drama in the desert

Four men and four women spend two years in an enclosed environment. They're isolated from the earth, but they can have visitors at a visitor window.  And since it's all a bit of a media spectacle as well as a science experiment, tourists can come gawk at the inhabitants at all hours.

The crew has to grow all their own food, take care of all medical needs, process their waste - if y'know what I'm sayin' - survive, not go crazy, and not kill each other.  Among other things.

I recently read T. C. Boyle's "The Terranauts".  It's a novel based on the real-life Biosphere 2 experiment from back in the early 90's.  Remember?

The book is described as "an intimate and epic story of science, society, sex, and survival..."  and I think that about sums it up.

It's rare for me to like a novel of which I don't particularly like any of the characters.  This one turned out to be one of those.  The chapters bounce around from the point of views of three of the main characters:  a female crew member, a male crew member, and a female on the outside who was passed over for this mission, but is destined to be part of the next crew.

As expected, it does get a bit soap opera-y.  In such a situation, there's gonna be drama.  But I didn't think it got too overly dramatic, although maybe it didn't need to be quite so long.  It seemed like some of the drama dragged on, but maybe that was to make us appreciate that they were stuck in there for a whole two years.

So you get

• one guy who has a tough time keeping it in his pants and
• the woman who clings then hates him for it
• another woman who thinks her boyfriend on the outside will wait for her
• a guy who's probably autistic and misreads a woman's intentions
• a medical doctor who must track everyone's vitals
• starvation
• oxygen depletion
• cooling system malfunction
• faction forming
• the rich people on the outside funding the whole thing and not wanting to look bad

Oh and I might mention

• four crew members who become two exclusive couples
• one female crew member who decides against the mandated birth control because it isn't "natural"

...  and so on.

So, yeah, I liked it well enough.  If nothing else, I found the science of the Biosphere 2 quite interesting, even though the real-life experiment exposed its shortcomings.  The facility still stands just outside of Tucson, AZ and is owned by the University of Arizona, which uses it for ongoing research.

Maybe I'll go check it out.  I've got these airline miles...

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Linking up again with Mama Kat for the prompt:
3. Book review!