The Red Planet - Simon Morden ***

I was so excited when I started reading this book - it felt like a really new approach to popular science. Simon Morden is a planetary geologist/geophysicist turned science fiction writer (see, for example, Gallowglass) and the book opens with a few short sections that seem to have brought the storytelling skills and narrative drive of science fiction to telling the story of Mars. In my notes, the first thing I wrote was 'Fascinating style'.

What I was hoping for was not that Morden would continue with the same approach through the many short sections of the book - just the right length to feel you need to read another (and another), but rather to vary the approach, but always with that clear understanding that you need an engrossing story. Unfortunately, for about three quarters of the book we fall back to default geology (or, more accurately, aresology) popular science writing with far too much descriptions of rock formation and far too little that would grip anyone who isn't obsessed with rocks. The fact is that geology is by far the hardest science topic to make interesting to the general public, and moving the scene to Mars doesn't do enough to inject fascination.

It would have helped a lot if the book had been illustrated. Remarkable-sounding structures are described - but we never see a photograph of one. There is also considerable talk about maps - without including any maps in the book. There's a whole section on mapping Mars with no maps. Later on, Morden says 'Before we consider how Valles Marineris formed, we ought to look at a map of it'... but there is no map. Time and again it's really difficult to form a mental picture of what is being described.

The last few sections, the book comes back to life, as Morden talks about living on Mars, either as a scientific experiment or stressing just how many difficulties would get in the way of colonisation. But by then it was too late to rescue what had started as arguably the most exciting popular science read of 2021, but had then settled down to be a distinct disappointment.

Hardback:

Bookshop.org

Kindle:

Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you

Review by Brian Clegg

Comments

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Search This Blog