Customer Reviews

Life Out There: The Truth Of And Search For Extraterrestrial Life

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The book I read with this name was copyright 1998, first published in Britain. It also had a different ISBN number, but aside from these differences, it appears to be the same book. I did not like it. It lost me in the Introduction when the author felt it was necessary to let me know Fermi's principle was "merely a display of stupendous arrogance and ignorance little different from the pompous declarations of medieval popes". Right at the end of the book, the author makes the following comment about Tipler, "He refuses to accept any arguments against his view, and is dogmatic to the point where one wonders what has precipitated such a belief - does it derive from some twisted humanism or some childhood trauma". Von Daniken is treated more generously as he is rebutted, although I wasn't sure what to make of a reference to a jail term for fraud. While the author is trying to muster arguments for acknowledging different (X-file like) opinions as part of the "Life out There" discussion, his attitude towards opinions counter to his own appear, at least on the face of it, identical to his description of Tipler. That said, the author has mustered many snippets of information that while readily available elsewhere, are interestingly put together in his book. Ironically, he even acknowledges, as a footnote in chapter 5, the presence of gamma-ray bursters that some people now feel add support for Fermi's principle, although this is not the context the author has used. My central criticism of the book is that the author is biased so strongly in favour of life out there, and so trenchant in his criticism of those who hold a different view, as the examples above suggest, that it is hard to feel comfortable with any of his views. Read this book if you feel you need a strident avatar for your cause.