Space to Live:
The Search for an Alternative Home for Humanity
by Roderick J. Hill (Prometheus Books)
This book is different from the other books that I have read on this topic in that it operates dispassionately. It is not polemic. It is not manifesto. The argumentation is slight and not forceful. The writing is dry, but the author will use tables and such for clarity and presentation.
It starts with the origins of life on Earth. This would seem to be a bit of a detour from living in space, but the book is focused on the Fermi Paradox – the idea that since space is as big and as long as it is, even if intelligent life elsewhere is super-rare, we ought to have seen some evidence by now of it. Taking up the ‘Great Filter’ solution – that life tends to get destroyed, either by natural or self-inflicted wound, the existence of the Great Filter becomes the primary argument for space exploitation: it is how we avoid it.
Superficially similar to arguments from other proponents that we have to become a multi-planetary species, it shares the same flaw as they do – that a disaster that dooms the earth would not also doom (in one way or another) any post-earth habitation, with an additional layer of recursive logic. If the Great Filter exists, then it would be incredibly odd to imagine that the Earth is the first place to realize it exists.
But the triple-flip is the book is rather bearish on said ‘alternative home.’ It lists off the challenges in extensive detail, and here it is downright useful in its general ambivalence. Treating it all as a big maybe creates the space for reasonable debate, without a specific side. It does lean towards the Singularity, but make it fashion argument, similar but distinct from The Giant Leap, where it accepts a future without humans but with human machines.
It feels basic. This may be an artifact of me reading several books on this topic, but particularly with its sort of first-principals approach in describing everything there is about earth, space, and civilization-destroying events, I feel like many readers will already be versed in most of what the book has to say. Of course, there is someone that is not the case for, which makes it ideal, and the general breadth of the elements and sub-elements is impressive.
So, particularly if you feel totally in the dark about space and what extra-planetary/solar living might or might not be, it is a useful read. But there is something of an audience problem here.
My thanks to the author, Rodrick J. Hill, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Prometheus Books, for making the ARC available to me.
CITATION HEEDED 