I am the author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils. I also write for Orion, Emergence Magazine, Lithub, Aeon, and the Atlantic. 

Footprints -

A Times Book of the Year 2020

A Telegraph Top 50 Books of the Year 2020

A New York Times climate book of 2020

A Smithsonian Magazine Book of the Year 2020

What will the world look like ten thousand or ten million years from now?  What traces will we leave behind?

"Fascinating" - Margaret Atwood, author of Oryx & Crake

"Subtly thought and beautifully written, it compels its readers to undertake a troubling, urgent thought-experiment: what will survive of us?" - Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey

“The kind of book that stays with you,” New York Times

“Farrier’s prose glitters. His journey takes in marvels … Subtle, elegant,” The Economist 

“Full of fascinating things,” Guardian

"Footprints by David Farrier has changed the way I navigate the world. ... This is transformative reading for the 21st century" - Katie Paterson, creator of Future Library

"An extraordinary accomplishment” - Steve Silberman, author of Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

"Wonderful" - Gaia Vince, author of Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time

"A brilliant and surprisingly beautiful requiem for what we have lost, but also, crucially, what we might save from the wreckage" - Philip Hoare, author of RisingTideFallingStar

"Urgent and inspiring’ Roman Krznaric, author of The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term a Short-Term World

"A riveting mix of science and storytelling that changed the way I process my everyday surroundings; now, I see a “future fossil” at nearly every turn" - Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses

‘It is an oddly hopeful exploration of deep time and a world doing just fine without us.’ New Scientist

‘Farrier races through the past and makes brief stops in the present before soaring into the deep future, all the while exploring our capacity as human beings to leave traces behind us … It echoes many of the concerns of nature writers such as Kathleen Jamie, Katharine Norbury and Robert Macfarlane, but from a different coign of vantage. Farrier is less nature writer an more ‘smart thinker’ … At its best, there are moments when the eye of the poet and the analyst come together in memorable flight’ Literary Review

‘All decent people want to be remembered well. In the ancient world, moral life was often seen as the effort to be a good ancestor. If that’s how you see things, David Farrier’s brilliant, plangent book will leave you gasping with shame. Our grandchildren (if any survive) will look back on us with contempt’ The Oldie, Charles Foster

"Literary, luminous, and deeply humane" - Rebecca Giggs, author of Fathoms: The World in the Whale

"Simultaneously grave and yet full of redemptive beauty, both elegy and awakening, it will be enjoyed by all readers who live on Earth’s lithosphere" - Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice.

"Profound, urgent, transformative, it is a remarkable book" - James Bradley, author of Clade

"Superbly researched and imagined" - Caspar Henderson, author of A New Map of Wonders