Skip to main content

How to Kill an Asteroid – Robin George Andrews ***

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 collision with a ‘city-killer’ asteroid, as he terms it. That’s something that’s bound to happen in the – well, in the next ten thousand years, say (but let’s not emphasise ‘astronomical’ numbers like this too much, or people might not buy the book).

As for the second problem – ‘don’t mention physics or you’ll lose most of your readers’ – Andrews does a pretty good job there too, by taking a purely narrative rather than explanatory approach. He focuses on describing events – including how a hypothetical future collision might play out, as well as historical occurrences such as the Tunguska and Chelyabinsk impacts, and comet Shoemaker-Levy’s 1994 encounter with Jupiter – and a handful of recent asteroid-related space missions. Most relevant to the subject of ‘How to Kill an Asteroid’ is NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which Andrews provides a detailed first-hand account of, but he also touches on the Hayabusa and OSIRIS-Rex sample-collection missions, with their revelations about asteroid composition. The result, I suspect, is pretty much what that core audience of sci-fi movie addicts will be looking for – and while it’s not quite the ‘propulsive narrative that reads like a sci-fi thriller’ promised by the publisher’s blurb, it certainly flows smoothly enough and is a quick and effortless read.

There’s a downside, though, in that by studiously ignoring the physics of the subject, Andrews may leave his more scientifically inclined readers with a lot of unanswered questions. So if you want a detailed insight into how asteroids – and potential defences against them – really work, you might want to look for a more sciencey, less journalistic book. On the other hand, if all you want is a broad overview of the subject, this is as good as any.

[The reviewer is too modest to make the suggestion, but if you’d like a ‘more sciencey, less journalistic’ book, you could try Andrew May’s Cosmic Impact - Ed.]

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Buy me a coffee
Review by Andrew May - See all our online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more