The historian is one of two fictional characters in the book. They are the narrator of the three chapters and the “Lexicon of Archaic Terms” in The Collapse of the Western World. The only detail given about the historian is that they live in the Second People’s Republic of China during or after the year 2300. The historian is practicing synthetic-failure paleoanalysis, which is defined as [t]he discipline of understanding past failure, specifically by understanding the interactions (or synthesis) of social, physical, and biological systems” (62).

The book, excluding the Introduction and interview, is a synthetic-failure paleoanalytical essay. The historian is assumed to be an expert in the field, and they use high academic standards, including direct references to influential figures and in-text citations. As such, the historian can be considered a reliable narrator. Aside from their role as a reliable narrator, the historian has little influence on the story itself. Rather, the historian acts as a buffer between the real-world authors and the fictional material, allowing the authors to relate factual information in a fictional format.

Akari Ishikawa is the sole fictional character outside of the narrator, and she appears indirectly in Chapter 2. She was a genetic engineer from Japan who developed a “lichenized fungus”—Pannaria Ishikawa—that efficiently absorbed carbon dioxide from the