For this issue, Pyne, an environmental historian, tells a story of the so-called Pyrocene, a term he coined in 2015 in “an attempt to summarize everything I’ve learned” about fire’s intimate relationship with humanity. He has written nearly 30 books on the subject but has struggled throughout his career to find an academic home for his fire-focused work, which didn’t fit cleanly into one department. The subject “was never taught, certainly not at the places where I went to school.” For Pyne’s part, though, he sees fire as an aspect of biology—“a creation of the living world and dependent on the living world.”