Intelligent Life in the Universe [Paperback]

I. S. Shklovsky (Author), Carl Sagan (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Doubleday (June 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385284586
• ISBN-13: 978-0385284585
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,996,591 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Scientific study of finding extraterrestrial life., August 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Intelligent Life in the Universe (Paperback)

This is a detailed treatment of the scientific work done in the fields of cosmology and "exobiology" (i.e. extraterrestrial life). It is written for the layman, with paragraphs written in a smaller font that hammer out the technical details.

Sagan annotates the original Russian work of Shklovskii. Sagan's annotations help clarify some of Shklovskii's work by inserting examples and 'fer-instance's, offering opposing arguments, and telling charming tales in his incomparable way.

The book has three sections. The first deals with Cosmology, which is the study of the structure and composition of the universe. The second section deals with the origins of life, how it happened on Earth, and how life might form in extraterrestrial environments, such as on other planets. The third section details the search for extraterrestrial life.

The book will give a sense of awe for the reader who may not know, for example, that there are former stars in our galaxy which are as massive as our Sun, are the size of our Earth, and that spin 300 times a second! (These are the pulsars). The book also succeeds in giving the reader a sense of enormity both in the size and the age of the universe.

There are sections in the book that you will want to ignore because they are severely outdated. For example, there are several chapters dealing with the quest for life on other planets in our solar system, such as Mars. All of the Mars pictures in the book are of fuzzy images from ground-based observatories. This book was written before Voyager, Viking, and the Hubble Space Telescope. So when Sagan asks "Are there canals on Mars?" or "Are the moons of Mars artificial satelites?", you can just skip it (there aren't and they aren't).

On the other hand there is much relevent information that deal with radio contact among galactic civilizations (if there are such civilations). Here you can see the seeds of some of Sagan's later work in "The Cosmic Connection", "Cosmos", "Contact", and well others.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Read, June 25, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Intelligent Life in the Universe (Mass Market Paperback)

If you are interested in this issue, I highly recommend the book. This book is extremely thorough, so thorough it could be used as a textbook on an astrobiology class. It was written in the sixties so yes its out of date here and there, but much of the information is surprisingly current. You also get a great early taste of Sagan's writing style.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Absolutely Essential Read, January 17, 2003

By 

Fara Shimbo "Certified Public Nuisance" (Hygiene, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Intelligent Life In the Universe (Paperback)

I first read this book in the early 1970s, and have read many
since then, and it pained me somewhat to find that the book is now out of print. I can honestly say this is still, without any doubt
in my mind, the *best* starting place for the study of astronomy,
cosmology, astrobiology/xenobiology (call it what you will) and
all things extraterrestrial. The book gives you all the background information available at the time of its publication to understand
problems that are still profound to this day, in a step by step
method that is both an absorbing read and and a good bit of education in itself. Invaluable for both its conclusions and for the historical background it gives to current issues, well illustrated and beautifully far reaching, I most highly recommend this rare and wonderful book.