what Carruth terms Nature Remade. Through three case studies—synthetic wildlife, the digital cloud and space colonization—the book challenges the conviction that climate change and other environmental crises must be met with planetary-scale technological intervention. Against the world-building gambits of Google, Open AI, SpaceX and a host of start-ups, Carruth marshals the work of writers and artists who imagine provisionally hopeful futures while refusing to forget histories of power and exploitation that have made the world what it is.
Praise for Novel Ecologies
“In this ode to livingness amidst a reckoning with devastation, Carruth has written a book that we need now and that is a testament to the future.”
– Cajetan Iheka, author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics
“This eye-opening account transforms the environmental humanities, defining it as a public-facing, urgently actionable field.”
– Wai Chee Dimock, author of Weak Planet: Literature and Assisted Survival
“Novel Ecologies is a beautifully-written vision that gives us seeds of possible futures yet to be grown.”
– Nicole Starosielski, author of The Undersea Network
Novel Ecologies 2025 book tour highlights
Novel Ecologies at Princeton University
Novel Ecologies at Princeton University
Novel Ecologies at Princeton University
Allison Carruth in conversation with Vinson Cunningham about Novel Ecologies at Princeton University
Novel Ecologies at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ
Allison Carruth in conversation with Eliza Griswold about Novel Ecologies at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ
Allison Carruth in conversation with Eliza Griswold about Novel Ecologies at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ
Novel Ecologies at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ
Allison Carruth in conversation with Eliza Griswold about Novel Ecologies at Labyrinth Books, Princeton, NJ
Novel Ecologies at Point Reyes Books, Pt. Reyes Station, CA
Allison Carruth in conversation with Alexis Madrigal about Novel Ecologies at Point Reyes Books, Pt. Reyes Station, CA
Allison Carruth in conversation with Alexis Madrigal about Novel Ecologies at Point Reyes Books, Pt. Reyes Station, CA
Allison Carruth in conversation with Alexis Madrigal about Novel Ecologies at Point Reyes Books, Pt. Reyes Station, CA
Alexis Madrigal and Allison Carruth at Point Reyes Books, Pt. Reyes Station, CA
Novel Ecologies 2025 book tour dates
Note: all bookstore events are open to the public.