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Summary: Skeptical about science
Review: Although his general skepticism about many aspects of the various beliefs in aliens and extraterrestrial life is evident, I find the lack of skepticism regarding the credibility of "hard science" and his constant criticism of postmodernism a bit disturbing. Generally the book is worth reading, but don't ever forget that this is just one person's perspective on things.
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Summary: brilliant and hilarious
Review: Captured by Aliens is a brilliant, hilarious tour of the UFO subculture--the eccentric club of scientists, mystics, visionaries and lunatics who have devoted their lives to the question "Is anyone out there?" It's also a tour of the mind of Joel Achenbach, which--fortunately for the reader--is one of the quirkier, more interesting spots in the known universe. You'll meet a woman who's convinced that she is a "walk-in" from the Pleiades; a man who singlehandedly put interplanetary exploration back at the top of NASA's agenda; a writer whose book about extraterrestrial life has a blurb from God Himself; the scientists who convinced Bill Clinton that they had found fossilized Cheeto-shaped worms in a Martian rock. Along the way, you'll get Achenbach's provocative, funny, and articulate musings about God, truth, space exploration, evolutionary biology, and the meaning of life itself.
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Summary: Great Book About All Aspects of Life on Other Planets
Review: Joel Achenbach is is one of the few writers who makes me want to read everything he writes. I put off reading this book for a long time, because I had no interest in the topic. "The X-Files" bores me to death, and knowing Achenbach roomed with David Duchovney in college led me to assume this book would be another rehash of "We're not alone". The book is nothing like that. I focuses on the most religious skeptic of our time, Carl Sagan. Achenbach examines the UFO phenomenon as an even more skeptical inquirer, though I don't think he started out that way. Sagan comes through like Robert Duvall in "The Apostle." He's a man of great faith and devotion, even when things aren't going his way. The description of his funeral moved me almost to tears. Read this book, and subscribe to the Washington Post, so you can read everything else Joel Achenbach writes.
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Summary: Lively accounting of fringe and mainstream views on ET
Review: Joel Achenbach, a reporter for the Washington Post, covers current thinking about life in the universe in this lively and very personal account. The book is divided into three parts. The first part could be considered to reflect the "establishment" view, giving the perspective from mainstream science and personages including Carl Sagan and NASA administrator Dan Goldin. Even within the mainstream, though, there are controversies: the well-known one about whether meteorite ALH84001 contains life and the lesser-known issue over whether the Viking landers really did find signs of life, as one of the investigators on that mission continues to claim. Achenbach covers these as well as an overview of the Drake Equation, a profile of Dan Goldin, and other such relevant items. Part Two takes a very different tack, covering the fringe: those who believe the aliens are here already, including those who think they themselves are the aliens (from the Pleiades, as I recall). Achenbach tries to be sympathetic to these, though not with complete success. As he concludes, "It is not the evidence of extraterrestrial creatures but, rather, the idea of the Alien that makes ufology such a powerful faith." As he makes clear, almost everyone would be delighted to find life elsewhere in the universe. The skeptics, however, require evidence before they will give in to their hopes. All of the parts are rather loosely organized, jumping from subject to subject, but Part Three is the loosest of all, seemingly only tied together by the concept of "what might happen." Here he jumps from possible new technologies ("Zero Point Fields") that might get us to the stars, reports on a conference of Robert Zubrin's Mars Society, spends a chapter on the Mars Face, revisits what's going on now with SETI, and more. He concludes with a celebration of Carl Sagan's enthusiasm tempered with skepticism: "A scientist needs evidence. Faith is not part of the game. ... Sagan's greatest professional achievement may have been his ability to stick to science and resist the incredible allure of sentimental thinking." The last paragraphs cover his funeral. All in all, the book is comparatively lightweight but is easy reading and hard to put down. Those interested in a hard-science approach to astrobiology should consider books such as Rare Earth and Is Anyone Out There? But for an overview of both the mainstream and fringe viewpoints, this is an excellent book.
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Summary: An interesting journey that loses its way.
Review: Or, more accurately, how our collective imagination has been captured by the idea of aliens. Achenbach is a science writer for the Washington Post, and many of these chapters had their origin as columns; the resulting book is a breezy and pleasant as one would expect. The first third, the most interesting, deals with scientists' efforts to find extraterrestrial life; Achenbach clearly has affection and admiration for those who are engaged in what seems to be such an impossible task. The second third covers the tabloid-style conspiracy theorists, who believe that aliens are among us. This section starts off well, leaving the reader in wonder at how deluded people can be, but over time it becomes rather depressing. The looniness of Achenbach's subjects is in the end drearily monotonous, and there's a limit to how much of this insanity I can take. The final third is Achenbach's own personal journey, as he comes to see obsession with aliens, by both kinds of people, as a projection of personal issues onto a cosmic scale. This section seems somewhat unfocused; I sense that Achenbach is not entirely clear what he has gotten out of his quest. In the end, the first half of the book is superb; although it loses momentum rapidly through the second half, the author is still engaging enough that I was glad I went on this journey with him, even if it didn't really go anywhere.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, informative, irreverent
Review: The title involves a pun on the word "captured." It is our imaginations that are captured by aliens, not our nubile bodies. The title sets the quasi-satirical tone for the revelations to come. Achenbach's book, to my mind, is an outstanding work of journalism, clearly in the personally-involved tradition of people like Hunter S. Thompson, Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote, but more playfully done. More than a scientific quest, what Achenbach reports on here is a sociological phenomenon of staggering proportions. It's "the alien question," which is many things to many people: a new religion in the making, the manifest destiny of an entire species, the most important scientific quest of all time, or simply a project that Congress won't fund. It is also "a bottomless pit," as Achenbach describes it on page 355, "a drop-off into nothingness, just mist and vapor," something that "is likely to remain a matter of infinite possibilities and zero certainties" for years to come. To write this book, Achenbach visited and interviewed scores of people including the illuminati of space science like the late Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and the head of NASA, Dan Goldin, as well as assorted lesser lights like Henry Harris, a non-PhD working for JPL, and Jill Tarter, who was the inspiration for Jody Foster's character in the movie Contact. But he also broke bread with an assortment of fringe looneys from those who claim to be part alien to those who committed suicide to catch up with the space ship companion to the comet Hale-Bopp. Achenbach's attitude throughout is serious, yet his style is irreverent, even flippant at times. He treats the Roswell aliens and the Face on Mars with the same respect as the Copernican Principle and the Drake equation. He tells the story of the rock from Mars with the same enthusiastic but polite reserve he employs when talking to a certain Jan Bingham, a "Starseed" from Las Vegas, Nevada, who sometimes travels interdimensionally. He has a gift for the language and can sum up an eye-popping situation in a memorable phrase that suddenly reveals a different perspective. Thus he writes on page 33, "You can take everything conclusively known about extraterrestrial life and fit it on the period at the end of this sentence (with room left over for about seventeen angels)." He quotes Bob Forward (inventor of the light-sail idea of propulsion) who is describing the scoop on a ramjet that would have to be infinitely strong to withstand collisions with particles, but would have no mass, as saying, "Therefore...it would have to be constructed from a special element: ‛unobtainium'" (p. 247). This is journalism at its best, on a par with PBS's Nova and Frontline, and a full stride ahead of most of what we see on network TV, and of course light years beyond the tabloids. Achenbach asks all the serious questions as he looks into every niche and cranny of the alien phenomenon. He even asks my favorite question on page 341, a question like a Zen koan, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Asking this question with a sufficient measure of wonder leads immediately to satori, while reading this book with a sufficient measure of light-hearted openness will lead to a whole lot of fun. By the way, did you know that the first five letters of Neil Armstrong's name spelled backwards is "alien"? (p. 335)
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Summary: Praise for this book
Review: This is the best book I have read on this subject. A very well written book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone that wonders about life on other worlds. Although Joel does not give an answer he does a wonderful job portraying the people that are looking for answers from the "kooks" to scientists such as the late Carl Sagan. In fact for anyone that is a Sagan fan this is a must read. Joel is a great author.
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Summary: Fun to read, but mixes apples with oranges
Review: This lively, amusing book touches on many ways that people relate to the cosmos, from astrophysicists to the Heavens Gate cult. That is a virtue, in the sense of providing the reader with a wide variety of material. It also is a weakness, in that highly reputable scientists are implicitly equated with flakes. The author should have drawn a sharper distinction between those he took seriously and those he found ridiculous. The net effect is to introduce a giggle factor into our views of anyone who finds the external universe fascinating and relevant to our future. Achenbach is a bit too worshipful toward Carl Sagan and former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. In particular, he glosses over the fact that Goldin's faster, better, cheaper policy led to three major mission failures in the late 1990's.
Rating:
Summary: Fun to read, but mixes apples with oranges
Review: This lively, amusing book touches on many ways that people relate to the cosmos, from astrophysicists to the Heavens Gate cult. That is a virtue, in the sense of providing the reader with a wide variety of material. It also is a weakness, in that highly reputable scientists are implicitly equated with flakes. The author should have drawn a sharper distinction between those he took seriously and those he found ridiculous. The net effect is to introduce a giggle factor into our views of anyone who finds the external universe fascinating and relevant to our future. Achenbach is a bit too worshipful toward Carl Sagan and former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin. In particular, he glosses over the fact that Goldin's faster, better, cheaper policy led to three major mission failures in the late 1990's.
Rating:
Summary: Captured By Joel Achenbach
Review: When I first picked up this book at the store, I feared it would be yet another credulous description of assorted alien abductions. But after I looked at it more closely, I realized that it promised to be quite rational and even entertaining. I wasn't disappointed. "Captured By Aliens" is a pleasure to read, and Achenbach is often very funny. Achenbach is an unapologetic skeptic who explores several strands in what the book's subtitle calls "the search for life and truth in a very large universe": SETI (the Search for Extraterretrial Intelligence), which looks for radio emissions from other technologically advanced civilizations; the search for life on other planets, including the heated debate about whether the Viking landers or the famous Antarctic meteorite show that there is (or was) life on Mars; the chances of finding intelligent life anywhere besides earth (assuming, for the moment, that you can even find it here); and the heartfelt if wildly inconsistent beliefs of UFO enthusiasts and others who are close to the fringe. The book is also useful as a brief and sometimes moving biography of Carl Sagan, the astronomer and skeptic who wanted very badly to believe but, in the end, found nothing that satisfied his rigorous standards of proof. The only criticism I have of "Captured By Aliens" is that it sometimes reads like a disjointed string of short articles rather than a sustained narrative. This is not surprising, since several of the chapters appear to have been derived from pieces that were published in magazines. That being said, this small flaw actually makes the book easier to enjoy in several sittings. If you enjoy authors who examine the lore of aliens with a skeptical wit, you might try David Darlington's "Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles" or Phil Patton's "Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51." Darlington and Patton are less conspicuously skeptical than Achenbach, but their books are nonetheless an interesting exploration of a modern mythology. Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," to which Achenbach often refers in his book, is also worth reading for what it has to say about Sagan's views on the search for life in the universe.
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