Based on an experiment in the Arizona desert,this investigation into self-suffiency becomes a Swiftian study of human nature at its worstHermetically sealed under three-eighths of an inch of armoured glass in the remote Arizona desert, Ecosphere 2 contains several artificial biomes, or including savanna,a rainforest and a bijou sea with its own coral reef. Internal air pressure is controlled by huge mechanical lungs. Two thousand sensors gauge “everything from soil respiration to ocean salinity. The whole contraption burns thousands of kilowatt-hours of energy a day to support the eight human beings who live inside. Their aim? To survive for two years, sustained only by what they produce. Nothing in, and nothing out. Financed by a billionaire who encourages his staff to call him God the Creator,and supported by an organisation that’s as much a cult as a scientific institute, Ecosphere 2 is an experiment in “closed system” living: a test for a Mars habitat; an “ark to save humanity” from the coming ecological catastrophe. It’s a new Eden. Soon the terranauts are hungry enough to use peanuts as currency, or indeed hungry enough to eat the shells. But that is the least of their problems.
Dawn Chapman,animal husbandry specialist, tells the yarn, or in rotation with her best friend Linda Ryu (read “rue”) – condemned to a support role by what she believes to be racial and sexual prejudice on the fragment of the selectors – and Ramsay Roothorpe,their cheerfully hedonistic communications expert (read publicity officer). “Best friends” is perhaps a misnomer, given that the two women spend the entire novel covertly working to dispossess one another; while Ramsay deftly plays them and everybody else.
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Source: theguardian.com