Life On Other Worlds - The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate

A nuclear physicist and a journalist, respectively, the Fishers (Tube: The Invention of Television, Counterpoint, 1996), a father-and-son team, review scientific research on the possibility of life beyond Earth, beginning with Percival Lowell's claims about canals on Mars and continuing right up to recent discoveries of planets around other stars and NASA's announcement of possible microorganisms on a meteorite from Mars. Intended for lay readers, their book covers much the same ground as Michael Lemonick's Other Worlds (LJ 4/1/98) and is equally good. Dick is an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory whose Life on Other Worlds, an abridged and updated version of The Biological Universe (Cambridge Univ., 1996), is deeper and broader thanthe Lemonick and Fisher books. In addition to reviewing scientific work on extraterrestrial life, he also explores the connections to science fiction, the UFO controversy, and some modern philosophers' musings. His book is aimed at a fairly sophisticated audience and is strongly recommended for all academic libraries.?Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor