annieb123's Review of Taxi from Another Planet

by Charles S. Cockell

Insightful, good-humored essays on the possibilities of alien life and the uses of space exploration, based on an astrobiologist’s everyday conversations with his fellow humans—taxi drivers, to be precise. “This is a joy to read.” —Publishers Weekly

If you’ve ever sat in the back seat of a taxi, you know that cabbies like to talk. Sports or politics, your job or theirs, taxi drivers are fine conversationalists on just about any topic. And when the passenger is astrobiologist Charles Cockell, that topic is usually space and what, if anything, lives out there.

Inspired by conversations with drivers all over the world, Taxi from Another Planet tackles the questions that everyday people have about the cosmos and our place in it. Will we understand aliens? What if there isn’t life out in the universe? Is Mars our Plan B? And why is the government spending tax dollars on space programs anyway? Each essay in this genial collection takes questions like these as a starting point on the way to a range of insightful, even poignant, observations. Cockell delves into debates over the inevitability of life and looks to both human history and scientific knowledge to consider what first contact will be like and what we can expect from spacefaring societies. He also offers a forceful argument for the sympathies between space exploration and environmentalism.

A shrewd and entertaining foray into the most fundamental mysteries, Taxi from Another Planet brings together the wisdom of scientific experts and their fellow citizens of Earth, the better to understand how life might unfold elsewhere.

Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.

Taxi from Another Planet is an intriguing and well written collection of essays and conversations between the author, Dr. Charles S. Cockell, and various taxi drivers he's encountered over the years. Released 30th Aug 2022 by the Harvard University Press, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is an engaging and whimsical meandering contemplation of life as we know it and what could be out *there*, presented by a well know astrobiologist (whose doctorate, from Oxford, was in biophysics - so clearly a guy who knows some things) as discussed with various taxi drivers. The language is easily layman accessible and the more complex scientific concepts contained here are explained simply and understandably. It's not an academic treatise, there are no annotations, and the bibliography and chapter notes are brief and not academically rigorous or demanding.

It stands on its own whimsical merits as the ruminations of an unusually clever and curious guy pondering the universe in which we all live. I found it both charming and sometimes surprisingly profound. I also really liked that despite his being a clearly academically gifted individual, he never took the focus on himself in these conversations. There was no judgement stated or implied toward the taxi drivers and the book really is a group of recollections of conversations about the possibility of life outside the Earth.

Four stars. Admittedly a niche book, but a delightful one.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Reading updates

25 February, 2023: Started reading

25 February, 2023: Finished reading

25 February, 2023: Reviewed