. . : : Lonely Planets : David Grinspoon : Introduction : : . .

David Grinspoon is the recipient of the 2006 Carl Sagan Medal!

Winner of the PEN Center USA's 2004 Literary Award for Research Nonfiction!

"An exuberant, provocative look at the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and what it might mean....Wisecracks, philosophical musings, and personal anecdotes make his text as lively as it is authoritative. The best look at this subject since Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection."

--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Lonely Planets is a funky natural philosophy of life in the universe written with authority and edge. Dr. Grinspoon uses the topic of ET life as a mirror in which we view human evolution, history, present, and future in cosmic perspective from the eyes of a working planetary scientist.

With an accessible, breezy and often whimsical style, he presents an authoritative scientific narrative of cosmic evolution along with provocative ruminations on how we fit into the story of the universe. In illustrating how we - scientists and nonscientists alike - have projected upon alien life our own philosophies, biases and preconceptions, he exposes the assumptions we make about extraterrestrials, and how these illuminate science and its limitations.

Listen to David Grinspoon on NPR,

interviewed by Scott Simon, 12/20/03

Read David Grinspoon's "Slate Diary"

A weeklong journal of an astrobiologist.

For the latest, coolest Mars

images, click "links" above..