Mark: Okay, Michelle. The Terraformers. Review it in exactly five words. Michelle: Sentient moose fights cosmic gentrification. Mark: Perfect. Mine is: Who owns a world, anyway? Michelle: I think both work! It’s this wild, sprawling story that feels both epic and incredibly personal. Mark: That pretty much nails it. Today we’re diving into The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. And what's so fascinating is that Newitz isn't just a novelist; they're a science journalist with a deep background in everything from urban history to technology. Michelle: You can really feel that, can't you? This isn't just a space opera with laser guns. It's a deeply thought-out exploration of urban planning, geology, and environmental justice on a planetary scale. It’s like a 60,000-year-long city council meeting, but with volcanoes and talking animals. Mark: And it was a Nebula Award finalist, so it's got serious sci-fi cred. The book asks this fundamental question: if a corporation builds a planet from scratch, does it get to own everything and everyone on it? Michelle: A question that kicks off with a bang. So where does this all start? You mentioned a moose fighting gentrification...

Mark: It starts with an Environmental Rescue Team ranger named Destry. She’s on the planet Sask-E, which is in the final stages of being terraformed by a mega-corporation called Verdance. Her job is to protect the brand-new ecosystems. Her partner in this is her mount, Whistle, who is a giant, genetically-engineered moose. Michelle: Okay, I have to stop you. A talking moose? How does that work? Mark: Through a brain-sender. He communicates via text. But here's the catch: Verdance, the corporation, uses something called an 'Intelligence Assessment' rating, or InAss, to limit the abilities of non-human people. So Whistle, despite being incredibly intelligent, is classified as a 'Mount' and his vocabulary is artificially restricted to simple, one-syllable words. Michelle: That is just… bleak. It’s like parental controls, but for your personhood. So what happens with Destry and Whistle? Mark: They're out in a new boreal forest when Destry smells smoke. She finds a man, Charter, who has set up an illegal camp. He's a tourist, a rich kid from off-world using a remote-controlled body to have what he calls an 'authentic Pleistocene experience.' He's speared a hare, built a fire, and is polluting the fragile environment. Michelle: Ah, the classic 'disrupting an ecosystem for the 'gram' tourist. I know his type. Mark: Exactly. Destry confronts him, tells him he's trespassing. And Charter is completely dismissive. He says, "Verdance is going to start selling it pretty soon. No harm done." He claims the planet is his 'birthright.' He even threatens Whistle. Michelle: Oh, that's a mistake. You don't threaten the talking moose. Mark: A fatal one. Destry, realizing this guy represents everything wrong with Verdance's model—treating the planet as a commodity—makes a split-second decision. In one fluid motion, she shoots the remote right between the eyes. Kills it. Michelle: Whoa! She just… shoots him? Isn't she supposed to be an environmental ranger? I thought the ERT handbook literally opens with "When in doubt, don’t kill anyone." Mark: It does! And that’s the core of the conflict. Destry breaks the number one rule because she sees this tourist not as a person, but as a destructive force, an extension of the corporate greed that threatens to undo all her work. She then meticulously composts his body and campsite to erase any trace, to protect the ecosystem from his remains. Michelle: That is hardcore. It’s like eco-vigilantism. But this has to have consequences, right? You can't just go around composting investors' sons. Mark: Oh, it does. Her corporate boss, Ronnie, is furious. But the bigger consequence is that this event sets Destry on a path of questioning everything. She starts to see the cracks in Verdance's control. And that leads her to the book's first massive revelation. A lava tube collapses on a volcano called Spider Mountain, revealing a strange, glowing, high-tech door where no door should be. Michelle: Let me guess. Not on the Verdance-approved building plans? Mark: Not even close. This area is supposed to be uninhabited. So Destry and her team go to investigate. They find the door, which turns out to be a sentient ship named Jaguar, and it's guarding a secret. Behind it lies Spider City. Michelle: A hidden city inside a volcano? Okay, now we're talking. Mark: And it's not just any city. It's a thriving, thousand-year-old civilization populated by a group called the Homo Archaea. They were the original terraformers of Sask-E. Verdance brought them in as a disposable workforce, designed to do the hard, dangerous early work and then 'die out' before the more 'valuable' Homo sapiens arrived to buy the real estate. Michelle: That is horrifying. So Verdance's business model was built on planned obsolescence, but for people. And they didn't die out. Mark: They didn't. They adapted. They went underground, built a self-sufficient society, and have been living in secret for a millennium. They have their own ERT, their own technology, their own philosophy. And their philosophy directly challenges Verdance's. Their guide, Lucky, tells Destry that in Spider City, they don't use the InAss system. He says, "We don’t buy into that cesspit logic down here. You're either alive or not. That's all that matters." Michelle: I love that. It's so simple and so radical. So the planet Verdance thinks is an empty commodity they're about to sell is actually home to a hidden, advanced civilization that they essentially left for dead. That's a bit of a wrinkle in the real estate prospectus. Mark: A huge wrinkle. And it gets worse for Verdance. The people of Spider City reveal that Verdance has diverted a major river, the Eel River, to feed future coastal developments. This is slowly killing the ecosystem around the volcano and threatening Spider City's water supply. The conflict is no longer theoretical; it's about survival. Michelle: And now Destry, the loyal ERT ranger, has to choose. Does she follow her corporate bosses, or does she side with the secret volcano people who represent everything the ERT is supposed to stand for? Mark: Exactly. And that choice, that initial spark of rebellion, sets up a conflict that echoes for centuries. The book then makes a huge leap, jumping forward 700 years, and the fight for the planet's soul looks completely different. Michelle: So, no more shooting rich tourists, I take it?

Mark: Not quite. The open warfare phase, which does happen, has ended. A treaty was signed. Spider City won its autonomy, but at a cost. They now owe Verdance two months of free labor every year—'treaty servitude,' as they call it. The new story follows Sulfur, a ranger from Spider City, and Misha, a network analyst from Verdance, who are forced to work together. Michelle: An odd couple. One from a collectivist, post-capitalist volcano utopia, the other a corporate employee. What’s their project? Mark: This is where Newitz's background in urban planning shines. Their mission is to design an intercity public transit system for Sask-E. Verdance, now competing with another corporation called Emerald, wants to build traditional train tracks. Michelle: That sounds… surprisingly normal for 60,000 years in the future. Mark: Ah, but there's a catch. Misha, the Verdance analyst, has a cynical realization. The planet is still geologically active. The climate is still changing. Any route they build with fixed tracks will be obsolete almost immediately. He suspects Verdance knows this. Michelle: Wait, what? Why would they propose it then? Mark: Because it's designed to fail. They build a flawed system, it breaks down, and then the corporations can say, 'See? Public transit is too expensive and unreliable.' It gives them the perfect excuse to abandon the project and let the cities remain isolated and dependent on corporate transport. Michelle: That is the most cynically brilliant corporate scheme I've ever heard. Propose a solution you know will fail, so you can blame 'public transit' as a concept and never have to fund it again. It feels… uncomfortably familiar. Mark: It’s cosmic-level gentrification strategy. But the ERT team, led by the folks from Spider City, comes up with a counter-proposal. They use a corporate loophole—an executive from the rival company hates Ronnie from Verdance and spitefully says 'no tracks on my land'—to propose something radical. They say, okay, no tracks. We'll make flying trains. Michelle: Okay, flying trains. That sounds more futuristic. Mark: But here's the revolutionary part. They aren't just vehicles. The team from Spider City, drawing on their philosophy that all life has value, decides to make the trains sentient. They are living, breathing, thinking people. Michelle: Hold on. They're building people to be a subway system? How is that not just a different, even more horrifying, kind of slavery? You're literally creating a life form to be a bus. Mark: That's the exact question Misha, the Verdance guy, asks! He's horrified because he himself was 'custom-built' by Verdance for his job and feels like a tool. He says, "I’m a person who was custom built to suit a bunch of contracts... And I don’t want to do that to anyone else." Michelle: I'm with Misha on this one. This sounds ethically nightmarish. Mark: But Spider City's philosophy is different. Obsidian, their head of urban planning, explains their view of government. She says, "A government's job is to recognize people, to help them make their own agreements with each other—and if you do your job well, those people become your political allies." They aren't building tools; they're expanding their community. They're creating a new species that will be a self-governing, voting member of their public transit authority. Michelle: So the train can vote on its own routes? And maybe go on strike for better oil changes? Mark: Precisely! And to ensure this isn't just another form of exploitation, Sulfur, the ranger from Spider City, makes a profound commitment. They decide to become the first train's parent. A lifelong commitment to raise it, socialize it, and ensure its autonomy and well-being. Michelle: Wow. So they're not just manufacturing a product. They're raising a child who happens to be a public transit system. That completely reframes it. It's not about creating a worker; it's about creating a citizen. Mark: Exactly. It's a radical act of political creation. They are fighting corporate control not with weapons, but by birthing a new, autonomous, public-serving life form. It's resistance through bio-engineering and civic design.

Michelle: So we go from one ranger making a brutal, individual choice in the woods, to a whole society deciding to birth a new form of life as a political act. The scale and method of resistance completely changes over the centuries. Mark: And that's the genius of Newitz's long-term view, which some reviewers found slow but is so essential to the book's point. The revolution isn't a single event. It's a process. The final part of the book jumps forward again, and the ultimate act that topples the corporations isn't a battle at all. It's a piece of investigative journalism. Michelle: You're kidding. After all that, it comes down to a strongly worded article? Mark: A very strongly worded article! It's called 'The Moose Report,' and it's written by a data historian who happens to be a cat named Moose. Michelle: Of course it is. A cat named Moose. This book is fantastic. Mark: Moose digs into the corporate archives and uncovers Verdance and Emerald's original sin. The 'exclusive' H. sapiens germline they've been licensing to settlers for exorbitant fees? It was stolen. They took it from a public biobank on Venus. It was supposed to be free for all humanity. Michelle: No way. So their entire business model, their claim to ownership, is based on fraud. They're charging people for their own bodies, which should have been public domain. Mark: Exactly. The Moose Report goes viral across the solar system. The corporations are hit with massive lawsuits. Their legitimacy collapses. The revolution wasn't won with a weapon; it was won with a historical fact. Michelle: That completely redefines what a 'revolution' even is. It's not one big, glorious battle. The book seems to be saying the real, lasting revolution happens in the boring details—in policy meetings, in historical archives, in how you design a bus route. Mark: That's the beautiful, hopeful message at the heart of it. One of the characters says it perfectly near the end: "The revolution is actually happening in the boring details, like how you manage housing and water, or who is allowed to speak." The fight for a better world is the long, slow, generational work of building better systems. Michelle: It makes you wonder, what are the 'boring details' in our own world that hold the key to a better future? The things we overlook because they don't seem as exciting as a protest or a battle. Mark: That's the question the book leaves you with. It's an incredibly optimistic and thought-provoking take on building a future. We'd love to hear what you all think. What are the 'boring' systems you think could change the world? Join the conversation on our social channels. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.