Book description
Biosphere rises from southern Arizona's high desert like a bizarre hybrid spaceship and greenhouse. Packed with more than 3,800 carefully selected plant, animal, and insect species, this mega-terrarium is one of the world's most biodiverse, lush, and artificial wildernesses. Only recently transformed from an abandoned ghost dome to a University…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Dreaming the Biosphere as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The Biosphere 2 project was the wackiest multimillion-dollar enterprise to emerge from the New Age movement. This book is a nonfiction account of how a New Mexico commune, with a charismatic leader, developed a plan to test the viability of off-planet living by creating a sealed-off biosphere, which would be a self-sustaining and organizing ecosystem in which humans could survive. The goal was to create not a sterile environment but one that supported life that would make off-planet living appealing. The four men and four women sequestered for two years in the 3.14-acre domed-off area outside Tucson grew into two…
From Fred's list on The best books about botched space colonization efforts.
The picture turns complex and darker with this detailed and utterly fascinating history of the cult (not to mince words) behind the conception and construction of the fabled and (sort of) failed Biosphere 2 in the red desert (could have been Mars) near Tucson, as well as its first (and it turned out only) 2-year “mission”. Guess what is Biosphere 1? And to what extent this multi-billion-dollar experimental human-inhabited terrarium was a trial run for escape from it?
From Anthony's list on The best ecotopian adventures (and misadventures).
If you love Dreaming the Biosphere...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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