Every once in a while a book comes along that feels less like reading and more like having your creative brain blown wide open. ULTRAWILD: An Audacious Plan for Rewilding Every City on Earth (Lerner/Graphic Universe, Sept. 2025) is that kind of book. Australian inventor and illustrator Steve Mushin packs its oversized pages with contraptions that oscillate between the absurd and the oddly plausible: robot birds that print habitats, sewer submarines that scrub water, and cannon balls made from manure and toffee(?) that can be fired from laser-guided cannons.
The premise is simple but… well wild. What if we rewilded cities, not politely or gradually, but with crazed abandon? With Extreme STEM. ULTRAWILD is funny, beautifully illustrated, and sneakily educational. Mushin insists that all of his outlandish inventions are grounded in real science and engineering and even provides supporting material on the book's website.
ULTRAWILD also sits comfortably in the company of other cultural eccentrics and outside the box visionary thinking: the sprawling, idea-stuffed pages of Whole Earth Catalogs, circa 1970s, the goofy brilliance of Japanese Chindōgu (the art of useless inventing), and the whimsical contraptions of cartoonist and futurist Steven M. Johnson. Mushin is carrying that torch forward with blueprints that are part serious, part playful provocation, and pure fuel for the imagination. You cannot flip through its pages without being challenged to think through the feasibility of what's being presented or wanting to grab a sketchbook and riff on your own ideas.
Oh, and there is also poop. Lots and lots of poop. Mushin has a fixation on the eco-restorative powers of waste, from animal droppings to humanure. It is funny, a little gross, and surprisingly persuasive. Your kids will love it.
That mix of funny, a little gross, and surprisingly persuasive defines this entire book. Even when the ideas go over the top, ULTRAWILD is serious about its underlying ideas and the power of possibility that this project invokes. It is an invitation to face climate change with creativity, humor, and a spirit of can-do problem-solving. Mushin reminds us that science and technology are not only instruments of control, but also engines of restoration and wonder. Imagining outlandish solutions may be exactly what leads us to the practical ones we have yet to imagine.
Here are a few images from the book, offered to Boing Boing as an exclusive first peek.
