Customer Reviews

Colonizing the Planets and Stars (Isaac Asimov's Library of the Universe)

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When I was in early elementary school, the book I read over and over again was, "You Will Go To the Moon." It was a simplified version of the path that a young person would take if they were to travel to the moon. This was before the actual moon landings, so at that point no one really knew what the surface of the moon was like.
This book is a brief description of humans from their evolutionary origins in Africa to the present and some speculations on what their ultimate destiny will be. While humans are by nature explorers, there is a fundamentally different aspect to space colonization. It is far more expensive and when the Europeans set out to explore and colonize the globe, they found air and water easily available nearly everywhere they went. That is not the case with space travel, all the necessities of life will have to be part of their travel apparatus.
Asimov is once again at the top of his writing form, explaining in clear detail what it will be like when humans decide that Earth is simply not big enough for the entire human race. Once that decision is made, the expansion will be rapid and humans, being the tenacious creatures that they are, will go to other worlds and stay there. It is very likely that Asimov has described exactly how that will be done.