The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia: An Alphabetical Reference to All Life in the Universe [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by David Darling (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
If there's anyone not interested in the possibility of life on other planets, they must keep to themselves. Along with "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" "Am I alone?" ranks as one of the classic Big Questions asked by all curious minds. Now comes the first detailed reference book covering the search for an answer: The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia by astrobiologist David Darling. More than 2,000 entries define and explain conceptual, fictional, theoretical, and technical thinking about exobiology, copiously referenced and cross-indexed for easy searching and browsing. Start with SETI (why not?) and after poring over the eight-page entry, you'll find yourself trying to decide whether to check out SERENDIP, Iosef Shklovskii, or the Arecibo radio telescope next.

Darling's choice of entries is telling--far from just a dry assortment of biographies and dates, you'll find 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes, and hydrothermal vents explored as they relate to the Big Question. Though the book has all the facts you'd need for a hundred term papers, it also acknowledges the strong cross-currents running between scientific and pop cultures, which makes for entertaining and sometimes surprising reading. (Who knew that so many serious astrophysicists wrote science fiction?) The truth may or may not be out there, but The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia will keep us current on the search. --Rob Lightner

Product Description
The possibility of life on other worlds has stirred the human imagination and stimulated scientific curiosity for as long as people have been looking up at the sky. From Aristotle to Star Trek to the latest pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the examination of this age-old question continues to arouse profound excitement and has found expression in human culture from the first cosmologies to the latest theories about the origin of life -- in oral tradition, literature, and film, and in the rapidly developing disciplines of astrobiology, space exploration, and extrasolar planet detection.

David Darling draws together the many threads of the search for extraterrestrial life in his comprehensive and entertaining guide. His one-of-a-kind resource covers everything from the Arecibo Message; brown dwarfs; cell membranes; Dyson spheres; and extremophiles to biographical portraits of leading scientists, such as Carl Sagan and Jill Tarter; philosophers, such as René Descartes and William Whewell; and science fiction writers, such as Olaf Stapledon and Arthur C. Clarke.

The Extraterrestrial Encyclopedia offers a wealth of information, never before available in a single volume: almost 1,900 informative entries cover a wide range of topics -- from serious science to pop culture.biographical profiles identify over 300 leading contributors in the field94 illustrations
user-friendly cross-referencing makes navigating through the topics easyan extensive list of web sites guides further researcha detailed time line places the search for extraterrestrial life in historical perspectivea detailed table shows SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) programs from 1960 to the present

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Product Details

• Paperback: 513 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (June 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081293248X
• ISBN-13: 978-0812932485
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,134,228 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine work of reference that's a pleasure to read, September 16, 2003

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

David Darling, prolific author of a wide range of popular works on astronomy and allied subjects, has favored us with this encyclopedic take on things beyond our planet. I say "favored us" because Darling is a writer who writes with the kind of clarity that we all wish we could achieve, and is therefore a pleasure to read.

By the way, my favorite David Darling book is Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation (1996), which is a very readable and profound look at human consciousness, a book I cannot recommend highly enough. (See my review!)

Included here are objects and energies in space, instruments and machines for exploring space, mythological references to the heavens, historical cosmic events, catastrophes from space, ideas about space, space programs (some still only on the drawing boards), space scientists and scientists tangentially involved in some aspect of the extraterrestrial, scientists who have mentioned something otherworldly, historical figures that have mentioned something otherworldly, science fiction writers, movie and book titles about space, aspects of other sciences that could be applied to things extraterrestrial, etc., etc.

But this is not a dry reference book. On the contrary it is exciting to read and fun to flip through. Opening it at random to page 164 I find "Galileo (spacecraft)" which I learn is the "first spacecraft to conduct long-term observations of Jupiter" with Jupiter in bold face so that I know I can cross-reference it if I like. There is a little table in the entry giving the launch date, the date of arrival at Jupiter and other information about the spacecraft. Darling also uses bold-faced arrows in the text to point to related entries. Here an arrow points to "Jupiter, moons of," which has further information about the Galileo spacecraft.

The next entry is "Galton, Francis (1822-1911)" making me wonder what the old social Darwinian had to do with the extraterrestrial. Turns out he proposed in a letter to the editor of the London Times in 1892 that sunlight be reflected toward Mars to catch the attention of any possible Martians.

Next are "gamma rays" and the "gamma-ray burster" (two full-page columns worth) carrying me to the next page where there is "Ganymede," the Galilean satellite that is the largest moon in the solar system.

There are long entries on topics that Darling considers "of central importance or popular interest" such as Frank Drake's famous equation (Darling evaluates each variable) and SETI which includes a list of programs from 1960 to 1999 with information about the investigator, the location, frequency used, etc.

One senses that one of Darling's main tasks in compiling and writing this book was to decide what to include and what to leave out. How pertinent does something have to be to be included? I wasn't surprised to see paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould with an entry since his idea of punctuated equilibrium (also included) depends in part on catastrophic environmental changes, some brought about by extraterrestrial events. Nor were the entries on the elements from the periodic table surprising. (There's a very nice entry on the biological abundance of elements both here and in space.) But I was surprised to find many entries on biology and microbiology, including entries on DNA and RNA. And yet, one can see how they are relevant in thinking about extraterrestrial life.

As a side note, remember Whitley Strieber who wrote the book Communion: A True Story (1987), purporting to be an actual experience with aliens?--a book, by the way, for which he reportedly got a million dollar advance. Well, according to the entry by his name here, he confessed in 1993 that he made it all up!

There's a chronology at the back of the book identifying events under the categories, "The Search for Life in Space," "Science Fiction," and "World/Scientific Events" beginning in 580 BCE. There are also several pages devoted to Web Sites with URLs. Darling has footnoted his text with 634 references giving book titles and journals for further reading.

One final thought: In the future there will be an encyclopedia devoted to every subject and to every creature and to every person under heaven. And those encyclopedias will be on the Web (as will future editions of this book, I predict). And it will be part of our life experience to update our encyclopedia, as Darling will surely have to do with this book in a few years.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!!!! Finally, a Reference Guide for ALL of Us!!!!, August 8, 2000

By	Mike Sivilli (Bayonne, New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This encyclopedia covers much more than its title suggests. You'll find subjects involving everything from religion to history to science --- and it's all related somehow to the possibility of life on other planets. This is a comprehensive work, yet I find it somewhat entertaining, too. The latest facts available regarding SETI, Area 51, the Roswell Crash of 1947, the Hubble Telescope, and too many other subjects to mention here are all presented in condensed, yet concise form in this book. The author also covers science fiction topics and theories as well as science. And it's perfect for the beginner or the trained professional. Charts, photos, illustrations, and cross references make it even more reader friendly.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference work, December 5, 2000

By	Nathan Birkholz "Reader, Writer, Rithmaticker." (San Diego, CA, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Thorough, clear, and occasionally whimsical, this book is an invaluable reference to keep by your side as you read about the search for extraterrestrial life and, indeed, as you read about most space topics.

Information is presented in hundreds (even thousands?) of well-written entries explaining and describing topics as diverse as the role of extraterrestrials in science fiction to Cepheid Variable stars, from laundry lists of nearby star systems to biographies of prominent scientists. The length and breadth of the information presented is truly impressive.

All information is throughly cross-referenced, with more detailed references indicated by a dark arrow.

Entries are written with an interest in the search for extraterrestrial life, but the book is a fine general reference work for amateurs interested in all space sciences.

The only complaint I have is that I wish there were more detailed illustrations for some concepts; if half stars were available, I might rate this book 4-and-a-half for this, but it deserves better than a four, in my opinion.

All in all, an extremely valuable reference, as well as a fascinating read in and of itself if you are interested in space science.