Stephen Erickson

The meerkat in “The Great Healing” is an exquisite creature. Hazel, our triplewart sea devil is another. As are Sherneka Johnson and Sky Smith, Thomas Quicksilver, Brady Kluge, Lucinda Monarch, Earl “the Worm,” Marlon Foster, and Wendell Berry. As are you.

I’ve been fortunate enough to make a living with my writing for my entire career. I have B.A. degrees from the University of California San Diego in both Visual Arts and Economics, along with a minor in Psychology to help me figure out why I did both. I received a M.F.A. in Film and Television from the graduate film school at UCLA. There, I was twice awarded the department’s highest writing honor. I wrote and directed the feature film “The Stonecutter.” As an entertainment executive, I originated and established one Home Entertainment label and then ran another, overseeing the licensing, development, marketing and worldwide release of nearly 400 programs onto broadcast, DVD and digital delivery platforms.

I did that while starting a family and fathering my children, helping raise them on this fascinating planet during a short window of time that may prove to have been the most magnificent years for human beings ever to be alive.

Global warming, during our lifetime, threatens to bring about the end of our Anthropocene Epoch — and us along with it. Over one million species of plants and animals are now facing extinction. Things are going to get worse, much worse. I wrote this book for all of us, but particularly for my children, for millennials, and for Generation Z — because you need to mobilize in a big way immediately, and take a stand to protect what remains of your opportunity to one day raise your families in a stable society and an environment fairly similar to the one we now enjoy, as opposed to being trapped in a sweltering, ugly, calamity — humanity’s increasingly chaotic, stricken and panicked exit from the global stage.

We are, each one of us, more than exquisite creatures — we are a special generation. This book will explain why. You have a choice. Compassionate awareness and activism — or not. Saving a habitable Earth — or not. The Great Healing cannot manifest without you. Join us in what will become the most important cause of all of humanity’s endeavors to date.

As a storyteller, I’ve tried my very best to engage your interest, to introduce you to exquisite creatures, and take you on an emotional journey — while alerting you to a dire threat, and revealing the path to our singular solution.

Important challenges are upon us.