[Scientific life as we (sadly) often know it too well nowadays.]
Life As We Do Not Know It, by Peter D. Ward, © 2005
Kinda disappointing, from my own internal buildup, I suppose. Found Life As We Do Not Know It in the used science section of my nearby Big and Nameless Booksellers last year, and it got destroyed in the Great Flood of ’09. A generous relative found another copy on a used book website, and it came in the mail last Spring, and was promptly put into my reading queue. Well, I finally got to it the last week of last year, and it aggressively underperformed as a book on life science.
The theme of Ward’s book is the possibility of life beyond the biosphere of earth. We start out with a tour of both “common” and “unexpected” life found on earth. From this we try to derive basic principles to determine what that elusive thing we know as “life” is. Then, we speculate on where it may be found in our solar system, and what exactly we might find.
Sounds better than it’s actually executed.
Where might we find alien life? Possibly the acid clouds of Venus, the ocean beneath the frozen crust of Europa, the methane-ammonia seas of Titan, the hydrogen swirls of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, maybe somehow on Triton. The Lunar and Martian crusts would be excellent places to forage for fossils. In fact, in a “manifesto” in the final chapter, Ward pushes for sending paleontologists to Mars and biochemists to Titan.
All well and good, and interesting when a pure discussion of facts and rigorous speculation. That is, after all, why I purchased and read it. The problem with Life As We Do Not Know It is that Ward insists on thrusting himself into just about every paragraph.
Now, I never heard of Peter Ward, and I admit that I am not a keen follower of the heavy hitters in biology today. I come from a physics and astronomy background and wanted to read the book to enhance my ability to write science fiction. Ward might be the Gandhi of astrobiology for all I know; I only know him from his own words. But after getting through Life, I realized early on that he himself is the problem with it.
Maybe he’s a revolutionary in his field. He certainly mentions it often enough. Maybe he knows everyone who’s doing cutting edge research. It’s possible. The fact that there are no footnotes in the work might be okay, since he lists dozens and dozens of books, magazine articles, and journal entries at the very end, chapter by chapter, and this is not a scholarly work submitted for peer review. But then he goes around throwing his name to new taxonomic categories, creating and naming them fully expecting acceptance and implementation. I’m a little confused.
But what got me most, what immediately took me out of the spirit of the work (the hunt for alien life, remember) were the sprinkling of completely unnecessary and irrelevant posturings. About a third through the book it ceased to be a learning experience and became a hunt for evidence of ventings and ramblings of a potentially crazed-angry-liberal-atheist scientist. Want some examples?
“Benner then tried some experiments, using a specific borate mineral named colemanite, which is found in Death Valley. Pretty ironic too, considering that St. Ronald Reagan, no evolutionist, hawked the stuff that might have been the key ingredient in the evolution of the first life itself …” (pg. 94)
Huh?
St. Ronald Reagan, no evolutionist …
Are we insulting men and women of faith, here, or conservative-minded folk, or both? Is it really, really necessary for a dig at Ronald Reagan, in this book, printed in 2005?
“This notion of a steady state universe seems ludicrous to us now, but in the nineteenth century it was gospel.” (pg. 142)
So, gospel = ludicrous? Might not Mr. Ward chosen a more neutral set of adjectives to pair up? How ’bout, “This notion of a steady state universe seems ludicrous to us now, but in the nineteenth century some of the finest minds in science accepted it.” Perhaps I’m being too sensitive. After all, the Reagan-insult-out-of-the-blue sent my spidey sense a-tingling. I’ll give him a pass on this one.
Then, this:
“One of the earliest worries by both NASA and the scientific community was that soon after the Bush announcement, there was no trickle-down request for new science to accompany the ambitious new proposal for missions to the moon and Mars. We all know what a deep and scientific thinker our president is. Soon paranoia began to accumulate along with the normal chatter between scientists.” (pg. 167)
Oh no! BDS!* Evil genius yet incompetent buffoon Bush is at it again, wreaking havoc this time in the scientific community!
This was quickly followed by:
“I will reproduce the entirety of its executive summary, for it details why we need to go back to the moon and why it matters to those interested in life on any planet, even if it is of little interest to those born-agains who now rule our planet …” (pg. 167-168)
Those darned knuckle-dragging born-agains! Who rule our planet! Confound them!
Every now and then in my frenetic reading I come across this strange phenomenon: the irrational, counterintuitive, counterproductive, completely unnecessary compulsion for an author to arbitrarily insult a good percentage of his audience. Maybe Ward’s target audience is 95% liberal atheistic scientists, though I don’t think so since he himself claims it’s also “a science book for the public” (pg 47). If so, why would you go out of your way to insult even 5% of your potential audience? Do you disdain potential unit sales and corresponding income that much? I just don’t get it.
So, I don’t recommend the book. I’ll still be on the hunt for another work out there that will help me write harder SF when it comes to what authentic alien life might actually be like.
Life As We Do Not Know It, by Peter D. Ward, © 2005
Kinda disappointing, from my own internal buildup, I suppose. Found Life As We Do Not Know It in the used science section of my nearby Big and Nameless Booksellers last year, and it got destroyed in the Great Flood of ’09. A generous relative found another copy on a used book website, and it came in the mail last Spring, and was promptly put into my reading queue. Well, I finally got to it the last week of last year, and it aggressively underperformed as a book on life science.
The theme of Ward’s book is the possibility of life beyond the biosphere of earth. We start out with a tour of both “common” and “unexpected” life found on earth. From this we try to derive basic principles to determine what that elusive thing we know as “life” is. Then, we speculate on where it may be found in our solar system, and what exactly we might find.
Sounds better than it’s actually executed.
Where might we find alien life? Possibly the acid clouds of Venus, the ocean beneath the frozen crust of Europa, the methane-ammonia seas of Titan, the hydrogen swirls of the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, maybe somehow on Triton. The Lunar and Martian crusts would be excellent places to forage for fossils. In fact, in a “manifesto” in the final chapter, Ward pushes for sending paleontologists to Mars and biochemists to Titan.
All well and good, and interesting when a pure discussion of facts and rigorous speculation. That is, after all, why I purchased and read it. The problem with Life As We Do Not Know It is that Ward insists on thrusting himself into just about every paragraph.
Now, I never heard of Peter Ward, and I admit that I am not a keen follower of the heavy hitters in biology today. I come from a physics and astronomy background and wanted to read the book to enhance my ability to write science fiction. Ward might be the Gandhi of astrobiology for all I know; I only know him from his own words. But after getting through Life, I realized early on that he himself is the problem with it.
Maybe he’s a revolutionary in his field. He certainly mentions it often enough. Maybe he knows everyone who’s doing cutting edge research. It’s possible. The fact that there are no footnotes in the work might be okay, since he lists dozens and dozens of books, magazine articles, and journal entries at the very end, chapter by chapter, and this is not a scholarly work submitted for peer review. But then he goes around throwing his name to new taxonomic categories, creating and naming them fully expecting acceptance and implementation. I’m a little confused.
But what got me most, what immediately took me out of the spirit of the work (the hunt for alien life, remember) were the sprinkling of completely unnecessary and irrelevant posturings. About a third through the book it ceased to be a learning experience and became a hunt for evidence of ventings and ramblings of a potentially crazed-angry-liberal-atheist scientist. Want some examples?
“Benner then tried some experiments, using a specific borate mineral named colemanite, which is found in Death Valley. Pretty ironic too, considering that St. Ronald Reagan, no evolutionist, hawked the stuff that might have been the key ingredient in the evolution of the first life itself …” (pg. 94)
Huh?
St. Ronald Reagan, no evolutionist …
Are we insulting men and women of faith, here, or conservative-minded folk, or both? Is it really, really necessary for a dig at Ronald Reagan, in this book, printed in 2005?
“This notion of a steady state universe seems ludicrous to us now, but in the nineteenth century it was gospel.” (pg. 142)
So, gospel = ludicrous? Might not Mr. Ward chosen a more neutral set of adjectives to pair up? How ’bout, “This notion of a steady state universe seems ludicrous to us now, but in the nineteenth century some of the finest minds in science accepted it.” Perhaps I’m being too sensitive. After all, the Reagan-insult-out-of-the-blue sent my spidey sense a-tingling. I’ll give him a pass on this one.
Then, this:
“One of the earliest worries by both NASA and the scientific community was that soon after the Bush announcement, there was no trickle-down request for new science to accompany the ambitious new proposal for missions to the moon and Mars. We all know what a deep and scientific thinker our president is. Soon paranoia began to accumulate along with the normal chatter between scientists.” (pg. 167)
Oh no! BDS!* Evil genius yet incompetent buffoon Bush is at it again, wreaking havoc this time in the scientific community!
This was quickly followed by:
“I will reproduce the entirety of its executive summary, for it details why we need to go back to the moon and why it matters to those interested in life on any planet, even if it is of little interest to those born-agains who now rule our planet …” (pg. 167-168)
Those darned knuckle-dragging born-agains! Who rule our planet! Confound them!
Every now and then in my frenetic reading I come across this strange phenomenon: the irrational, counterintuitive, counterproductive, completely unnecessary compulsion for an author to arbitrarily insult a good percentage of his audience. Maybe Ward’s target audience is 95% liberal atheistic scientists, though I don’t think so since he himself claims it’s also “a science book for the public” (pg 47). If so, why would you go out of your way to insult even 5% of your potential audience? Do you disdain potential unit sales and corresponding income that much? I just don’t get it.
So, I don’t recommend the book. I’ll still be on the hunt for another work out there that will help me write harder SF when it comes to what authentic alien life might actually be like.
* Bush Derangement Syndrome.
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