Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "philosophy"

An Alien’s Quest The Archives of Varok series will be expanding soon, and the fourth book, Shawne: An Alien's Quest will make them even more difficult to shelve. I can't in good faith call them Science Fiction, because the aliens placed in our solar system (as much as I love these dear old friends) are tools to help me explore some realistic human problems. Here are the one-phrases that encapsulate the themes:
THE VIEW BEYOND EARTH--Self-actualization and personal growth
THE WEBS OF VAROK--
A picture of a steady state economy, its requirements and vulnerabilities.
THE ALIEN EFFECT--
Current human denial and challenges.
AN ALIEN'S QUEST--
Personal integrity and the meaning of existence.
THE UNHEARD SONG--
Dealing with communication problems and overpopulation stress (A history of the ellls encountering varoks for the first time.)

And here are the updated log lines and summary:
THE ARCHIVES OF VAROK
A series of five books set in a realistic mid-to-late 21st century,
in which Earth discovers sympathetic but challenging neighbors
who reflect a critical overview of human civilization.

What Is It All About? Book club and discussion topics:

Book 1- THE VIEW BEYOND EARTH—How would dispassionate Others view us?

Book 2-THE WEBS OF VAROK—What must we do to insure a satisfactory future?

Book 3-THE ALIEN EFFECT—Are we headed for extinction or can we evolve into something better?

Book 4-AN ALIEN'S QUEST—How can we find Meaning, when our lives are driven by unpredictable complexity?

Book 5-THE UNHEARD SONG (coming in 2017)—Inescapable certainties: to secure the future all populations must communicate and hold to steady numbers.


So is this Sociology? Psychology? Women's fiction? Literary fiction? (I don't think so.) YA or Adult? Action? Philosophy? Religion? What?

The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities by Caleb Scharf, New York, ScientificAmerican/Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2014. Astrophysicist Caleb Scharf’s Science Book of the Year 2014 wins my award for a vibrant, readable and enjoyable history of astronomy and a comprehensive overview of the current finds that suggest answers to the “ultimate” question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

Schaft begins by reminding us of old-world answers to that question. Then he takes us beyond Copernicus and his problems with a heliocentric solar system to the Kepler telescope and its exoplanet zoo.

What delighted me were Scharf’s forays into all the difficult sciences that serve as tools for studying the universe. These include statistics, constants necessary for life, relativity, chaos, the complex nature of life, biochemistry and its requirements, as well as Rare Earth geoastronomy, requirements for Earth Equivalence, and remote clues that suggest life elsewhere.

Scharf does not dance around the facts. Space is enormous, as are energy and time requirements for traveling to other stars. He does suggest that Earth orbits in a rather special solar system, special because most of our fellow planets sail around in orbits within 10% of circular. At the same time, our Milky Way galaxy is richly endowed with other solar systems, some unexpected, some thought impossible or surprisingly different, but overall not too different from computer models of possible varieties.

The author charges ahead in covering all the possibilities for finding an answer to the big question. In the end, he stays true to his realism when suggesting two choices we will have to make, if we do find evidence of life elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. I heartily recommend this book if you have ever wondered who we are and where we seem to be.