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Meet the Neighbors - Steven Benner *****

I love popular science books, but it's a quiet sort of love: it's not often a book like this gets me really excited - but Meet the Neighbours (sorry, I know it's Neighbors, but it grates) does just that. 

Once upon a time there was quite a market in books speculating about life on Mars, but of late most Martian titles have focused on getting to and colonising Mars (though often avoiding the 'c' word). Steven Benner drags us back to see the evidence for life having existed there, and does so with a vengeance. (Almost literally - he really lays into those who are dismissive of what evidence there is.)

Do we have proof? Well, no - but proofs are for mathematicians. As Benner says 'science does not deal in proof... Rather, it relies on a 'preponderance of evidence' standard to shift the burden of proof.' Benner points out the weird reality that since the Viking landers, which arrived in the 1970s, there hasn't been a mission looking for organic signs on Mars - and he argues that this was a big mistake. He claims the analysis of the Viking findings was poorly carried out - and the realities could be very different.

Benner's personality comes through strong and clear: this is a personal opinion, looking at the evidence from a different viewpoint. Benner is a chemist and synthetic biologist and as such can give a powerful assessment of the potential chemical routes to life available on Mars and what residues these might leave. He is not suggesting that Martians are hiding in a cave, but he does tell us that while Terran life would struggle to exist on Mars it is possible to envisage a means of microbial survival, and he believes it may well have happened.

Benner finishes by telling the reader 'You now know more about the possibility of extant life on Mars than many of the committees that choose missions to fly, members of the US National Academy of Sciences, and even a few Nobel laureates.' He then invites the reader to devise an experiment that could be delivered with the (relatively) simple means described in the book. To get a feel for the writing style, he tells us 'And if you cannot think of any experiment yourself, find people who have experimental ideas. Give them some money. Buy some cake from them at their bake sale.'

My only real complaint here is that I'm not a great fan of ending chapters with summaries, a list of personalities, and a collection of keywords and concepts. When you are as good a story teller as Benner is, you don't need to use this textbook-style approach, because a good story doesn't need recaps each chapter. But that can't stop me enthusing about what might be the most engaging popular science book I've read this year.

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