Thirteen profusely illustrated chapters to match 13 television
programs this fall featuring prolific, peripatetic Carl Sagan as
author/host. The cosmos is, as he says, everything there is, or
was, or will be. For Sagan it is romance, drama, adventure,
discovery - and a peg to allow him to write about favorite themes:
the origins of life here, and possibly There, evolution,
intelligence, cosmology, communication. Some of the chapters focus
on familiar planetscapes; hostile Venus, maybe-microbial Mars.
Others set the grand scene - the 15-billion-year-old universe, the
takeoff of life forms on Earth with the first multicellular
creatures. In many ways this is vintage Sagan, asking questions
with schoolboy curiosity, conveying facts with irrepressible zest,
sprinkling literary quotes and illusions along the way, and
stirring all with bits of gossip, anecdotes, and tales of
visionaries and fools. Velikovsky comes in for his usual raps. We
hear about Kepler's sad marriage and Newton's lifelong virginity.
In the end we are smitten with Sagan's zeal to find out who is out
there; to set up the radio telescopes and listen; to hope that our
feeble communications are overheard, and that some day we get there
or that supergalactic explorers arrive. Sagan at his best. (Kirkus
Reviews)
This work is the story of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution,
transforming matter and life into consciousness, how science and
civilization grew up together and the forces and individuals who
helped shape modern science. The book aims to make scientific ideas
accesssible and exciting. It is based on the television series of
the same name. Subjects covered include the ancient library of
Alexandria, the death of the sun, the evolution of galaxies, space
missions and hieroglyphics.
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