Is Earth Exceptional? The Quest for Cosmic Life

By Mario Livio & Jack Szostak

Basic Books 2024

Is Earth Exceptional has two subjects, the origins of life on Earth and the possibility of life on distant planets, and two authors, Mario Livio the astrophysicist and Jack Szostak the chemistry professor, but one approach and one authorly reflex. 

The approach is pedagogical; both these authors have spent far, far too much time expounding their subject to helpless students vacantly yearning for their next vape hit. The book is full of dusty professorial rhetorical devices of the complacent variety used only by people who are accustomed to captive audiences. “Having established the necessity of a cellular origin of life, we are now in a position to ask what kind of physical compartments would be best suited for the first cells, which we will refer to as protocells,” goes one such passage of many. “Let us first examine whether we can use the modern-day biological solution to this problem as the basis for a prebiotic answer.” The authors have fascinating subjects to discuss; the mechanics of abiogenesis on this planet may be common throughout the galaxy, and the profusion of exoplanets discovered in just the last ten years is a source of endless interest. But at almost every turn, the authors decide not to thrill readers but rather to remind them of what may very well show up on the final exam. “As we have previously seen, when cyanide attacks aldehydes in water, the product is cyanohydrin …”

But if this approach is bad, far worse is the professorial reflex that pervades not only this book but 90% of science-related writing aimed at a general audience: condescension. The very first sentence of Is Earth Exceptional points out to readers (adult readers; this book isn’t being marketed to middle school, where at least the insult would be a bit more palatable) that we can remember the past because it’s already happened, but we can’t remember the future because it hasn’t happened yet. And there are plenty more sentences like that in the course of the book. When the authors aren’t loading the pages with poorly-explained chemical equations, they’re carefully, laboriously instructing their readers that it’s easier to see things that are up close as opposed to those that are far away. Quite literally: “It is much easier to study, either remotely or directly, the conditions on planets revolving around the Sun, or even on the moons orbiting those planets, than to examine in detail extrasolar planets,” they explain. “The reason is simple – solar system objects are just so much closer.” 

It’s probably impossible to pinpoint exactly when this kind of patronizing tone became the norm rather than the exception in general-audience science writing. Doubtless it’s connected both the well-documented rising rates of American all-purpose stupidity and the near-total intellectual emptiness of the majority of the aforementioned vaping undergrads. But provocation doesn’t equal justification; books on such interesting subjects as these should try a little harder to be interesting themselves. And if the tone here echoes the modern astrophysics lecture hall, well, the United Federation of Planets is going to feel like a loooong way off. 

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, The American Conservative, The Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, The National, and the Daily Star. He has written regularly for The Boston Globe, the Vineyard Gazette, and the Christian Science Monitor and is the Books editor of Georgia’s Big Canoe News