Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Post-Apocalyptic Pop-Up Field Guide

Beyond the Sixth Extinction by Shawn Sheehy

It’s the year 4847, over a thousand years since the end of a mass extinction event, caused by human activity, that resulted in the demise of eighty percent of the Earth’s animal species. The Cagoan District, in the area southwest of Lake Mishkin, was long thought to be lifeless, marked only by large ruins of an ancient urban city that flourished from 1837 to 2620. But a landmark survey in the year 4797 revealed that several new, highly adaptable species had developed in the Cago area.

Chief Scientist Willek Muriday has now issued this Field Guide to Creatures of the Cagoan District for the benefit of biologists living in this future world. This guide features eight of the strange creatures that now thrive in the Cagoan District, with three-dimensional pop-up models of the creatures, explanations of the unique characteristics they have evolved, and related illustrations and diagrams.

The premise of Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Post-Apocalyptic Pop-Up (2018) is based on The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, a 2014 non-fiction book by Elizabeth Kolbert. This winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction argues that humanity is in the process of causing the sixth worldwide extinction event in the history of our earth, and that disastrous changes to Earth are occurring because of global warming, pollution, widespread travel and trade (leading to introduction of invasive species), and other human activities.

Shawn Sheehy’s Beyond the Sixth Extinction takes a somewhat hopeful look at the aftermath of the Sixth Extinction. His field guide-like book spotlights several fictional animals, insects and plants, mutated from creatures currently existing in our world, that have survived this mass extinction event. Not just survived: each creature has found a unique way of coping with and even helping to renew the damaged ecological system of their corner of our world, like “converting industrial waste into biological nutrients.”

Sheehy, an accomplished paper engineer, has created large, multi-layered pop-up sculptures for each of the eight species featured in this book. The pop-ups are made of cardstock-weight paper and are reasonably sturdy, though I doubt they’d survive an attack by a determined toddler. Each entry also includes a fold-out section that summarizes the key characteristics of the animal or plant, and a two-page section follows each pop-up that describes the creature in more detail, with excellent full-color illustrations by Spanish illustrator Jordi Solano. Beyond the Sixth Extinction also includes a chart outlining all six historic extinction events, a diagram of the Cagoan ecosystem showing how all of these species interact with each other, and a map of the District of Cago.

Beyond the Sixth Extinction is a gorgeous and creative book with unusual pop-ups. Its list price is $65 (though Amazon currently has a much lower price listed) so it’s somewhat of an investment, but it would make an entertaining coffee table book or gift for an older, scientifically-minded child or teen, as well as interested adults. I could see this book prompting some fascinating discussions about our world and our relationship to it.