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Fiction Off the grid THE TERRANAUTS T. C. Boyle 508 pp. Harper Collins Reviewed by Marty Carlock Can a self-sustaining biosphere be created on, say, Mars to enable human beings to live on an alien planet? Theorists think so. A couple of decades ago an attempt to perform this experiment actually took place in the Arizona desert; it was called Biosphere2. Although a crew stayed inside for two years, they cheated on several crucial levels, such as importing outside oxygen. T. Coraghessan Boyle, one of our more prolific and entertaining contemporary novelists, satirizes the experiment in The Terranauts . In his fecund imagination, another mission is undertaken (with snide references to the actual, failed one). Boyle has no problem visualizing the probabilities as eight “Terranauts” attempt to survive for two years in an artificial environment. E2 (E1 is the actual Earth, outside) is carefully planned: Its three acres comprise five biomes – rain forest, ocean, desert, savanna and marsh. The...