Customer Reviews

Our Cosmic Future: Humanity's Fate in the Universe

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Professor Prantzos analyzes the evolution of the universe and examines what some thinkers have forseen about its ultimate fate. The most interesting sections of Our Cosmic Future was the colonization models to be undertaken for the Solar System. The Lunar colonization efforts look very practical indeed. But the moon is only the start. This effort to populate the solar system, will not cease until the 10-Trillion worldlets of the Oort Cloud (named after Dutch astronomer Jan Van Oort) are inhabited. Count on this to be a long term project. The essay continues with the habitation of the Galaxy and the fate of the Cosmos and intelligence. This work compliment's Marshall Savage's Millenium Project, Freeman Dyson's Infinite In All Directions.

I really wanted to like this book; normally I just love this sort of outrageously long term speculation. Unfortunately it's mainly a summary/historical review of other people's ideas, and if you're interested in this sort of thing then you've probably seen most of it before. On the other hand, if you're new to this kind of speculation then this book might be a good place to start (so add a star) as it covers a lot of ground without too much detail. The frequent references to science fiction (in particular Olaf Stapeldon's cosmological novels, of which the author is obviously a huge fan) in what initially appears to be quite an academic text is quite unusual, and could lead you to add a few titles to your wish list. The book was originally written in French and I suspect that part of the problem is poor translation; it's just not all that compulsive reading.