How a planet turned a personality in my new novel

My new novel The Terraformers explores what you would possibly embrace – and miss – in the event you had been constructing an Earth-like planet. I spoke to some scientists to see what would possibly work, says Annalee Newitz

By Annalee Newitz

IF YOU may construct an Earth-like planet, what would you allow out of the design specs? That’s the query I requested a handful of mildly amused scientists as I started to write down my newest novel, The Terraformers.

It’s the story of a bunch of building specialists who’re working for a shady interplanetary actual property improvement firm. Their mandate is to create a branded Pleistocene expertise like that on palaeolithic Earth 15,000 years in the past, for individuals in Homo sapiens our bodies who crave that genuine Earth je ne sais quoi.

The factor is, if you’re …