Extraterrestrial Civilizations

The godfather of extraterrestrial civilizations. Explore new dimensions. All the possibilities. Science fiction? It was. In the past that is. Read this book with a new understanding. Never too late to revisit the master!

An infinite cosmic landscape of alien civilizations, advance technology from outer space, extraterrestrial dimension, brilliantly discussed and explored by the grandfather of science fiction. The author blended science, time-space, logics, metalogics and philosophy science to materialize the essential elements of a parallel truth. Sublime work. Do not hesitate a second to acquire a copy of this precious book.

Asimov's book provides a methodical step-by-step historical and scientific overview of past and current attempts to answer this question. It has a comforting and well-reasoned inevitability to it, and although the book was written back in the computational "bronze age" of 1979, it still holds up very well indeed. It would have been wonderful if Issac has been around to see how the Hubble Space Telescope, more recent flybys of the various planets, and how high-speed computing and digital signal processing have greatly advanced the fields of astrophysics & astronomy, not to mention non-terran planetology ... alas, such was not to be. It's very enjoyable reading. It's fun, and nostalgic at times, to see him write about the scientific principles that some of his earlier works of fiction depended upon ... like how many stars are visible to the naked eye, against the backdrop of a classic novel like "Nightfall". It's also wonderful to watch as Asimov arrives at various conclusions, and how well they've held up in the face of additional advances after his death, and at how other things are a bit off (his mass-driven guestimate of the number of stars in the milky way, and in other galaxies, are a bit off, due to the confirmation of the existence of black holes, both here and elsewhere). Very enjoyable, and recommended. This is exactly the sort of book that more modern science popularists, like superstring theorist Brian Green, probably cut their teeth on ... they're continuing in the footsteps of others before them - like Issac Asimov. I do have one nit however ... the title is a bit of a misnomer. A title like "Extra Terrestrial Civilizations" perhaps has some unintentional overtones - as if it were a book about alien civilizations that have been secretly discovered and are being analyzed. I could see people giving me odd stares when they saw the title of the book i was reading ... "oh, he's one of them" (i.e., alien conspiracy theorists). That is NOT what the book is about at all. This is a science book - not a consiracy theory book. A more accurate (but entirely too verbose) title might have been "Astronony, Astrophysics, Exobiology, Biochemistry, and Mathematics, both past and present, attempt to answer: Can/How should life exist elsewhere ?"

I found this book at a used bookstore, and having just finished Foundation, I thought I'd dive into a non-fiction book by Asimov. I have always admired Asimov's brilliant and lucid writing style, and his other non-fiction works are wonderful (particularly Understanding Physics, which is an outstanding treatment of the standard physics canon). In Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Asimov steps readers through a series of observations about the development of intelligent life here on Earth, and he extrapolates the data we have about ourselves into the question of whether or not intelligent life is probable somewhere in the rest of the Universe. I was concerned that a 25-year old book on the topic might feel antiquated--especially considering the advancement of astronomy in general and the data from the Hubble telescope in particular--but as with much of Asimov's work, his ideas are as fresh today as they were in 1979. To be sure, he does make some statements that aren't true today or that have been modified (i.e., he states that we have no direct evidence of planets around other stars, and he also says that neutrinos have zero mass), but he is also careful to comment frequently that "this could change at any moment, even tomorrow." His conclusions are quite interesting, and I was captivated by his "storytelling of the Universe" as well as by his commentary about why we know what we do. If you want a primer on "who might be out there," buy this book.

This book was written about 20 years ago. Asimov's scientific rigour and marvelouly clear divulgative prose guides us to what we know of the possible existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. Had he written this book today, he would have been less optimistic, perhaps, but most of his reasoning wouldn't have changed. For an updated equivalent of this book,readStephen Webb's Fifty solutions to Fermi's Paradox.