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Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All Possibilities. By Rebecca Reider. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. 326 pp., $39.95, hardback, ISBN 978-0-8263-4673-5.
Biosphere II was an elaborate construction south of Tucson enclosing a mimic of earth's ecosystems and eight Biospherians for two years beginning on September 26, 1991. What was its purpose? Was it a scientific experiment meant to reveal the path to sustainability? Or was it a prototype space module meant to show how humans could live independently of earth in a closed system? Then why was it actually an open system, "a Garden of Eden on top of an aircraft carrier," powered by an electrical generator running on fossil fuels (102)? Was it meant mostly as a metaphor, in a phrase of its creator, "a theater...