A sealed experiment, sold as salvation.

Eight carefully selected “Terranauts” volunteer to live inside a self-contained biosphere for two years, tasked with proving that humans can survive in a closed ecological system—off-planet, if it comes to it. Inside, everything is monitored. Everything from oxygen levels, crop yields, bodily rhythms, psychological drift. Outside, the project is a media spectacle, a corporate gamble, and is at the same time eroding into myth. 

The novel tracks the group as the system begins to fail in small, compounding ways. It begins with food shortages, oxygen dips, interpersonal fractures. Then, it worsens. Boyle moves between perspectives, showing how idealism curdles into competition, obsession, and control. Relationships tighten, hierarchies emerge; the experiment becomes less about ecology and more about power, ego, and the need to be seen succeeding.

Funny how you can't seal human behaviour off from the environment it creates. The “closed system” isn’t just the dome—it’s the social logic inside it.

Bloomsbury uncorrected proof (advance reading copy), 2016. Light surface wear to covers with minor rubbing and faint creasing. Clean internally, no inscriptions. A solid proof copy—uncommon in this format.