Waski_the_Squirrel
Resident of the least visited state in the nation.
Last night I stayed up a little too late finishing a used paperback I had picked up for $2.50. I mention the price because apparently the cheapest you can get that paperback on Amazon is $38. I was going to buy the Kindle version and mail the paperback to someone I know, but now I'm not sure if I want to do that any more.
The book is James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars published on a dare in 1978. In the book, a 50,000 year old human corpse in a space suit is found on the moon. The obvious question is how it got there.
I loved that this book was hard science fiction. That means it was based on known science of the day. There are a few things which are a little off. For one, smoking is a lot more common in this book than it will be given current trends, but it probably didn't look that way in 1978.
One thing which the author did is use evolution in his science to quite interesting effect. Our version of human and Neanderthals both lived on the Earth at the same time. The Neanderthals died out and we lived on. Three guesses why. What he did is put a science fiction spin on that.
He also suggested how humans could evolve on two different planets (hint: they didn't) and he also looked into how evolutionary theory might be different if organisms evolved from two different planets were then put on one to continue evolving together.
Besides the evolution, he gets into lunar geology, isotopes, linguistics, chemistry, and the importance of scientific communication. He also ends the book with a clever scene in which the evidence needed to tie everything together is casually tossed away by someone who decided finding a digital wristwatch on a caveman was someone's idea of a joke. (In 1978, a digital wristwatch would have been really nifty and high tech.)
This is the cover of the paperback I have. You can buy the book with other covers for quite a bit less.
The book is James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars published on a dare in 1978. In the book, a 50,000 year old human corpse in a space suit is found on the moon. The obvious question is how it got there.
I loved that this book was hard science fiction. That means it was based on known science of the day. There are a few things which are a little off. For one, smoking is a lot more common in this book than it will be given current trends, but it probably didn't look that way in 1978.
One thing which the author did is use evolution in his science to quite interesting effect. Our version of human and Neanderthals both lived on the Earth at the same time. The Neanderthals died out and we lived on. Three guesses why. What he did is put a science fiction spin on that.
He also suggested how humans could evolve on two different planets (hint: they didn't) and he also looked into how evolutionary theory might be different if organisms evolved from two different planets were then put on one to continue evolving together.
Besides the evolution, he gets into lunar geology, isotopes, linguistics, chemistry, and the importance of scientific communication. He also ends the book with a clever scene in which the evidence needed to tie everything together is casually tossed away by someone who decided finding a digital wristwatch on a caveman was someone's idea of a joke. (In 1978, a digital wristwatch would have been really nifty and high tech.)
This is the cover of the paperback I have. You can buy the book with other covers for quite a bit less.
