Review of Aliens and Humans

[Vassilis Roupas]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Aliens and Humans" by Harry Keller.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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I should say from the beginning that I am a science-fiction fan. I have also read several non-fiction books of popular/speculative science. So, when I came across Harry Keller’s book, I thought, “Do I really need to read another one?” The subject is, of course, fascinating: Are we alone in this vast universe? If there are aliens, where are they? Why don’t we see them? A lot of books have been written on this subject, and if there are no definitive answers, the debate will continue in the future. With the progress of science and technology, new books are written to replace outdated ones. Perhaps this is the case with “Aliens and Humans”. Upon reading this book, I enjoyed the author’s honest, earnest approach and I learned some things I didn’t know. The book is well-structured, and the funny illustrations help to grasp difficult concepts. The numbers are…well, astronomical, and the unavoidable mathematical equations are there to convince the skeptics (but you can skip those if you are not up to it). There are sections on cosmology, biology, physics (velocity), among others, and a final section which summarizes the author’s point of view and discusses other rival theories. As he puts it, “This book has been all about the probabilities of events that allow us to be here and, therefore, our opposite number to exist near enough to make visitation possible”. But “With 6-25 trillion galaxies in the universe, it’s almost guaranteed that some of them will have societies to rival ours. Yet, the distances between galaxies are so great that we will never have the means even to detect their existence”.
I enjoyed reading this book. There are, however, some editing issues in the introductory section (Roman numerals, capitalization) and in the index (missing index title) which need to be corrected. Because of this, I am going to give a grade of 4 out of 5.

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Aliens and Humans
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