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Showing posts with the label Evolution of life

A Review of Outbound: Islands in the Void by Richard M. Anderson

 (Precocity Press, 2024). ISBN: 979-8-9898304-6-6 A few months ago, I reviewed Richard M. Anderson’s nonfiction book, The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies (a 2023 Nautilus Silver Award Winner), which is an ambitious and ultimately successful text that encapsulates the evolution of life from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present. I encourage you to read that review for details on the far-ranging and fascinating subjects Anderson tackles through his exploration of Earth’s present, past, and future. The final portion of Evolution of Life is devoted to the possibilities and pitfalls of space exploration and colonization. It looks at political, social, environmental, and many other aspects of the endeavor, which tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, along with NASA, see as an inevitable and even preferable part of our future. At least for some of us. Outbound is Anderson’s fictional imagining of what this all might look like. He offers an In...

A Review of The Evolution of Life: Big Bang to Space Colonies by Richard M. Anderson

 (Precocity Press, 2022). ISBN: 979-8-9851494-6-3 A 2023 Nautilus Silver Award Winner, this ambitious text (apt that it is published by a press called Precocity) encapsulates the evolution of life from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present, before postulating at length about the possibilities and pitfalls of colonizing space, the Moon, and, far less likely, Mars. With Space X sending up another rocket as I write this review and Disclosure in the news cycle at an unprecedented, eye-opening level, coinciding with a UAP/drone mystery that held America enrapt through the holidays, the subject of colonizing space is certainly topical and worthy of our attention and consideration. After earning an MA in microbiology, Richard M. Anderson went on to a distinguished career as a clinical laboratory bioanalyst, and he brings considerable knowledge to bear over the course of 326 pages. Armed with Anderson’s table of extinction and evolution events (which has a companion tabl...