SEEING US SEEING THEM

Avi Loeb. Interstellar, the Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth. John Murray Books, 2023.

This book is potentially a trailblazer and may be one of the first in a new genre. A book about aliens visiting Earth that is not written by a UFO enthusiast trying to investigate close encounters, but is very much a consideration of that subject through the actual evidence uncovered by astronomers and cosmologists.

🔽

STILL SEARCHING

David Whitehouse, The Alien Perspective, Icon Books, 2022.

SETI research has spent decades using radio telescopes to search for signals from intelligent extraterrestrial civilisations. A few unusual blips have been detected but they have never been repeated or have been attributed to terrestrial interference or previously unknown celestial events.

🔻

WHERE IS EVERYONE?

Wade Roush, Extraterrestrials. MIT Press, 2020.

Keith Cooper, The Contact Paradox; Challenging our Assumptions in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Bloomsbury, 2020.

Dan Farcus. Hyper-Civilizations, an Answer to ET Contacts on Earth. Flying Disc, 2019.

Extraterrestrials is a handy guide to the current status of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research. Wade looks at the history of our dreams and ideas about the existence of aliens, how SETI research began after World War II, the more recent discovery of extremophiles that exist in extreme environments on Earth (and possibly lurk elsewhere in our Solar System) and the increasing numbers of exoplanets being detected that might be the home to primitive life or even intelligent civilisations.

🔻

SILENCING SAGAN?

Donald L. Zygutis. The Sagan Conspiracy: NASA's Untold Plot to Suppress the People's Scientist's Theory of Ancient Aliens. New Page Books, 2017.

Donald Zygutis claims to be "the world's foremost authority on Carl Sagan's ET beliefs, particularly his work on ancient alienism". He asserts that NASA tried to keep this secret, apparently because they were in favour of trying to detect signals from distant planets using radio telescopes, and they were sure that interstellar space flight was impossible.
🔻

OUT THERE

John W Traphagan. Science, Culture and the Search for Life on Other Worlds. Springer, 2016.

Apparently there is a strange star out there given the decidedly unromantic name of KIC8462852, the light of which unexpectedly dims every few weeks or months, which has led some people to suggest that its light is being intercepted by huge megastructures orbiting it, built by aliens.
🔻

THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS

        

Mary-Jane Rubenstein. Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse. Columbia University Press, 2014.

---

Richard J. Evans. Altered Pasts: Counterfactuals in History. Little Brown, 2014.

---

David Waltham. Lucky Planet: Why the Earth is Exceptional and What That Means for Life in the Universe. Icon Books, 2014.

These three books examine in very different ways the question of the 'plurality of worlds' and the uniqueness, or otherwise, of Earth's place in the universe. 

🔻

ALIEN NOTION

Don Lincoln. Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013

The purpose of this book is to explore the question: "Are we alone?" As there seems to be little prospect of getting a definitive answer, we are given a history of speculation on the subject. The first chapters consider the sources of information which have guided our collective image of Aliens. (Lincoln has capitalised 'Alien' to indicate intelligent aliens to distinguish them from alien life in general.)   🔻

STILL SEARCHING

Edward Ashpole. Signatures of Life: Science Searches the Universe. Prometheus Books, 2013

This book is mainly concerned with speculating about the possibilities of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Various hypotheses are formed and considered, but attempting to do science with no data is rather frustrating. The most sensible idea discussed is that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) should not be conducted by attempting to detect radio signals from distant planets.
🔻

BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

David Toomey. Weird Life: The Search for Life That is Very, Very Different From Our Own. W. W. Norton, 2013.

“Its life Jim, but not as we know it”, is perhaps the only famous line from the song 'Star Trekkin', though the words were never actually spoken by Dr McCoy in Star Trek. Life, but not as we know it is the subject of this book, in which David Toomey meets with and discusses the work of those searching for this weird life. The start of the search for alien life begins here on earth, with the hunt for life that might have come from a second genesis, one of those involved in this search being the retired cosmologist and one-time ufologist Paul Davies.
🔻

STILL SEARCHING

Paul Murdin. Are We Being Watched? The Search for Life in the Cosmos. Thames and Hudson, 2013.

This is one of a number of recent books which have combined astronomy with biology in order to discuss the prospects of finding evidence of extraterrestrial life. This study is, not surprisingly, called astrobiology. The main problem with astrobiology, as the author admits, is that it is "a science about something that might exist, not something that exists for certain". 🔻

WE ARE THE MARTIANS?

Giovanni F. Bignami, We are the Martians: Connecting Cosmology with Biology, Springer-Verlag Italia, 2012.

This is a short book of student notes giving an interdisciplinary treatment of recent findings on the development of the universe (or at least the observable part of it) from the Big Bang to the emergence and evolution of living organisms. The account of the development of the universe leading to the formation of galaxies containing billions of stars and planets is as described in many popular books on astronomy and cosmology.
🔻

INTRODUCTION TO EXOTHEOLOGY

Thomas F. O'Meara. Vast Universe: Extraterrestrials and Christian Revelation, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2012.

If you don't believe in Christian revelation and think that we unlikely ever to encounter any extraterrestrials, then this book is possibly not for you. However, it should be of interest not only to theology students, but also to those who are interested in the interaction between scientific discovery and religious belief, which is a more important subject than is generally realised.
🔻

LIFE OUT THERE

J Woods Halley. How Likely is Extraterrestrial Life? Springer, 2012.

It is now half a century since the celebrated conference at Green Bank, West Virginia, on the subject of ‘Intelligent Extraterrestrial Life’, at which Frank Drake proposed what has become known as the Drake Equation for the number of civilisations that might exist in space. Unfortunately, there were no real values for most of the factors. Much has been discovered since, but, as Halley’s book makes clear, there are still too many unknowns to be able to give a real answer.
🔽

UFOS AND BEYOND

Jeffrey Bennett, Beyond UFOs: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and its Astonishing Implications for Our Future, Princeton University Press, 2011.

This book is mainly about possibilities rather than actualities, as we have no hard evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life. We do, however, have plenty of scientific data which indicate that some forms of life similar to that here on Earth could exist on other planets and satellites in the solar system. Life could also be common throughout the universe.
🔻

STRANGE NEW WORLDS

Ray Jayawardhana. Strange New Worlds – The Search for Alien Planets and Life Beyond Our Solar System. Princeton University Press, 2011 

There is little doubt the discovery of tell-tale signs of life elsewhere in the universe, let alone the receipt of an indisputably alien radio signal, would have massive implications for mankind – the first sign that life is not unique to Earth.
🔻

TALKING TO THE ALIENS

Douglas A. Vakoch (ed.). Communicating with Extraterrestrial Intelligence, State University of New York Press, 2011

The idea of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences through radio, optic or other processes continues to fascinate both sections of the scientific community and the general public, despite 50 years of failure to detect an unambiguous extraterrestrial signal. This is evident from the collection of papers published here which "arose from" the April 2010 astrobiology science conference organised by NASA.
🔻

LIFE ON MARS?

Dirk Schulze-Makuch and David Darling, We Are Not Alone: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life. Oneworld, 2011

The title is somewhat misleading, as we have not (yet) found extraterrestrial life but only some, hotly disputed, evidence suggestive of the existence of microorganisms on the planet Mars. The search for life on Mars began in August 1960 when NASA authorised the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to work on a plan to land a capsule equipped with instruments and experiments for detecting signs of life in the soil of the planet. 

🔽

ET TALK

Fernando J. Ballesteros. ET Talk: How Will We Communicate with Intelligent Life on Other Worlds? Springer, 2010.

After looking at the prospects for life in the solar system, and examining the various strategies used to search for extraterrestrial signals, and their success or lack of same (a number of isolated anomalies such as the famous 'Wow' signal but no actual sustained signal) Ballesteros goes into the meat of the book, how to communicate.
🔻

ALIEN CONVERSATIONS

Chris Impey (ed.) Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

This book comprises interviews with 37 people associated with various aspects of the search for extraterrestrial life and intelligence, dealing with topics ranging from the search for life on Mars, the chemistry of various solar system bodies, the development of life and mind on earth, the search for extrasolar planets, and the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence. 

🔻

HIGH STRANGENESS & HIGH HOPES

Philip J. Imbrogno. Files from the Edge: A Paranormal Investigator's Explorations into High Strangeness. Llewellyn, 2010.

---

Michael A. G. Michaud. Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears About Encountering Extraterrestrials. Copernicus Books, 2007

High Strangeness is certainly not an understatement, as much of the material in this book consists of the sort of stories you used to hear on the fringes of UFO group meetings, and which most people walk away from, having shut their ears several minutes earlier. Imbrogno is either open-minded enough or credulous enough (you pays your money and takes your choice) to document some of these stories. 
🔻