Monday, July 27, 2015

One Life Is Not Enough




Title: One Life Is Not Enough – An Autobiography
Author: Natwar Singh K
Publisher: Rupa Publications 2014 (First)
ISBN: 9788129132741
Pages: 410

Television became widespread in India only in the 1980s. Many of us were schoolchildren then, and we were glued to the TV sets, be it showing news, agricultural programs, movie or sports. Thankfully, the choice was easy as we had only the state-run Doordarshan to watch. News on TV meant never ending scenes of ministers inaugurating various projects, attending conferences and foreign visits. Today’s children won’t touch those programs even with a very long pole. But we enjoyed every bit of it, the novelty of seeing the whole world sitting in your room was so exhilarating. One of the familiar faces on TV along with that of Rajiv Gandhi, who was the prime minister, was that of Shri. Natwar Singh, the Minister of State for External Affairs. He was very familiar to news watchers and had the glamour of resigning from the prestigious Indian Foreign Service to join politics. There is only one family that counts for anything in the Congress party then as well as now, and he was very close to it. He worked in various diplomatic missions abroad before quitting and joining the cabinet of Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. He produces nice reminiscences of events of those years in this book, which is very attractive to readers on account of its simple yet elegant diction. Readers are assured of a ringside view of what was going on inside the world’s largest democracy’s administration. His style is not humble, by any stretch of the imagination. Singh declares in the prologue that he does not believe in equality – fraternity yes, but no equality. Anyhow, he has succeeded in bringing out a thoroughly useful book for the casual reader.

The book presents a handy sketch of the person and administration of Jawaharlal Nehru. The nation’s first prime minister was also its most intellectual one so far. Having a natural turn to reading and having spent almost a decade in jail during the freedom struggle, Nehru was a very learned man and a voracious reader. But his vast knowledge imparted an air of condescension in his dealings with foreign leaders, and took the form of moralizing on the diplomatic arena. His foreign policy was a damp squib, with the Non-Aligned Group a non-starter because it was a B-team of the USSR. Nehru protested from the roof top when Britain invaded Egypt in 1956 when the Suez Canal was nationalized by them. In that same year, USSR invaded Hungary to crush the protests for democratic reforms and re-imposed the Communist Party’s dictatorship. But this time, Nehru’s tongue was tied. Natwar Singh identifies three blunders committed by Nehru which caused lasting damage to India. He carried the Kashmir issue to the UN Security Council, thereby making it an international dispute. He moved the international body under Chapter 6 of its Charter dealing with disputes, while it should have been filed under Chapter 7, concerned with aggression from a foreign country. In all these vexed issues, Nehru readily accepted the flawed advice offered by Lord Mountbatten, who had a different agenda than that of the Indian government. He was asked to continue as Governor General of free India by Nehru. What prompted him to make this strange request raises several unsavoury questions regarding Nehru’s alleged relationship with Edwina, the Governor General’s wife. Was he trying to prolong the couple’s stay in India at a great cost to national interest? Singh also mentions that what Nehru did immediately after returning from his Chinese visit in 1954 was to apprise Lady Mountbatten (of all people!) about the developments on his visit which might be construed as breach of the oath of secrecy. The miserably lost war with China personally devastated Nehru. Indian army’s humiliating defeat prompted him to accept U.S. military aid. Singh attaches two such letters written by Nehru to President Kennedy, literally begging him to provide military equipment and staff during the war with China. Diehard patriots would find it difficult to read the letters without heartburn. But the single most terrible setback for modern India was his refusal to accept a permanent seat at the UN Security Council when it was offered by the USSR on the ground that only China has the moral right to be there! All such moral postures were flown to the winds when India forcibly liberated Goa from Portuguese control. Western media flayed him for this misdemeanor from one who preaches to the world about what is morally right.

An aristocratic birth in India guarantees connections at the highest levels and and an exalted career. Belonging to a prominent family of Bharatpur, having relationship with royalty and having married the daughter of the Maharajah of Patiala, Natwar Singh was the epitome of the bureaucrat who could talk in private with the prime minister at any time – and to a person no less than Indira Gandhi! She signed as a witness to the author’s marriage and his warm relationship with her aunts ensured Indira’s constant attention on Singh. This was a tricky issue when Emergency was proclaimed in 1975. The book contains passages in which the author, who was in London at that time, speaking out against it. This is far from convincing. The ire he received from the Janata Party leaders, who trounced Congress in the very next election after lifting Emergency, stands in silent testimony to his activities, or at least its perception by opposition leaders. He was shunted to Zambia by the Janata government. Natwar Singh exhibited an attitude bordering on arrogant contempt to Prime Minister Morarji Desai. He ridicules Desai’s eating habits and takes a dig at his drinking habit, which in fact included urine! Singh even refused to introduce his pretty wife to Desai even though the prime minister actually requested it during a friendly talk. Singh’s guilt is mitigated somewhat by the fact that Desai reciprocated his feelings in equal measure. His star shone brightly when Indira returned to power. He resigned from his official post with five years to go for retirement and managed a seat from Indira to contest in the very next parliamentary election. He planned for a Rajya Sabha seat, but the power brokers of Indira got jealous of him and allotted the Bharatpur Lok Sabha seat, his own constituency. He also got decorated with Padma Bhushan when she was in power.

The author is unusually candid towards Rajiv Gandhi at whose cabinet he served as a minister of state. Every stage of Rajiv’s disastrous Sri Lanka policy is outlined in clear detail, including India’s open consultations with LTTE and its leader V. Prabhakaran. Rajiv pay rolled LTTE which finally took his life. We see Rajiv as a weak administrator after 1987 when he feigned ignorance of Operation Brasstacks which was the largest military exercise held very close to the Pak border. He even asked the author whether India would go to war with Pakistan, reflecting a clear lack of understanding of what’s going on. Singh blames the coterie that surrounded Rajiv for what took place, but falls short of directly naming them. They are described as three ignoramuses with inflated egos, one a socialist, one inept political wheeler-dealer and the third a meddling nuisance (p.275). But watchful readers need only turn to p.234-35 to get their names as M L Fotedar, Arun Singh and Arun Nehru. The author could have saved the trouble.

Natwar Singh fell from grace in 2005 while serving at the pinnacle of his career as India’s external affairs minister. His name appeared in a UN report that exposed the corrupt deals made by Saddam Hussein of Iraq as part of the Oil for Food Programme implemented by UN. Congress party asked for resignation which transformed the author to a ferocious, wounded tiger. He attacks each and every person who asked him to step down, even though they were only sacking a tainted colleague. He flays Manmohan Singh as a decent though spineless man, who never stands up for his colleagues (p.322). Natwar Singh owes his cabinet berth to Sonia Gandhi, but she suddenly becomes persona non grata as ‘exercising power without responsibility and indulging in backseat driving’. Paul Volcker, the former chairman of U.S. Federal Reserve who drafted the UN report that indicted Singh is said to be biased. Even Justice R S Pathak, who investigated the case, is not spared, as the author alleges Pathak’s father to have approached him twenty years back with a request for a job in the International Court of Justice. The allegations are directionless and much mudslinging is done by the author who is infuriated at the prospect of being called corrupt.

Having a wide experience in book reviews and an avid reader himself, Singh identifies understatement, restraint and objectivity to have a paralyzing effect on an autobiography. True to the norm, it should as subjective as it could be. Two halves are clearly discernible in the text. The half that ends with his becoming a minister is witty, having many anecdotes and down to earth observations. But the latter half is in stark contrast to this. The author seems to have lost his grip on humour the moment he took the oath of office as a minister. Here, it takes on the appearance of a diary, with dry recordings of happenings. Verbatim accounts of speeches and meetings make this half more lackluster. The book boasts a good index and a number of colour plates. A chronology of events would be a nice addition to the second edition.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Life Ascending




Title: Life Ascending – The Ten Greatest Inventions of Evolution
Author: Nick Lane
Publisher: Profile Books 2010 (First published: 2009)
ISBN: 9781861978189
Pages: 344

This book showcases a chemist’s eye view of evolution, thereby affording another perspective to the charming story of life. In a survey of the history of life on earth, the author comes out with ten events, or rather inventions in his parlance, that thoroughly changed the course of life and diverted it into the highway leading to complex organisms like mammals and men. Development of the complex cell, sight, power of movement and sex constitute a few of the characteristics identified by the author. With his judicious selection of parameters, Nick Lane has presented a well balanced picture of the state of things. Being a scholar of biochemistry who has authored many books and articles on the subject, Lane excels in portraying what he knows best in flowery detail. He was awarded the Biochemical Society Award in 2015 for his achievements and the book itself has bagged many honours.

Picking out ten identifying features from a bewildering array of organisms with infinitely variable features is a herculean task, that can’t be undertaken without a solid structure for the investigation and proper methods of analysis. The author identifies four criteria for selecting the phenomena that is included in the text. The first one is quite obvious – it should be revolutionary in function, taking place on a global scale so as to affect the growth of life as a whole. Another benchmark is that the phenomenon must still be existing. There is indeed no point in singing the praise of a creature that was extinct long ago because it lacked the ability to adapt to changing environment. Evolution by natural selection alone is taken to be the third factor in which cultural selection is ruled out as it came rather late in the history of life on this planet. In a discussion rooted on the basics of emergence of life, anything other than natural selection need not be considered. The final parameter selected by Nick Lane is that the evolutionary development should be iconic. This term is rather vague, even though it is justified in the text. An iconic transformation is bound to be revolutionary too, and vice versa. So, what is the difference between it and the first one? Whatever may be Lane’s arguments to the contrary, readers get an impression that the fourth point is a redundant one.

Secrets behind the origin of life are presented from a chemist’s point of view. One important aspect visible here is the scrapping of Darwin’s famous idea of the ‘primordial soup’, the warm puddle that was thought to be the cradle of life. Darwinists posit that life originated in those primordial pools of warm water in which amino acids and proteins abounded. Lane brings up the idea of under-sea hydrothermal vents as the nursery of life on earth. These vents are the locations of the outpouring of hot metals and minerals from the mantle to sea floor. A few such structures have been studied in detail and the prodigious amount of energy and complex organic molecules detected around the periphery of these vents makes the idea highly plausible. But readers should keep one thing firmly in their minds. Darwin’s suggestion of the warm pool does not constitute an integral part of the theory of evolution, which is silent on the question of the origin of life. What Darwin proposed was a probable mechanism for the interpolation of his theory to the origins of life itself. Changing the warm pool with the hot vent does not in any way affect the applicability of Darwinian evolution, because once life was afoot (in the figurative way, of course), the further course of action proceeded along the evolutionary pathways. There is no confusion here, but the author could have specifically explained this.

The book attempts an overkill on the issue of how eukaryotic cells (having a nucleus inside the cell as opposed to bacteria which don’t possess one) evolved from their more primitive bacterial ancestors. Bacterial body structure is very conservative, we don’t see much change in them even at present since they are supremely adapted to the environment to which they belong. But eukaryotes change rapidly. They were the harbingers of higher life forms. All mammals belong to this family. So, the problem addressed by Lane is the origin of the eukaryotic cell. Evolution by natural selection is the obvious option, but the speed of mutation attested by microbiology is too slow, in fact, so slow that the entire tenure of the earth is not sufficient to cover the development of a nucleus inside the cell. The alternative is a fanciful postulate going by the name of ‘fateful encounter theory’. In a nutshell, when two dissimilar cells come near by chance, one cell gobbles up the other, turning it into its nucleus in the long term. The event is purported to be so fortuitous that it might have occurred only once! Such a remote probability for the origin of all higher forms of life doesn’t augur well for Darwinian evolution. If it had to seek help from a very, very improbable event, how is it going to be functionally different from creation? But on two other occasions, such gobbling up is taken for granted without much nitpicking as in the case of photosynthesizing cells that incorporated cyanobacteria to do their trick with light and ordinary cells accommodating mitochondria for fulfilling their energy demands, even though mitochondria are deemed to be independent bacteria prior to acquiring tenancy inside the cells. Are they too deemed to be fateful encounters? The book doesn’t provide an answer to this vital question.

A thought provoking discussion on the meaning of consciousness and its physical significance is provided. Speculations on ending the exclusion of physical forces and particles in describing mind’s action are intriguing. It may be that a new form of quantum interactions not yet identified is behind the working of the mind. This is definitely a bit forcing the issue, as the appeal to undetected quantum fluctuations to explain a point is the hallmark of charlatanism. Another inspiring description is about aging and death. Even though a bit counter intuitive, Lane identifies death as one of the ten inventions made by evolution in its progress at creating complex life forms. If the author is to be believed, a great deal of research is going on to uncover the secrets of aging and death. Early researchers had identified

free radicals and antioxidants as the players in this great game, but later research is more ambivalent on the issue. Leak of free radicals from the cells’ mitochondria is the hot cake now, and a gene has been identified among the Japanese which slows down this process. The healthy consequence is longer and healthier lives for those fortunate enough to have this mutation in their genome. However, the effect of this gene is revealed only much later after sexual maturity and hence there is no selective advantage for them. The author expects widespread improvement in man’s healthy lifespan in around two decades as a result of the study going on in the field. A healthy optimism, indeed!

As the author is a renowned biochemist, the presentation is geared more towards the mechanism of chemical reactions in focus. Emotions, for him, are not exactly the ineffable experience we feel, but the result of a group of molecules combining with others, in the brain. The relevance of the book is attested to by the up to date information available in it. While most of the books in the genre fall short of the year 1980, Lane has included content right after the year 2000 as well. This is the advantage of being a front runner in the field, which the author is. His infatuation with hydrothermal vents in the early part of the book appears to be verging on the intimidating. The physical layout of the book is not very appealing to the reader, with its very small text that is a burden to read. Also, it assumes a good deal of prior understanding of biological concepts to fully appreciate the content. Statements like ‘a vast number of unicellular protists are facultatively sexual’ (p.132) frankly flew way above my head. The book is gifted with a good index and a nice set of illustrations and photographs.

The book is recommended for the serious reader.

Rating: 2 Star

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Is God A Mathematician?




Title: Is God A Mathematician?
Author: Mario Livio
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 2010 (First published: 2009)
ISBN: 9780743294065
Pages: 308

Science is an attempt to read God’s mind which is evident in the physical reality as the rules and principles which hold the world together. Livio’s book is an elegant attempt to tell the epic story of man’s quest to peer into nature itself and to grasp its fundamental principles with the help of his greatest intellectual tool – mathematics. Its extraordinary ability to describe the world has been a source of wonder to philosophists ever. This feat comes in two varieties. In one category named active mode, scientists deduce mathematical laws applicable to an event after carefully observing it, while in the other, passive mode, mathematical functions which were formulated long ago in totally unrelated circumstances suddenly find application to explain new discoveries in science. Judging from the closeness with which mathematical predictions approach reality, we are tempted to think that God is a mathematician. So, the answer to the rhetorical question in the title is in the affirmative and the 250-odd pages explain why it is so. It may be mentioned in passing that another book titled ‘The Loom of God’ by Clifford Pickover (reviewed earlier in this blog) also follows a similar theme. Mario Livio is a noted author who is also an astrophysicist and the head of the Office of Public Outreach at the Hubble Telescope Science Institute. This is the 314th book review in this blog and it is a happy coincidence that a book related mathematics comes out as number 314 (remember pi is approximately 3.14?).

A noteworthy feature of mathematics is its strikingly effective provenance to explain natural features and phenomena. Why should it be so? Mathematics is anyway a product of human contemplation and analysis. If this fruit of human intelligence so faithfully displays an uncanny ability to explain and predict nature, it is no wonder that a group of philosophers – a large one indeed – postulated the existence of mathematics in an idealized Platonic world, whose reflections on the physical world constituted our everyday adventures. This raises the pertinent question whether mathematics is discovered or invented. The niceties of such philosophical speculation need not detain the readers, but Livio presents a deeply speculative question in an easy to digest way. The ideas of Platonic world and discovery are compatible, in the sense that the numbers and shapes already existed in a perfect, imaginary world until man stumbled upon them in a spark of intellectual brilliance. Just like America existed before it was ‘discovered’ by Columbus, or Vikings, or even by that Turkish guy – who provided some much needed comic relief in international discourse a few months ago – mathematics existed right from the universe’s moment of being. But quite a few philosophers, and such humble beings like myself, differs from this point of view. According to this theory, mathematics is an abstract concept developed by man with the help of his extraordinary ability to detect patterns in nature. The book provides ample room for general readers to get familiar with this dichotomy that surrounds mathematics’ existence.

History of science occupies a major portion of the book, but presented in an admirable way that commands attention from readers. Freely interspersed with witty anecdotes and informative quotes from authors present and past, the text stands tall as a testimony to the immense amount of research that had gone in to the publication of it. Livio identifies Archimedes, Newton and Gauss as the three greatest mathematicians of all time, but does not restrict his pen to these three. Would any discussion on the development of science through the Renaissance era be complete without a solid reference to that mathematics professor from Padua, Italy – Galileo Galilei, no less? Galileo’s trial and the stifling overlordship of blind faith over reason is a topic you would find described umpteen number of times in any book that deals with the history of science through the turbulent 17th century. Livio’s description would feel to be delightfully elegant to new readers. Old readers also would find the narration to be very congenial. This book extends the story to other mathematicians, including Descartes, and the Bernoullis. The sibling rivalry between Jakob and his brother Johann Bernoulli is brought to light with a quote from a letter the younger Johann wrote to his friend in which he exults at defeating his elder brother in the solution to a vexing problem. Mathematicians are also human, after all!

Even though Livio considers Gauss to be one of the three greatest ever mathematicians, nothing much is said about him apart from casual references in the context of non-Euclidean geometry. But this shortfall is more than leveled by the extensive discussion on the new developments in mathematics that took place during the last two centuries. The new sprouts are so revolutionary as to merit the epithet that man had broken free from the shackles of classical learning and began to explore nature in the light of a new creative spirit. A mind boggling array of discoveries had taken place in this period, but ordinary readers find it difficult to comprehend the practical purpose of many of them. Non-Euclidean geometry is however very helpful in estimating the shortest possible distance between any two points on a spherical surface. Aircrafts usually follow these shortest routes. But such hyperbolic geometry is extended to such extreme lengths that no apparent use is evident – yet! At around this time, logic was also linked to mathematics so as to strengthen the mutual foundations. Boolean algebra originated as the systematic representation of logic as ordinary algebra was to scientific concepts. Enhancement of geometry to many more dimensions than three enabled it to stand as the structural framework of advanced theories on the origins of the cosmos in the form of string theory, which postulates ten dimensions. This also shows the effectiveness of the discipline as a faithful representative of nature. But the long chapters on logic and discussions on its consistency are hard to enjoy for average readers.

A frequent source of controversy among mathematicians is the question whether its concepts should provide practical applications for human use. Such a notion itself is anathema to many practitioners who bask at the sheer glory of pure mathematics. Archimedes and G H Hardy were two mathematicians of this school. What would have been their impression when they saw their concepts eagerly accepted by the scholars and put to uses which provide immense value to their own societies? Archimedes is credited with the invention of a screw pump, levers of varying complexities, optical instruments and defensive apparatus, while much progress in cryptography is attributed to Hardy. There were mathematicians in the other camp as well, like Gerolamo Cardano, who wouldn’t conceptualize the definition of more dimensions than three because no practical utility was existent at that time, nor conceived to be feasible in the near future.

The book is splendidly written, having a good structure in presenting ideas. It is also graced with a good number of anecdotes, pictures and illustrations. There is an immense collection of notes mentioned in the main text and a sizable bibliography is listed. A nice and comprehensive index completes the attractive side of the book. On the negative part, about a quarter of the text starting from logic and its relations to mathematics is highly abstract, making life difficult for the readers. Fortunately, no harm is done even if you were to simply bypass those chapters and dive straight to the last one.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Monday, July 6, 2015

Pale Blue Dot




Title: Pale Blue Dot – A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Author: Carl Sagan
Publisher: Ballantine Books 1997 (First published: 1994)
ISBN: 9780345376596
Pages: 360

An impressive work by a renowned scientific mind that is also socially responsible. Carl Sagan is the epitome of the people-centric scientists who also foresaw the spurt in space exploration in the latter half of the last century. Nothing lighted up the society’s imagination like the daring attempts by two superpowers to outsmart each other in space science and technology. For once, the competition was a healthy one that spawned huge benefits to mankind. Though manned missions to outer-space are not cost effective as compared a robotic one, the sight of a few brave warriors smoothly sailing through the blackness of space to unknown worlds was exhilarating. The people, politicians and the bureaucracy were all mesmerized by the feat of man first setting foot on the moon. Continuing from this epochal event, Sagan speculates on the future of human species in space and addresses the issues that make it imperative for our society to expand its reach to other planets in the medium term and also to other stars in the long term.

Sagan was part of the NASA team associated with Voyager probes, which explored the worlds of the four outermost planets from Jupiter. He tells the thrilling story of Voyager 1, which was designed to photograph Jupiter and Saturn at close range. Chugging along with a radioactive plutonium based power source – since solar power would be too weak at such long distance from the sun – Voyager 1 was healthy enough in 1980 after its scheduled reconnaissance with Saturn, hardly three years after its launch. NASA decided to extend its working life to explore Uranus and Neptune as well. It did both splendidly and even the extended mission was complete. The author always wanted to take a picture of the earth from that distant vantage point. Many opposed the move, citing the motive as nothing related to science. But finally, Sagan had his way. Just before the radio technicians were to be shuffled out for other projects, the command to take a last photo of the mother plant was issued. So in 1990, Voyager 1 turned its cameras inward to from where it came from, taking care not to orient the highly sensitive optics towards the sun. The picture reached earth nearly five hours later. And it was worth the effort. Though nothing much could be discerned from the photograph, the presence of earth as a pale blue dot on the family portrait of the solar system fills one with awe and humility. That tiny speck of brightness fills us with elation at the technological prowess with which the instrument made by a bipedal ape could snap the shot and humility at the insignificance of it all. Sagan devotes a few chapters to drive the point home. Presenting a brief history of the origins of geocentrism, the author explains how religion exerts a decisive thrust in shaping the false idea of the earth being at the centre of the universe. Recent incarnations of geocentric models in the guise of the anthropic principle which states that the physical parameters of the universe would be somehow tuned for compatibility for the existence of life forms that inhabit the earth. Sagan’s refuting of the principle hits the bull’s eye with the picture of the pale blue dot. Much of the frame, except that tiny point, is empty and meaningless when viewed through the eyes of the anthropic principle. Life, then, should be treated as a rare coincidence in the history of the universe.

Having written this book in 1994, one might expect the content to be dated somewhat, considering the rapid progress usually associated with science and technology in every passing year. Sadly, this is not the case in interplanetary exploration. Sagan has obviously missed some probes sent later than the year of publication, but there are no path-breaking efforts on the part of any nation like the Apollo project which put men on the moon. The book explains the real significance of the race between two superpowers to safely land a human being on the earth’s natural satellite. Sagan comments that the project was conceived and run as a political program rather than scientific. The spinoffs expected from such a huge exercise employing cutting edge technology would surely be worth something militarily. At the same time, this program shifted the focus from military to the civilian level as far as the competition between the U.S and Soviet Union was concerned. The immense success – 12 Americans landed on the moon, and no other country has been able to replicate it – helped produce optimism about technology and enthusiasm for the future. U.S. touched greatness with the Apollo project. After the end of Cold War, funding to space programs dried up mainly because of the downgrading of high-profile strategic warfare in the list of priorities of rich nations. The people too, changed its mindset from appreciation of science to concerns about the mindless application of it. Global warming and ozone layer depletion were two prominent trouble spots on the industrial landscape when this book was going to press.

There exist a few people who question the utility of carrying out expensive space programs by Third World countries like India where a considerable segment of the society live below poverty line. They would challenge the justification for earmarking a portion of the budget on expensive scientific projects like the Mangal Yaan. The recurrent refrain is that this money should be spent on poverty eradication efforts, which also means that scientific research is a prerogative of the rich. But this logic is utterly flawed as this seeks to isolate the poor nations from the benefits accrued from new knowledge and materials that is a byproduct of the main program. Space exploration and study are not something rich nations do in their free time. The tear in the Ozone layer that wraps around the upper atmosphere and the discovery that chlorine-containing Freon is the reason for its depletion was identified only because the scientists were familiar with a similar phenomenon observed on the planet Venus. The problem could be identified in time only because we were ready for it. Similarly, human-induced warming of the planet as a result of Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide was first observed and studied in Venus, whose surface temperature is high enough to melt many metals. Venus was turned into an inferno because of Greenhouse effect. We have developed software models to predict the temperatures of Venus correctly. When these models were run with the conditions obtaining on earth, the results suggest heating up of the planet. Here also, we were ready for identifying the problem in light of experience gained from the study of another planet’s atmosphere. But the author’s third idea about nuclear winter appears superfluous. There will be a cooling off of the atmosphere as a result of an all out nuclear war between the big nations. Five scientists, including Sagan himself, informed the political leadership about such a prospect in view of the data obtained from other planets. However, the contingency of a nuclear war is now abated and this point is not very convincing at present.

A sizable part of the latter half is devoted to speculations on colonizing other moons, planets themselves, asteroids and comets in the remote edges of the solar system and even interstellar space. Colonization of the solar system is optimistically estimated to take place by around the next century. Leaving the technologies aside, the imposing task of making the other worlds habitable – terraforming – is daunting. Venus, Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan are the likely candidates. Sagan puts forward reasons for convincing the public and the politicians to compel national governments to set apart large sums in their annual budget for space travel and exploration. Any reference to Sagan is bound to evoke memories of SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) among readers. Not surprisingly, he devotes a few chapters to it, in which he tantalizingly states that he personally has come across eleven instances of detecting probable alien broadcasts through the analysis of data from a radio telescope devoted to SETI. The positive aspect attributed to conquest of other worlds and also to detecting the presence of other intelligent beings is that it is a global effort, as the difference between peoples of various nationalities is trivial as compared to the vast difference between us and them. The author also sounds a note of caution against the sophisticated and lethal technologies that are required for terraforming and moving around asteroids of deflect incoming comets falling into the hands of rogue states or psychic national leaders.

Reading the book after a lapse of two decades since its publication brings to light some points which have gone clearly out of date. Pluto was still a planet for Sagan, as the threat of CFCs for their ozone-depleting potential a burning issue. Confident predictions of large scale robotic or even manned space missions to Mars have not materialized by now, even though George Bush, while unveiling his plans for new space missions in 1989 predicted a football match in Mars by 2019. Sagan’s arguments in favour of SETI is forceful, but still not very convincing. References to the sighting of earth as a pale blue dot is the theme of the book, but not even a monochrome image of Voyager 1’s original photograph is included in the book. Perhaps this is good, as the image, which is accessible on the Internet, is so ordinary and featureless that we marvel at the amount of ideas Sagan had mined out of it. The book incorporates a nice set of references and a good index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star