Goodreads review: 'The Possibility of Life'

[mount_oregano]

The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos by Jaime Green

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Is anyone out there? Of course we want the answer to be yes. We want to believe we’re not alone in the universe. Jamie Green has hopes, too, and she’s a smart and experienced science writer, so she knows how to look for answers.

She takes us on an investigation. She talks to a lot of scientists, discusses a lot of science fiction, and answers a lot of questions. Would an alien have an anus? (Maybe, maybe not.) How weird could alien life be? The question, she says, “challenges us to imagine something beyond what we know” — but what exactly do we know? What would alien life be like? How about intelligent alien life? Would it even be understandable? Why or why not? What are some examples from science fiction?

If you’re interested in science and science fiction, you’ll learn something from this book and have a good time learning it. If you write science fiction, you’ll come away with good ideas — maybe even inspiration.




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Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Is anyone out there? <<

Of course. But the most common life is basically algae or microbes. Far more heavenly bodies have scummy stuff on them than a complex biosphere. That said, however, life tends toward complexity and thus intelligence ... if it doesn't get smacked by a comet, fried by a cantankerous star, or bomb itself back to the stone age.

I love playing with Drake's equation.

>>Would an alien have an anus? (Maybe, maybe not.)<<

Almost certainly. Life produces waste which must be expelled. Above a fairly low level of development, an intake-output tube is the most efficient way to eat and excrete. There are exceptions, but the anus is popular because it works. Though I'm including variations -- technically a cloaca is different in features, but it still serves the same purpose. So while microbe aliens will probably not have an anus, most things big enough to move around and be seen easily probably will have one or something similar. Plants have their own ways of handling input-output, but for animals, the anus is really a winning design.

>>How weird could alien life be?<<

LOL tardigrade platypus Cambrian explosion black smokers.

The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.

That said, there are still a lot of patterns that pop up. Anything showing convergent evolution here on Earth is likely to appear elsewhere for the same reason, like torpedo-shaped fish or airfoil-shaped wings. Earth squirted out a vast diversity of life, but most of those early designs wound up on the cutting room floor because they didn't work as well as what survived. Not counting things that died due to comet smacks or whatever.

Re: Thoughts

[mount_oregano]

You might enjoy the book.