Science Archives - Page 2 of 2

Stellaris – People of the Stars — Les Johnson and Robert E Hampson (editors)

First published 2019. Baen, paperback, 2019, pp 312, c.110,000 words. This book arose out of a symposium held by the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop in 2016. It is a collection of science fiction stories and essays on aspects of interstellar travel relating to how humans might adapt to allow them to flourish more easily in […]

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Solar Sails — Giovanni Vulpetti, et al

2nd edition first published 2015. Praxis Springer, paperback, 2015, pp 277, c.120,000 words (main text). Vulpetti seems to be the primary writer of this book, judging by the Italian-accented English. He seems to have spent his professional life studying the subject of using the pressure of light from the sun to propel spacecraft and is

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Future of Humanity, The — Michio Kaku

First published 2018. Penguin, paperback, 2019, pp 339, c.120,000 words (main text). This book is to a degree an update of Kaku’s Physics of the Future, and that’s no bad thing. This volume is structured around the future of space travel, but covers a wide range of topics. Space travel is expected to move rapidly

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Sirens of Mars, The — Sarah Stewart Johnson

First published 2020. Penguin, paperback, 2021, pp 266, c.70,000 words (main text). This book gives a history of human interest in the planet Mars written by someone who developed a passion for the planet as a child, staring through her father’s telescope. She went on to work on NASA missions to Mars. The book, as

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Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars — Kate Greene

First published 2020. Icon Books, paperback, 2021, pp 228, c.65,000 words (main text). Kate Greene was a member of a team who lived for four months in a Mars simulation on Hawai’i. The book describes how she came to be there, what it was like and what she felt about the experience afterwards. Her life

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Limitless — Tim Peake

First published 2020. Century, hardback, 2020, pp 478, c.160,000 words. Tim Peake was the second British person to go into space, and he spent six months on the International Space Station [ISS] in 2015. This book is his autobiography, written with the help of a ghost writer. Peake’s career follows that of the ‘typical’ astronaut:

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Endurance — Scott Kelly

First published 2017. Black Swan, paperback, 2018, pp 461, c.130,000. Scott Kelly made four journeys into space. The first two on the space shuttle, the latter two using Soyuz. His first was a short mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble space telescope, the remaining missions were to the International Space Station, culminating in his

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Carrying the Fire — Michael Collins

First published 1974. Pan Books, paperback, 2019, pp 482, c.175,000 words. Collins was the member of the crew of Apollo 11 that didn’t walk on the moon. This is his autobiography, written by himself. Collins devotes only the first ten percent of the book to describing his life and career before joining NASA. He describes

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In Search of Shrodinger’s Cat — John Gribbin

First published 1984. Black Swan paperback, 2012, pp 395, c.90,000 words. This is an attempt to explain quantum mechanics to the layman. Gribbin has written other history of science books and he takes that approach here, giving us much detail on the people who worked in theoretical physics during the first half of the twentieth

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