What do you think?
Rate this book
Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience
This book weaves together essays by twenty-five noted scholars from the social and space sciences which examine the human as well as the technological side of our future beyond Earth.
- GenresNonfictionScienceSpace
354 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
2 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 3, 2018
Slightly dated now, both with the O’Neillian optimism that the Space Shuttle would open the space frontier, and with the Cold War assumptions, this is nevertheless the earliest multi-author work I know going beyond simplistic analogies to historical exploration and settlement to seriously examine some of those historical societies and learn lessons about the possible social organization of future space settlements
December 26, 2023
review to follow
Read
April 9, 2009The tile to the contrary, this is not very much about how humans would experience interstellar and other extraterrestrial environments.
It's full of fascinating, if sometimes disturbing, ideas. (For example, I'd prefer to see the idea of stellar husbandry tried somewhere else before it was implemented in the Solar System. There're too many unresolved issues (like what do you do with the extra hydrogen in the interim?).)
By and large, the essays read like articles in the Journal of The British Interplanetary society--except that some articles in JBIS are more on a human scale. Not necessarily a bad thing--JBIS has provided me with a lot of interesting reading over the years. It's just that if you say you're going to discuss the human experience of things, it might be a good idea to actually discuss the human experience a bit more.
It's full of fascinating, if sometimes disturbing, ideas. (For example, I'd prefer to see the idea of stellar husbandry tried somewhere else before it was implemented in the Solar System. There're too many unresolved issues (like what do you do with the extra hydrogen in the interim?).)
By and large, the essays read like articles in the Journal of The British Interplanetary society--except that some articles in JBIS are more on a human scale. Not necessarily a bad thing--JBIS has provided me with a lot of interesting reading over the years. It's just that if you say you're going to discuss the human experience of things, it might be a good idea to actually discuss the human experience a bit more.
March 6, 2013
(read 3/6/13) An anthology of collected papers dealing with issues that will effect humans when/if we take to the stars to colonize space. The work is very scholarly in nature, dealing with issues such as nature of space travel, the cost of mining resources, breeding and the effects of space on the future evolution of the species. Interesting for anyone fascinated by science.
December 28, 2016
An influential book, to me, back in 1987. First, because it was the first book I'd read combining social science and space sciences. Second, because it resulted in me contacting editor Eric M. Jones, with whom I later worked on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, a cooperation that I look back on fondly.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.