The Possibility of Life by Jamie Green

3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

I laugh every time I see the Calvin & Hobbs cartoon above as it tells me two truths about our endless fascination with the possibility of life somewhere in this vast universe;

1. Given a lot of the really dumb things that we do as a species so are we actually that intelligent?
2. If there were some super bright entity that is capable of interstellar travel, why would it be interested in the likes of us?

It was something that Douglas Adams alluded to when one lot of aliens turned up but wanted to take the whales…

This fascination of life being out there somewhere has captivated scientists for hundreds of years, all the way back to Galileo and Copernicus. But as scientific understanding grew of how life appeared on this planet and the way it fluctuates from masses of plants, insects and large creatures to extinctions and back again with a different type of life adapts to the changed conditions.

The discovery of other planets orbiting stars in the ‘Goldilocks zone’ that might, just might, have the right conditions based on what we know about the Earth has driven research, intensive scanning of the heavens and intense speculation of what might or might not be out there.

We have not found any evidence of life outside this small blue dot that we’re on. However, there is speculation still that some of the moons around the planets in the solar system might. As you’d expect, the question as to whether there is life elsewhere doesn’t really get answered in this book, but that is not the whole point of it, this is an exploration of what they might be like if we were to come across another species.

Green has split the book up into six chapters, Origins, Planets, Animals, People, Technology and Contact, and in each draws from science and science fiction as to the things that life is capable of creating. I have always had an interest in it since I downloaded the SETI program many years ago. Strangely enough, I didn’t find any signals from any aliens when running that software, but the possibility that I might keep me interested for a long time. I thought that this was a very accessible book on a subject that I had not read much about before. Worth reading if you have an interest in the possibilities of life.

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5 Comments

  1. Jason Denness

    looks interesting. cheers for the review

    • Paul

      You’re very welcome!

  2. Elle

    Have you read Martin MacInnes’s novel In Ascension, which won the Clarke Award in 2024? It’s all about a scientist searching for the origins of terrestrial life, it’s totally beautiful, and the ending provides an answer that I absolutely loved for its circularity and uncanniness. Might be an interesting thing to read after this!

    • Paul

      I haven’t read In Ascension, but it is on my TBR. I will see if the library has a copy

      • Elle

        Oh, do! I really think you’d like it.

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