Newsweek

Doom With a Side Salad: T.C. Boyle's Cheerful Pessimism

Writer's latest novel, 'The Terranauts,' is the story of a Biosphere-2-like experiment to prepare for the colonization of space.
Novelist T.C. Boyle photographed at his home in Montecito, on March 20, 2015. Boyle is a fixture of the Southern California literary scene, and the recipient of the 2015 Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement.
11_18_TCBoyle_01

It was one of those perfect Southern California afternoons, the sun peeking through a thick grove of trees, the air just a touch autumnal. I was eating lunch with the novelist T.C. Boyle in the backyard of his Frank Lloyd Wright–designed house in Montecito, the posh enclave of Santa Barbara where he has lived for more than two decades, raising three children with his wife of 42 years. His black puli, Ilka, played happily on the deck.

“It’s quite clear to me that our species is on the way out,” Boyle said casually, as if the scene had grown just a little too suburban. It is the novelist’s job, after all, to jostle us out of our comforts, while being entertaining—that is, to make discomfort pleasurable. Boyle has proved remarkably capable in this regard through his 26 works of fiction, which combine the zany humor of early Woody Allen with An Inconvenient Truth’s concern for our collective fate.

Boyle’s latest novel, , is set in the desert of Arizona—which, with global warming on the rise, much of California is starting to resemble. It is the story of a Biosphere 2–like experiment to prepare for the colonization of space, giving humanity the chance to ruin another planet with Starbucks-laden strip malls. There had been encouraging news that day about SpaceX, the Mars mission overseen by Tesla founder Elon Musk. “Elon Musk is a great, great, great visionary,” Boyle told me. “However, I think he’s mistaken. I don't think it's possible to re-create an ecosystem.” Besides, Boyle mused, the class politics of space colonies are sure to be brutal to those who can’t afford a ticket to get up and out. “Who’s gonna be left behind to die in their own

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Newsweek

Newsweek6 min read
Country Has Won Our Achy Breaky Hearts
COUNTRY MUSIC IS ENJOYING A HUGE RESUR-gence—and showing signs that it is becoming more inclusive. With both Beyoncé and Lana Del Rey having announced that they’re releasing country albums this year, and country songs regularly going viral on TikTok,
Newsweek2 min read
Ramy Youssef
DESCRIBING RAMY YOUSSEF’S WORK ISN’T EASY, BECAUSE HE REFUSES TO settle on just one thing. “I feel really inspired to connect in the way that it makes sense.” That started out with stand-up, but has since morphed into acting, writing, directing and p
Newsweek4 min read
Valerie Bauman
Q _ Were you ultimately successful in your quest to conceive? A _ I am currently pregnant, due in mid-May. I can’t wait to meet my son! Is there anything you would have done differently along the way? There is a donor I mention in the book who I wo

Related Books & Audiobooks