Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous examination of a contemporary trend.
Review: When I heard Achenbach speak, he was eloquent on the subject of the book. However the portions of the book he read led me to believe that the whole volume was a comment on those, for example, who believe they are manifestations of beings from Pleiades or who found some mystical wave by which beings fled from their own galaxy to--surprise--our own backyard. You know, the stuff one hears from the UFO-inclined these days. But the book is far, far more than that.He starts with those who have a noted critical capacity--particularly Carl Sagan--who not long ago felt certain that we would encounter extraterrestrial life in the near future. Yes, I DID say Carl Sagan, founder of the Planetary Society, the one who later made jokes of those who claimed to have had experiences with extraterrestrials. Oh, yes, there are still UFO conventions in which participants are convinced that they'd been abducted by reptilians from wherever. Joel covers them too. But in spite of their eccentricities, they make up only a small portion of the book. To where have these eccentrics led? By and large they've been pretty harmless, and they're entitled to believe what they'd like. However these trends have also led to items like the Heaven's Gate phenomenon, a mass suicide whose members believed would deliver them to the heavens--literally. So these movements are not all innocuous. The text covers a plethora of subjects related to extraterrestrial life, from late 20th century examination of its possibility, to the more eccentric claims of the habits of--and our alleged exposure to--such life, to consequences thereof, etc. It continued to return to Sagan who was kind of the hero of the story. Yes, he felt we'd make contact. But then he found that Venus was inhospitable, to say the least. His fantasies led him to Mars. But that too--despite groups who fantasize relocating to that planet--has been found to be of dubious hospitality (not to mention the astronomical--pun intended--expense it would take to get a colony there!) In short, Sagan grew with experience and knowledge. There is a chapter on the alleged finding of bacteria fossils on a stone from Mars a few years ago. Sagan I remember used the saying of healthy skeptics toward that finding: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. He wasn't convinced that those who'd claimed they found evidence of life on Mars had provided sufficient evidence for it. (And Achenbach points out that a similar claim has been made since then with substantially less media fanfare than during the first finding. The media too, apparently, are demanding more evidence before making extraordinary claims!) I was particulary stimulated by the second last chapter. In it, Achenbach examines that people don't feel comfortable with science despite what it's delivered to us. For one, science doesn't address good and evil. And very important: science finds what it does whether it makes us feel good or not. To many that's pretty bleak. We seem to lack meaning because of it. We therefore try to have our cake and eat it too, and believe also in astrology, various "New Age," paranormal and pseudo-scientific phenomena depite what we've learned--or HOW we've learned--from science. But as the author points out, some of our meanings are provided by religion, prayer and the like, not by what we find in science. Some may suggest that Achenbach is convinced that we're alone in the universe. That could make us lonely indeed. I don't believe he suggests that, though. He first insists, as did Sagan, that we examine the evidence. Despite a few personal testimonials, the evidence does not indicate that we've been visited by beings fromm elsewhere. That does not mean such beings do not exist. And, again important, if they did why would they visit this insignificant rock on which we live? (Yes, the author points out, the UFO advocates have their reasons, making humans more important than we are in the scheme of things!) That, and the time it would take "them" to get here makes such visits less likely than we'd like to think. Read this as a well-balanced examination of something for which our era will be known for some time to come.
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