Sublime

“The optimum population,” said Mustapha Mond, “is modelled on the iceberg—eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.”

Much closer to realization is an effort to bring back the American chestnut tree. The tree, once common in the eastern United States, was all but wiped out by chestnut blight. (The blight, a fungal pathogen introduced in the early twentieth century, killed off nearly every chestnut in North America—an estimated four billion trees.) Researchers at t

The first moon colony was built on the silent flatlands of the Sea of Tranquility, near where the Apollo 11 astronauts had landed in a long-ago century. Their flag was still there, in the distance, a fragile little statue on the windless surface. There was substantial interest in immigration to the colony. Earth was so crowded by then, and such swa

There is a small volcanic island called Ascension, situated in the mid-Atlantic between South America and West Africa. It is one of the most unappetizing landing spots on the map: jagged with rocks, waterless, and far from everything. “A crow would break his leg trying to land there,” joked one visitor. Yet in early 1942 the U.S. Army engineers had