The Terranauts
-
- 69,00 kr
Publisher Description
Linda is desperate to be one of the lucky eight chosen to take part in the world's most ambitious ecological experiment. Gazing longingly at Ecosphere II, which rises like a spaceship from the Arizona desert, Linda knows she can survive under its glass dome. Competition is fierce between the hopefuls, among them smooth-talking PR man Ramsay, and Dawn, a naïve beauty. All are certain that they would never, ever, break closure before two years are up – unlike their discredited predecessors.
Inside this humid microcosm, the terranauts' labours over crops and livestock, their battles with creepy crawlies, their hostilities and sexual dalliances are all observed by the tourists who come to gawp, Mission Control's cameras and the watchful eye of the media. As the crew struggles to control nature, and hunger sets in, the snake in this Eden starts to look unmistakably human.
Inspired by real-life events, The Terranauts is a darkly comic, acutely insightful story of human behaviour, animal instincts, idealism and ambition. Placing utopian visions and individual motives under the microscope, this is T. C. Boyle at his acerbic, pitch-perfect best.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his 16th novel, Boyle (The Harder They Come) weaves a sprawling tale of achievement, yearning, pride, and human weakness. On March 6, 1994, eight "Terranauts" from different scientific backgrounds enter E2, a sealed three-acre world within a world outside Tillman, Ariz., to embark on the grand hundred-year vision of billionaire futurist Jeremiah Reed (known portentously as "God the Creator"), "one of the first to recognize that our species... was well on its way to destroying or at least depleting the global ecosystem and might just need an escape valve." Narrated by Dawn Chapman, the affable, telegenic darling of the crew; Linda Ryu, the book's id and a spurned Terranaut whose close friendship with Dawn sours as the project wears on; and Ramsay Roothoorp, the sexually adventurous man-child whose incessant rationalizing, political plays, and mercurial personality provide much of the story's humor (and twisted psychological insight), the two-year mission exposes the fragility of interpersonal relationships and tests the limits of the human body. In a multilayered work that recalls the tragicomic realism of Saul Bellow and John Updike, Boyle observes his characters with scientific rigor and a good deal of genuine empathy as they struggle to maintain their identities in the most communal of settings.
