Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Planetary Defense: A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion

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An Introduction to Planetary Defense by Travis S. Taylor, et al., is a very comprehensive and scientific look at the possibility of and preparation for an alien contact and/or invasion. Opening up the book with a thorough and concise outline of the entire textbook (allowing one to easily prepare for an opening for a thesis paper), Taylor and Bob Boan waste no time in diving into the science and probabilities (or lack thereof) of an alien contact or invasion. Using graph's for visual assistance, they are able to easily explain scientific theories and examples that were once restricted to the realm of the scientific community. Boan's careful research, blended with Taylor's penchant for converting the incomprehensible to layman's terms, this book is the first step in the proper direction.

The book is divided into 7 main chapters, with subsections inside each. Each chapter focuses on one area of alien contact or invasion. These chapters are simple, so I took the liberty of shortening the chapter titles (or altering them to make this fun):
1) Chances of an alien invasion
2) Warfare with aliens
3) Which aliens are friendly, which want us for lunch
4) Do we need to know?
5) Did we say hello, or are you our lunch?
6) Who's prepared, and who's preparing?
7) Conclusion

While renaming the chapter titles may seem redundant, it is just one way that any student or professor can look at this book and not easily dismiss it as simply science fiction. The book should be in some classes, from politics to theoretical engineering, possibly even ethics. Each class could benefit from having a book such as this in the classroom, let alone the higher ups in our own government.

So we ask the authors, could we possibly exist with aliens?

One example given within the book is a very simple graph drawn up by the four authors (R.C. Anding and T. Conley Powell contributed) showing what class the aliens could fall within. The Central Limit Theorem suggests all types of aliens. The graph also notes (arrogantly) that the humans would be in the middle of the road, or we would have neutral intent. On the far left side of the graph would be the aliens who would be indifferent to our well-being. Imagine the aliens from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who are blowing up Earth to build the super highway. On the far right, the same thing. In between are three mediums; the "Utopian" aliens, who want to see us benefit from their existence; the neutrals, or aliens who just see us, shrug, and wonder what we're going to do; and finally, the hostile, or what I call the "Ringo"-type aliens, who view us as lunch. This graph and example within the book is just one of many.

Planetary Defense is a very enlightening textbook, one that should also be mandatory at all war colleges for those with space programs, or any form of military. While the chances of a hostile alien species finding us is minute, we also believed that for the longest time, hijacker's taking over a plane and driving it into a tower to kill thousands of people was minute as well. This fact in itself should make people reserve judgment for this splendid book until they have read it, digested the facts and formed their own opinion from the offered material.

While the book is very meaty and sound in the science department (it had better be, with who authored it), there were some editorial errors in the book which did detract me a bit. I enjoyed the book, don't get me wrong. But if the publisher, BrownWalker Press, intends for this to be a college textbook, they may want to ensure that English professors who read this won't immediately pull their hair out in frustration.

Then again, this book might also have the classic scientist Utopian community pulling out their hair as well.

Fair trade.

First, some bona-fides. In my previous military career, I flew B-52Gs as an Electronic Warfare Officer, Instructor Electronic Warfare Officer, and Staff Instructor Electronic Warfare Officer, with a combined total of over 4500 hours of in-flight and simulator time, and spent 18 months on the Battle Staff of the 42nd Bombardment Wing (Heavy). I've helped plan missions that have never been flown (i.e. monthly contingency planning exercises), and planned what became the first few nights of B-52s in Operation DESERT STORM, 2 years before Kuwait was invaded.

Dr. Taylor's book provides the same type of background information on tactics, strategy, and alternatives as we used in formulating effective missions. The information is concise and informative, and yet engagingly written. This book needs to be on the reading list of every Intelligence officer as well as part of the reading for mid-level and higher Officer Development, and definitely covered during War College attendence.

And, frankly, it's also a interesting read, and would also make an interesting special for something like the Discovery Network. While written as a scholarly textbook, the level is suitable for the average college graduate.

This book is billed as the first, serious look by defense professionals at how the people of Earth might analyze, comprehend and then defend against an Alien invasion. There are interesting and thought provoking ideas here but, their impact is lessened considerably and the credibility of the entire book itself is called into question by the occasionally illogical, and often clumsy and semi-literate writing style of the authors, for example, p.15 "If we are the only intelligent life form in the universe, why is there such a vast universe?" or p. 21 "It is most likely that any advanced civilization could eventually detect any lesser-advanced civilization." or p. 49 "We must refrain from automatically assigning the science of Earth as the set of natural laws that govern other celestial bodies. The natural laws, or at the least the understanding of them, are probably different in each alien civilization"

Given the book's subject, impeccable presentation is essential to convince readers that this is a serious book by professionals on a very serious topic; anything less relegates the book to science fiction status and feeds the "giggle factor." Such a book as this could hold crucial ideas if we were ever faced with such an invasion but, it needs a complete re-write to be anywhere near as informative and influential as it could be. Attention also needs to be paid to upgrading many of the illustrations, which are also less than professional in quality.

This book is NOT a joke. It is a serious first attempt to discuss the possibility that Earth will be visited by beings from 'out there.' The four authors are all scientists working in some aspect of the space program.

They treat the possibility of contact by alien species with all seriousness. Then they extend that possibility to analyzing the intents of aliens that might visit with the range of attitudes on their going from benevolent to hostile. They clearly understand that mankind is going to be at a much lower technology level than any proposed visitor. After all, the fact that they can come here and we can't go there.

They then discuss the logical extension of some of our advanced weapons development programs into weapons that might be effective against aliens. There are no breakthroughs here, these are weapons that are within our concept and which are being worked on to some extent already. But it is a good analysis of future concepts.

Finally they propose that an organization be set up to begin thinking about and planning for first contact. I have to disagree with them here. As I read the papers, there are an incredible number of people who would strenuously object to doing such a thing while there are still hungry people, homeless people, poor people, etc. etc. And congress would listen.

All in all, this is an excellent book to read. It lays out the possibilities and provides some in depth thinking that makes good sense.

This book is a major let down. The language used is often clumsy and confusing. The references are hardly scholarly, including many science fiction films and novels, not to mention Wikipedia. You read that correctly, the text cites Wikipedia for a definition of "mecha."

The authors also suggest that internet searches will yield relevant information if desired. That's right, I paid for a book to tell me to look it up on Google. Graphs are referred to that were clearly left out of the book; for example, page 67 has a giant blank space where figure 2.3 belongs. Figures 2.2 and 2.4 are present, and figure 2.3 is referenced, but is absent. Additionally, the political slant presented is painfully obvious, tacky, and irrelevant.

While the topic of extraterrestrial attack allows for a great deal of speculation, the content they offer is poorly conceived, and there is very little offered at that. It appears that the formula for this book is: "[insert interesting topic] is beyond the scope of this book." The ideas that are presented are incongruous. For example, the authors describe at length the importance of developing laser-based weaponry, as it is assumed that light speed weapons will be of greater value than, say, nuclear missiles which are merely hypersonic. Fair enough. The authors then postulate that extraterrestrials will likely be able to travel at speeds at least 100 times greater than the speed of light. It appears to me that this would render the light speed lasers quite useless.

The authors seem to trapped in the mindset of the military-industrial complex, going as far as to advocate for a renewed global nuclear arms race. Don't bother with this book. I'll save you the money and offer this abridged addition:

-Enrico Fermi was a moron, as were all scientists who came after him until us. We are extremely clever.
-Carl Sagan was a jerk. It's not relevant, we just wanted you to know.
-We need hover tanks.
-The United States should put nukes in space and not tell anyone.
-If extraterrestrials are ever discovered, DO NOT TELL ANYONE! Loose lips sink ships don't ya' know.
-All electronic communications should be ceased immediately. We will live underground like moles.
-SETI is dumb, and so are you if you even consider any other possibility.
-Watch Independence Day and War of the Worlds (2005). That's all we did.
-The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan sure are great, aren't they? Heck, all war is great!

In all likelihood, there are genuinely good ideas lurking somewhere in this book. Unfortunately, the authors' credibility is repeatedly undermined by poor writing. Typographical and basic grammar errors occur on nearly every page, and chapter content wildly oscillates between broad, undefended assumptions and clumsily-articulated technical minutiae. There is little evidence that this book was subjected to any sort of editing.

A few examples to give the potential buyer pause:

1. From the introduction: "A fundamental belief in many religions is that there is an omnipotent, benevolent Supreme Being who is the creator. If the Supreme Being is truly omnipotent, there could not be an accident. There could not be a result that is unexpected, only ones that are predetermined. An experiment could not go awry. An experiment could not have a bad ending except by design. A bad ending would be inconsistent with the benevolence of this so-called creator. The outcome would be well known at the beginning." I leave to the reader to decide whether the clumsiness and redundancy of this passage is more or less appalling than the fact that it is used to support an argument in favor of the existence of extraterrestrials.

2. In the middle of the book, the authors digress into a detailed account of a meeting between a young Dr. Taylor and Carl Sagan, who was apparently unenthusiastic about discussing the Strategic Defense Initiative at length with a stranger while getting into his car during a rain storm. This is presented as proof that Carl Sagan is an elitist "jerk."

3. The book's illustrations are generally awful, in most cases having apparently been copied from public websites.

For readers looking for a balanced, elegantly-written exploration of similar topics, I recommend "Contact with Alien Civilizations," by Michael Michaud. It's a far better value for the money.

Every so often I'll take on a review of something that I normally wouldn't give a second glance. When I was contacted for a review of An Introduction to Planetary Defense - A Study of Modern Warfare Applied to Extra-Terrestrial Invasion by Travis S. Taylor, Bob Boan, R. C. Anding and T. Conley Powell, I'll admit my first reaction was "you've got to be kidding". But after a short reconsideration, I decided to give it a shot. Surprisingly, it's a serious treatment of a subject populated all too often by the crackpot fringe...

Contents: The Statistics - Probability of an Alien Invasion; Warfare with ET - Humans vs. Aliens Weapons, Tactics, & Strategies for Human Defense; Motive Based Classification of Extra-Terrestrials; The "Need to Know"; First Response, Second Response, Third Response - Did We Get It Right? Did We Win?; The Sixth Column - Somebody Should Be Preparing; Conclusions and Discussions; Bibliography; Index

The authors, all highly educated experts in their fields, decided to apply serious science to the matter of defending earth from an alien invasion. They start from the perspective of probabilities... how likely is it that there's life out there, and that they might come looking for us? The discussion then moves to the type of tactics that could be employed by either side, as well as what type of alien we might end up with (curious? benevolent? hostile?). They cover whether the government has the responsibility to inform the public of alien contact (the answer isn't what you'd expect), and what is to be expected in a protracted conflict. Finally, there's the call to action for what we should be doing now to prepare for the possibility of an alien encounter sometime in the future. While I was ready to watch these writers get all worked up over something that's pretty remote, the opposite happened. It was a rational look at what could be expected, and how the Hollywood responses don't actually make much sense when you examine them in the light of hard science.

I thought their parallels of an alien invasion to the white man visiting the island tribes was pretty close to reality. An advanced culture showing up, beyond the imagination of the more primitive culture, and there was no defense in place. While their call to action is logical in a perfect world, the reality is that there's no way that a group of governments would fund something like this when there are far more pressing issues that need to be dealt with immediately. Conversely, who knows *what* programs the military backs without us knowing...

I'd recommend this book as an excellent research tool for anyone writing a science fiction book or producing a movie involving invasion. Some time spent here will lead to a much more realistic portrayal of the problems we'd face if "Independence Day" became a reality...

An Introduction to Planetary Defense is theoretical non-fiction, presented in textbook fashion. The theory however is sound. Are there aliens? No one can answer that with certainty until aliens visit and make themselves known. This book makes no attempt to prove aliens exist, nor do the authors try to convince you they are coming and will kill you. What they do say is, if they are out there, do we want them to drop in unannounced? Should we advertise that we are here and defenseless?
The weapons of the future are taken directly from Science Fiction with only a few references to Science Fact, but then again, what is science fact but yesterday's science fiction. The author's theories for defense are possible, common sense things we can all do today. Will these things save us? Probably not. At least not as a race if Aliens are hostile. In a perfect world, we'd all work together to defend ourselves from this possible threat, but in reality, how can one convince the world to prepare for an unknown threat when they can't be convinced to prepare for a known one. I refer to terrorists and Radical Islamic Fundamentalists of course.
On the whole, I enjoyed this book. I found it informative and even entertaining for a textbook. There were at least forty chuckles and one or two good, humorous, laughs, but with that were the few times my eyes glazed over at some of the formula. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in defense either against aliens or the enemies our country currently faces. There are facts here that could, and perhaps should, be applied to current world situations.

... now they just need some guys who understand the "scientific" bits well enough not to screw them up, a guy who can "write", and, oh --- an "editor" would be nice as well.

So it reads like a first draft of a term paper by an enthusiastic but academically mediocre freshman --- what else is wrong?

Lots.

Since I'm a scientist, I'm going to focus on the science part of this book (the first 60 pages --- for the record, though, I have read the whole thing). I have no strong opinion on the factual content that follows p60 (the writing is uniformly terrible throughout the book), but the science part is drivel. Here are some of the major problems with p1-60:

(1) (Not really science but something needs to be said) The dedication (p5) states quite baldly that "we must prepare for alien invasion because of September 11th" (I'm paraphrasing). Is that number 439 or 440 on the conservative wishlist of actions that must be taken "because of September 11th"? Help me out here --- I'm losing count.

(2) On p17, the following "argument" is given (again, I'm paraphrasing): "There is at least one intelligent civilization in our galaxy. Therefore, there ought to be at least one intelligent civilization in every galaxy. Since there are billions of galaxies, there ought to be billions of intelligent civilizations"! By the same logic, since there is at least one person in the square foot of the earth's surface that I'm standing on, and since the earth's surface area is about 5 million billion square feet, there should be at least 5 million billion people on this planet. Get it? Got it? Good.

(3) The treatment of Drake's Equation is nonsensical. DE is a fun toy for thinking about ETs, but since we have ABSOLUTELY NO INFORMATION about how big or small the last couple of terms are, DE allows us to infer NOTHING about the existence of ETs. And certainly not to write bold-faced drivel like (p26): "So, more than two hundred thousand traveling civilizations should be in range of Earth!"

(4) (Not really science but something needs to be said) If you're not American and you buy this book, be prepared for a lot of jingoistic flag-waving.

(5) (Not really science but something needs to be said) If you're a Democrat and you buy this book, be prepared for the obligatory bouts of (i) Reagan Worship, and, (ii) Clinton Bashing.

(6) Another reviewer already tackled the authors' (willful?) misinterpretation of the Fermi Paradox. 'nuff said.

(7) There's a breathtakingly stupid attempt to use the Central Limit Theorem (think back to your Intro Stats course) to ... well ... Actually, I can't bring myself to say it, so I'll just quote from p57: "From the logic of the central limit theorem we can extrapolate that the types of creatures and their motivations that could exist in our universe should follow a Gaussian distribution" (which, for the uninitiated, means a Bell-curve). No. Actually you can't. This is wishful thinking that belongs in an SF novel, not in a serious nonfiction book. Oh, and, read the list of "normally distributed phenomena" on p56 with skepticism. Contrary to what the authors claim, some of those phenomena are not normally distributed.

Sigh. Let me finish by hoping that some day the authors hire someone with a proper scientific background to completely rewrite the first chapter (I'm not volunteering). It'd be nice to see a serious book on the subject of alien invasions. This ain't it.

This book fails both as science fiction and as military strategy. It reminds me of the worst academic military strategy books, full of charts and manufactured statistics, unleavened by practical military experience. The few valuable insights could have fit on one page.