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One: COSMIC PERSPECTIVES
1. A Transitional Animal
2. The Unicorn of Cetus
3. A Message from Earth
4. A Message to Earth
5. Experiments in Utopias
6. Chauvinism
7. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
I. The Scientific Interest
8. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
II. The Public Interest
9. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
III. The Historical Interest
Part Two: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
10. On Teaching the First Grade
11. "The Ancient and Legendary Gods of Old"
12. The Venus Detective Story
13. Venus Is Hell
14. Science and "Intelligence"
15. The Moons of Barsoom
16. The Mountains of Mars
I. Observations From Earth
17. The Mountains of Mars
II. Observations From Space
18. The Canals of Mars
19. The Lost Pictures of Mars
20. The Ice Age and the Cauldron
21. Beginnings and Ends of the Earth
22. Terraforming the Planets
23. The Exploration and Utilization of the Solar System
Part Three: BEYOND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
24. Some of My Best Friends Are Dolphins
25. "Hello, Central Casting? Send Me Twenty Extraterrestrials"
26. The Cosmic Connection
27. Extraterrestrial Life: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
28. Has the Earth Been Visited?
29. A Search Strategy for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligence
30. If We Succeed
31. Cables, Drums, and Seashells
32. The Night Freight to the Stars
33. Astroengineering
34. Twenty Questions: A Classification of Cosmic Civilizations
35. Galactic Cultural Exchanges
36. A Passage to Elsewhen
37. Starfolk
I. A Fable
38. Starfolk
II. A Future
39. Starfolk
III. The Cosmic Cheshire Cats
1. A Transitional Animal
2. The Unicorn of Cetus
3. A Message from Earth
4. A Message to Earth
5. Experiments in Utopias
6. Chauvinism
7. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
I. The Scientific Interest
8. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
II. The Public Interest
9. Space Exploration as a Human Enterprise
III. The Historical Interest
Part Two: THE SOLAR SYSTEM
10. On Teaching the First Grade
11. "The Ancient and Legendary Gods of Old"
12. The Venus Detective Story
13. Venus Is Hell
14. Science and "Intelligence"
15. The Moons of Barsoom
16. The Mountains of Mars
I. Observations From Earth
17. The Mountains of Mars
II. Observations From Space
18. The Canals of Mars
19. The Lost Pictures of Mars
20. The Ice Age and the Cauldron
21. Beginnings and Ends of the Earth
22. Terraforming the Planets
23. The Exploration and Utilization of the Solar System
Part Three: BEYOND THE SOLAR SYSTEM
24. Some of My Best Friends Are Dolphins
25. "Hello, Central Casting? Send Me Twenty Extraterrestrials"
26. The Cosmic Connection
27. Extraterrestrial Life: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
28. Has the Earth Been Visited?
29. A Search Strategy for Detecting Extraterrestrial Intelligence
30. If We Succeed
31. Cables, Drums, and Seashells
32. The Night Freight to the Stars
33. Astroengineering
34. Twenty Questions: A Classification of Cosmic Civilizations
35. Galactic Cultural Exchanges
36. A Passage to Elsewhen
37. Starfolk
I. A Fable
38. Starfolk
II. A Future
39. Starfolk
III. The Cosmic Cheshire Cats
Preface
When I was twelve, my grandfather asked me – through a translator (he had
never learned much English) – what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered,
"An astronomer," which, after a while, was also translated. "Yes," he replied, "but
how will you make a living?"
I had supposed that, like all the adult men I knew, I would be consigned to a
dull, repetitive, and uncreative job, astronomy would be done on weekends. It was
not until my second year in high school that I discovered that some astronomers
were paid to pursue their passion. I was overwhelmed with joy; I could pursue my
interest full-time.
Even today, there are moments when what I do seems to me like an
improbable, if unusually pleasant, dream: To be involved in the exploration of
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; to try to duplicate the steps that led to the
origin of life four billion years ago on an Earth very different from the one we
know; to land instruments on Mars to search there for life; and perhaps to be
engaged in a serious effort to communicate with other intelligent beings, if such
there be, out there in the dark of the night sky.
Had I been born fifty years earlier, I could have pursued none of these
activities. They were then all figments of the speculative imagination. Had I been
born fifty years later, I also could not have been involved in these efforts, except
possibly the last, because fifty years from now the preliminary reconnaissance of
the Solar System, the search for life on Mars, and the study of the origin of life will
have been completed. I think myself extraordinarily fortunate to be alive at the
one moment in the history of mankind when such ventures are being undertaken.
So when Jerome Agel approached me about doing a popular book to try to
communicate my sense of the excitement and importance of these adventures, I
was amenable – even though his suggestion came just before the Mariner 9
mission to Mars, which I knew would occupy most of my waking hours for many
months. At a later time, after discussing communication with extraterrestrial
intelligence, Agel and I had dinner in a Polynesian restaurant in Boston. My fortune
cookie announced, "You will shortly be called upon to decipher an important
message." This seemed a good omen.
After centuries of muddy surmise, unfettered speculation, stodgy conservatism,
and unimaginative disinterest, the subject of extraterrestrial life has finally come of
age. It has now reached a practical stage where it can be pursued by rigorous
scientific techniques, where it has achieved scientific respectability and where its
significance is widely understood. Extraterrestrial life is an idea whose time has
come.
This book is divided into three major sections. In the first part I try in several
ways to convey a sense of cosmic perspective – living out our lives on a tiny hunk
of rock and metal circling one of 250 billion stars that make up our galaxy in a
universe of billions of galaxies. The deflation of some of our more common
7
conceits is one of the practical applications of astronomy. The second part of the
book is concerned with various aspects of our Solar System – mostly with Earth,
Mars, and Venus. Some of the results and implications of Mariner 9 can be found
here. Part Three is devoted to the possibility of communicating with
extraterrestrial intelligence on planets of other stars. Since no such contact has yet
been made – our efforts to date have been feeble – this section is necessarily
speculative. I have not hesitated to speculate within what I perceive to be the
bounds of scientific plausibility. And, although I am not by training a philosopher
or sociologist or historian, I have not hesitated to draw philosophical or social or
historical implications of astronomy and space exploration.
The astronomical discoveries we are in the midst of making are of the broadest
human significance. If this book plays a small role in broadening public
consideration of these exploratory ventures, it will have served its purpose.
As with all ongoing work and especially all speculative subjects, some of the
statements in these pages will elicit vigorous demurrers. There are other books
with other opinions. Reasoned disputation is the lifeblood of science – as is, sadly,
infrequently the case in the intellectually more anemic arena of politics. But I
believe that the more controversial opinions expressed here have, nevertheless, a
significant scientific constituency. I have purposely introduced the same concept
in slightly different contexts in a few places where I felt the discussion required it.
The book is carefully structured, but, for the reader who wishes to browse ahead,
most chapters are self-contained.
There are far too many who helped shape my opinions on these subjects for
me to thank them all here. But in rereading these chapters, I find I owe a special
debt to Joseph Veverka and Frank Drake, both of Cornell University, with whom
over the past few years I have discussed so many aspects of this volume. The book
was composed partly during a very long transcontinental trip in a very short
automobile. I thank Linda and Nicholas for their encouragement and patience. I
am also grateful to Linda for drawing two handsome humans and one elegant
unicorn. And I am grateful to the late Mauritz Escher for permission to reproduce
his "Another World" and to Robert Macintyre for the human figure and star field
in Part Three. Jon Lomberg's paintings and drawings have been a source of
intellectual and aesthetic excitement for me, and I am grateful to him for
producing many of them especially for this book. Hermann Eckleman's careful
photographic reproductions of Lomberg's work have facilitated their appearance
in this book. And I thank Jerome Agel, without whose time and persistence this
book would never have been written.
I am indebted to John Naugle of NASA for showing me his file on public
response to the Pioneer 10 plaque; the Oregon System of Higher Education for
permission to reproduce some ideas from my book Planetary Exploration; the
Forum for Contemporary History, in Santa Barbara, for permission to reproduce a
portion of my letter distributed by the Forum in January 1973; and Cornell
University Press for permission to reprint a fraction of my chapter "The
8
Extraterrestrial and Other Hypotheses" from UFO's: A Scientific Debate, edited by
Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, Cornell University Press, 1972. I am also grateful to
those who have granted me permission to reproduce in Chapter 4 their remarks
on the Pioneer 10 plaque. The evolution of this book through many drafts owes
much to the technical skills of Jo Ann Cowan, and, especially, Mary Szymanski.
– Carl Sagan
When I was twelve, my grandfather asked me – through a translator (he had
never learned much English) – what I wanted to be when I grew up. I answered,
"An astronomer," which, after a while, was also translated. "Yes," he replied, "but
how will you make a living?"
I had supposed that, like all the adult men I knew, I would be consigned to a
dull, repetitive, and uncreative job, astronomy would be done on weekends. It was
not until my second year in high school that I discovered that some astronomers
were paid to pursue their passion. I was overwhelmed with joy; I could pursue my
interest full-time.
Even today, there are moments when what I do seems to me like an
improbable, if unusually pleasant, dream: To be involved in the exploration of
Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; to try to duplicate the steps that led to the
origin of life four billion years ago on an Earth very different from the one we
know; to land instruments on Mars to search there for life; and perhaps to be
engaged in a serious effort to communicate with other intelligent beings, if such
there be, out there in the dark of the night sky.
Had I been born fifty years earlier, I could have pursued none of these
activities. They were then all figments of the speculative imagination. Had I been
born fifty years later, I also could not have been involved in these efforts, except
possibly the last, because fifty years from now the preliminary reconnaissance of
the Solar System, the search for life on Mars, and the study of the origin of life will
have been completed. I think myself extraordinarily fortunate to be alive at the
one moment in the history of mankind when such ventures are being undertaken.
So when Jerome Agel approached me about doing a popular book to try to
communicate my sense of the excitement and importance of these adventures, I
was amenable – even though his suggestion came just before the Mariner 9
mission to Mars, which I knew would occupy most of my waking hours for many
months. At a later time, after discussing communication with extraterrestrial
intelligence, Agel and I had dinner in a Polynesian restaurant in Boston. My fortune
cookie announced, "You will shortly be called upon to decipher an important
message." This seemed a good omen.
After centuries of muddy surmise, unfettered speculation, stodgy conservatism,
and unimaginative disinterest, the subject of extraterrestrial life has finally come of
age. It has now reached a practical stage where it can be pursued by rigorous
scientific techniques, where it has achieved scientific respectability and where its
significance is widely understood. Extraterrestrial life is an idea whose time has
come.
This book is divided into three major sections. In the first part I try in several
ways to convey a sense of cosmic perspective – living out our lives on a tiny hunk
of rock and metal circling one of 250 billion stars that make up our galaxy in a
universe of billions of galaxies. The deflation of some of our more common
7
conceits is one of the practical applications of astronomy. The second part of the
book is concerned with various aspects of our Solar System – mostly with Earth,
Mars, and Venus. Some of the results and implications of Mariner 9 can be found
here. Part Three is devoted to the possibility of communicating with
extraterrestrial intelligence on planets of other stars. Since no such contact has yet
been made – our efforts to date have been feeble – this section is necessarily
speculative. I have not hesitated to speculate within what I perceive to be the
bounds of scientific plausibility. And, although I am not by training a philosopher
or sociologist or historian, I have not hesitated to draw philosophical or social or
historical implications of astronomy and space exploration.
The astronomical discoveries we are in the midst of making are of the broadest
human significance. If this book plays a small role in broadening public
consideration of these exploratory ventures, it will have served its purpose.
As with all ongoing work and especially all speculative subjects, some of the
statements in these pages will elicit vigorous demurrers. There are other books
with other opinions. Reasoned disputation is the lifeblood of science – as is, sadly,
infrequently the case in the intellectually more anemic arena of politics. But I
believe that the more controversial opinions expressed here have, nevertheless, a
significant scientific constituency. I have purposely introduced the same concept
in slightly different contexts in a few places where I felt the discussion required it.
The book is carefully structured, but, for the reader who wishes to browse ahead,
most chapters are self-contained.
There are far too many who helped shape my opinions on these subjects for
me to thank them all here. But in rereading these chapters, I find I owe a special
debt to Joseph Veverka and Frank Drake, both of Cornell University, with whom
over the past few years I have discussed so many aspects of this volume. The book
was composed partly during a very long transcontinental trip in a very short
automobile. I thank Linda and Nicholas for their encouragement and patience. I
am also grateful to Linda for drawing two handsome humans and one elegant
unicorn. And I am grateful to the late Mauritz Escher for permission to reproduce
his "Another World" and to Robert Macintyre for the human figure and star field
in Part Three. Jon Lomberg's paintings and drawings have been a source of
intellectual and aesthetic excitement for me, and I am grateful to him for
producing many of them especially for this book. Hermann Eckleman's careful
photographic reproductions of Lomberg's work have facilitated their appearance
in this book. And I thank Jerome Agel, without whose time and persistence this
book would never have been written.
I am indebted to John Naugle of NASA for showing me his file on public
response to the Pioneer 10 plaque; the Oregon System of Higher Education for
permission to reproduce some ideas from my book Planetary Exploration; the
Forum for Contemporary History, in Santa Barbara, for permission to reproduce a
portion of my letter distributed by the Forum in January 1973; and Cornell
University Press for permission to reprint a fraction of my chapter "The
8
Extraterrestrial and Other Hypotheses" from UFO's: A Scientific Debate, edited by
Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, Cornell University Press, 1972. I am also grateful to
those who have granted me permission to reproduce in Chapter 4 their remarks
on the Pioneer 10 plaque. The evolution of this book through many drafts owes
much to the technical skills of Jo Ann Cowan, and, especially, Mary Szymanski.
– Carl Sagan
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