Scott Ludlam’s Full Circle.

Black Inc, 384pp, $34.99 Black Inc is a Schwartz company

imagining of the birth of life on Earth, ominously charting multiple mass extinctions along the way, beginning with the formation of our sun and running from the emergence of precellular entities to the evolution of the human species.

In theory, combining this range of styles with such breadth of information might seem hubristic, but in execution Ludlam proves himself as capable with metaphor and magic realism as he is with history and political theory.

His prose has the tenacity of poetry and the rigour of an infographic. This tempers his considerations of highly theoretical concepts such as Sankey diagrams, panarchy, captured states and power laws, giving the reader unfamiliar with these ideas a meaningful and tangible introduction to many of the invisible forces, natural and man-made, that underlie humanity’s current circumstances and those of the planet to which we cling.

Ludlam shows that the tools, the ideas, the models and the will to alter the status quo and save the planet from capitalism’s excesses and the climate catastrophe already exist – they just need to be joined together in a single global network of determination and action.

Full Circle is a thought experiment, an attempt at explanation and an offer of reassurance, but above all it is an urgent call to arms. As Ludlam himself says, “Enough prefiguring. Whatever your idea is, do it now.”