Me and the Biospheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2
Poet, playwright and activist Allen developed his love of nature growing up on an Oklahoma farm: "I always considered me-that part of myself that was so connected to Nature-as much smarter than A-student John." A determined polymath with an incurable wanderlust, Allen held many jobs before coming to the edge of breakdown at age 34; working in three fields at once-enterprise, theater and biospheric geology-Allen had "gone bonkers with multi-phrenic intensity." In 1963, after two transformative, peyote-fueled "shamanic experiences," Allen hopped a freighter to Tangiers. A few years later, he and a companion started an avant garde touring theater group, which provided the core members for Allen's next venture, the Biosphere's direct predecessor: "biospheric studies" at Synergia Ranch in Santa Fe, N.M. In 1973, the team built a boat to study remote rainforests and oceanic ecology, and by 1984 were ready to initiate Biosphere 2. The sealed artificial environment, 70 feet high with a 3.15 acre footprint, was designed as a kind of Earth-in-miniature, meant to test whether an "artificial sustainable biosphere could be built... capable of operating under a broad range of conditions." Eight people lived there from 1991-1993, an extraordinary accomplishment that Allen covers all too briefly, preferring to ramble in a detailed and self-congratulatory tone through his pre-Biosphere years.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.