Terrarium - Softcover

Sanders, Scott Russell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0253210216 ISBN 13: 9780253210210

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1996

Synopsis

With round-the-clock drugs, games, and eros parlors to entertain them and virtual weather to sustain them, humans live inside a global network of domed cities known collectively as the Enclosure. Having poisoned the biosphere, we’ve had to close ourselves off from the Earth. The cities of the Enclosure are scattered around the globe on the land and sea, and are connected by a web of travel tubes, so no one needs to risk exposure. Health Patrollers police the boundaries of the Enclosure to keep the mutants and pollution out.

Phoenix Marshall decodes satellite images for a living. He has spent all 30 years of his life in Oregon City, afloat on the Pacific Ocean. He busies himself with work and various forms of recreation to keep boredom at bay. One morning he opens his door to find Teeg Passio. Teeg is the same age as Phoenix, but she’s different; she’s menacingly and enticingly wild. She grew up on the outside. Her mother oversaw the recycling of the old cities, and her father helped design the Enclosure. Teeg works maintenance, which allows her to travel outside the walls. When she introduces Phoenix to her crew, he is drawn into a high-tech conspiracy that may threaten everything he understands. Are humans really better off within the Enclosure? Is the Earth? Are Health Patrollers keeping us safe or just keeping us in?

Teeg seduces Phoenix out of his orderly life, enlisting him in a secret, political, and sexual rebellion. Teeg and her co-conspirators, part mystics, part tech-wizards, dream of a life embedded in nature. Then one day, during a closely monitored repair mission on the outside, a typhoon offers the rebels a chance to escape the Enclosure and test their utopian dreams in the wilds.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In the 21st century, humanity has abandoned the Earth for the Enclosure: a network of cities, built from the salvage of the old world, sealed against all of nature. In Oregon City, a small group plans to escape to the wild Earth beyond the walls. United by something much more than just an idea, they meet in secret. But they are not unobserved. And what they find outside is not what they expect.

About the Author:

Scott Russell Sanders is an award-winning author of over 20 books of fiction and nonfiction with an environmental focus. Sanders’s work has been compared to that of Emerson and Thoreau, as well as to that of Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University Bloomington.

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0253210216
• ISBN 13: 9780253210210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288