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Rating: 
Summary: A remarkable look at our present and our future
Review: Among non-fiction books, one of the best is Jerry Pournelle's A Step Farther Out. It contains essays he wrote throughout the seventies. One of the main goals of the book is to show that we can escape the Four Dooms--starvation, pollution, overpopulation, and depletion of natural resources. How? By developing the resources of the entire solar system; not just Earth. It isn't just a fluffy, "let's go to space" dream, either. Dr. Pournelle goes through the numbers, demonstrating that by developing the natural resources of the entire solar system we can survive, happily and with our high-energy society, for thousands of years. We can't survive if we stay on Earth--we'll run out of natural resources and starve--but we will survive if we use our solar system. Pournelle makes a compelling and entertaining argument in a book so well written you just can't put it down. He also reviews many fascinating scientific and technological breakthroughs and developments. I can't possibly do this book credit here. You'll just have to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: An outdated and uneven collection of articles
Review: «A Step Farther Out» is a collection of thirty articles originally published in "Galaxy", most of them centered on the theme that mankind can «survive with style» and other scientific issues of interest to science-fiction writers, such as black holes, dinosaurs and computers. Some of the articles are just reactions to annual conferences of the AAAS which Pournelle attended, giving snapshots of scientific research in the late 1970s. Most of the articles were already partly obsolete when they were gathered in book format, so one may wonder at their relevance twenty years after the publication of the book. Pournelle's constant marveling at the computing power of his pocket calculator is a reminder of how far we have travelled since the articles were written : much has been learned about the planets of the solar system, for instance, and Pournelle already recognized in 1979 that his schemes for the terraformation of Venus were extremely simplistic. Moreover, given the format the essays were originally published in, the book lacks cohesion and progression, and is often redundant. The message of the book is very similar to that of Julian Simon's « The Ultimate Resource », except Simon focuses on the Earth's resources, while Pournelle extends the discussion to those of the whole solar system. Another difference is that Pournelle, though obviously sympathetic to free enterprise (twice quoting Freeman Dyson's remark that America was settled by enterprising individuals), is quite tolerant of big government budgets, going so far as to put forward his ideas for a better allocation of government research funds. (As an Objectivist, I am personally in favour of the complete privatization of scientific research.) He does a good job showing that most sources of «soft energy» popular with the environmentalists, such as wind and garbage, will not fill man's energetic needs, and that nuclear energy is the only solution in the short term. In its defense of nuclear energy, the book echoes the message of Pournelle and Niven's «Lucifer's Hammer», where mankind finds its post-cataclysmic salvation by maintaining a nuclear plant in activity. At times, Pournelle is extremely naïve, as when he assumes that one day, the acquisition of knowledge will be automated («the computer can squirt the book's contents directly into your mind» p86) or rendered obsolete by instant hook up with world databases. He does not seem to realize the importance of the integration and automatization of knowledge (not to mention filtering !), which cannot be done without extended periods of intense «chewing» of the material (to borrow Ayn Rand's term). Pournelle also gratuitously assumes that there is a «central processing unit» in the brain (p86) - Edelman's mythical «homonculus»- and that the «basis of consciousness» is either «matter or structure» (p308.) In addition to this occasional scientific naïveté, probably due to the fact that most of what we know about the brain we learned during the last two decades, Pournelle also goes over the edge at times, going so far as to accept the possibility of telepathy (p87) or UFOs (pp101-113). Perhaps more disgusting, because less blatantly pseudo-scientific, are his speculations concerning black holes, which seem to be a haven for the scientists' irrationality. «Time running backward» is a meaningless phrase, and Hawking's idea that «anything» can come out of a black hole is simple nonsense. All in all, I would rather recommend reading Julian Simon's books, plus up to date speculations about mankind's future in space.
Rating:
Summary: visionary
Review: Pournelle is a realist with insight. We need more - a pity that the "marching morons" are winning. If they weren't Pournelle could win for us all.
Rating:
Summary: visionary
Review: Pournelle is a realist with insight. We need more - a pity that the "marching morons" are winning. If they weren't Pournelle could win for us all.
Rating:
Summary: An outdated and uneven collection of articles
Review: «A Step Farther Out» is a collection of thirty articles originally published in "Galaxy", most of them centered on the theme that mankind can «survive with style» and other scientific issues of interest to science-fiction writers, such as black holes, dinosaurs and computers. Some of the articles are just reactions to annual conferences of the AAAS which Pournelle attended, giving snapshots of scientific research in the late 1970s. Most of the articles were already partly obsolete when they were gathered in book format, so one may wonder at their relevance twenty years after the publication of the book. Pournelle's constant marveling at the computing power of his pocket calculator is a reminder of how far we have travelled since the articles were written : much has been learned about the planets of the solar system, for instance, and Pournelle already recognized in 1979 that his schemes for the terraformation of Venus were extremely simplistic. Moreover, given the format the essays were originally published in, the book lacks cohesion and progression, and is often redundant. The message of the book is very similar to that of Julian Simon's « The Ultimate Resource », except Simon focuses on the Earth's resources, while Pournelle extends the discussion to those of the whole solar system. Another difference is that Pournelle, though obviously sympathetic to free enterprise (twice quoting Freeman Dyson's remark that America was settled by enterprising individuals), is quite tolerant of big government budgets, going so far as to put forward his ideas for a better allocation of government research funds. (As an Objectivist, I am personally in favour of the complete privatization of scientific research.) He does a good job showing that most sources of «soft energy» popular with the environmentalists, such as wind and garbage, will not fill man's energetic needs, and that nuclear energy is the only solution in the short term. In its defense of nuclear energy, the book echoes the message of Pournelle and Niven's «Lucifer's Hammer», where mankind finds its post-cataclysmic salvation by maintaining a nuclear plant in activity. At times, Pournelle is extremely naïve, as when he assumes that one day, the acquisition of knowledge will be automated («the computer can squirt the book's contents directly into your mind» p86) or rendered obsolete by instant hook up with world databases. He does not seem to realize the importance of the integration and automatization of knowledge (not to mention filtering !), which cannot be done without extended periods of intense «chewing» of the material (to borrow Ayn Rand's term). Pournelle also gratuitously assumes that there is a «central processing unit» in the brain (p86) - Edelman's mythical «homonculus»- and that the «basis of consciousness» is either «matter or structure» (p308.) In addition to this occasional scientific naïveté, probably due to the fact that most of what we know about the brain we learned during the last two decades, Pournelle also goes over the edge at times, going so far as to accept the possibility of telepathy (p87) or UFOs (pp101-113). Perhaps more disgusting, because less blatantly pseudo-scientific, are his speculations concerning black holes, which seem to be a haven for the scientists' irrationality. «Time running backward» is a meaningless phrase, and Hawking's idea that «anything» can come out of a black hole is simple nonsense. All in all, I would rather recommend reading Julian Simon's books, plus up to date speculations about mankind's future in space.
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