The cover image and title font leave little doubt that this book is targeted at fans of blockbuster sci-fi movies – which these days means a sizable fraction of the general population. That’s a great marketing ploy, because if potential readers paid too much attention to the words ‘real science’ tucked away in the subtitle, then the audience might shrink to a small fraction of the size. It’s a sad fact that space is only seen as cool when it’s fictional; as soon as it becomes factual then it’s strictly for science nerds only. The most obvious reason is that, outside science fiction, there’s barely any ‘human interest’ angle to space. On top of that, once you get above the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s almost impossible to give a proper explanation of how objects behave and interact without recourse to at least GCSE-level physics. So I have to give Andrews top marks for avoiding both these pitfalls. He picks the one astronomical topic that really does have a human angle – a potential collisi