If planets could talk

摘要

IF YOU could build an Earthlike planet, what would you leave out of the design specs? That is the question I asked a handful of mildly amused scientists as I began to write my latest novel, The Terraformers. It is the story of a group of construction experts who are working for a shady interplanetary real estate development company. Their mandate is to create a branded Pleistocene experience like that on palaeolithic Earth 15,000 years ago, for people in Homo sapiens bodies who crave that authentic Earth je ne sais quoi.