This was a read outside of my usual chosen genres, but I'm always glad to try something new, and this choice paid off with Taxi From Another Planet. This collection of essays and stories unravels life's most significant questions, a thought process of life and the universe.

We journey through conversations with taxi drivers about the universe in ways that are so accessible to the general audience - this aspect really made me know this guy knows what he's on about - where we become privy to not only his thoughts but the thoughts of the taxi drivers in the conversational piece of knowledge exchange. It's really a book I would recommend because it's one of those that gives you a little insight into something you think you would understand nothing of but come out of it slightly astonished.

Taxi from Another Planet by Charles S. Cockell is a collection of essays that explore major topics in astrobiology through the lens of casual conversations with taxi drivers around the world. Cockell is an astrobiologist and microbiologist, a professor and a science communicator. I myself am a planetary scientist and astrobiologist who has read and worked with Cockell’s academic textbook on astrobiology for years. My personal background is in geophysics and habitable environments more than biology, though. Naturally, I was still intrigued by this book and how it would present complex and fascinating questions about life in the universe.

Some of the topics that Cockell discusses with his drivers include: the origin of life on Earth and elsewhere, the possibility and implications of intelligent aliens, the challenges and benefits of space exploration and colonization, the ethical and environmental issues of terraforming planets, the role of religion and philosophy in understanding our place in the cosmos, and the future of humanity in a vast and uncertain universe. Given my background, these ideas are not particularly new to me, but I was nevertheless enthralled by the conversation. Cockell writes with clarity and insight, drawing on his scientific expertise as well as his personal experiences and opinions. He does not shy away from addressing the nuances and difficulties of each topic, but he also conveys a sense of wonder and curiosity that is contagious.

This book is published by Harvard University Press (thanks to NetGalley for an eARC and to Harvard Press for a physical ARC), but it does not present itself in an overly academic way. It is written for a general audience who may have little or no prior knowledge of astrobiology, but who are interested in learning more about it. I was nervous about the depth of the conversation given the type of conversations that are feasible in a short taxi ride, but the taxis are just the setup. Each essay digs into the details and implications of each topic, even providing examples for further reading and exploration.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read about astrobiology (i.e., life on Earth, outside it, and its origins) and our place in the cosmos. It is one of the best books I have read on the subject. It is informative, entertaining, thought-provoking, and inspiring. It will make you look at the sky differently, and perhaps even strike up a conversation with your next taxi driver.

Taxi from Another Planet is an intriguing and well written collection of essays and conversations between the author, Dr. Charles S. Cockell, and various taxi drivers he's encountered over the years. Released 30th Aug 2022 by the Harvard University Press, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is an engaging and whimsical meandering contemplation of life as we know it and what could be out *there*, presented by a well know astrobiologist (whose doctorate, from Oxford, was in biophysics - so clearly a guy who knows some things) as discussed with various taxi drivers. The language is easily layman accessible and the more complex scientific concepts contained here are explained simply and understandably. It's not an academic treatise, there are no annotations, and the bibliography and chapter notes are brief and not academically rigorous or demanding.

It stands on its own whimsical merits as the ruminations of an unusually clever and curious guy pondering the universe in which we all live. I found it both charming and sometimes surprisingly profound. I also really liked that despite his being a clearly academically gifted individual, he never took the focus on himself in these conversations. There was no judgement stated or implied toward the taxi drivers and the book really is a group of recollections of conversations about the possibility of life outside the Earth.

Four stars. Admittedly a niche book, but a delightful one.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

’ve often been taken by the wealth of stories shared by taxi drivers, bus drivers, and driving instructors; and I’ve wished there were more books about their experiences. Taxi from Another Planet seemed to be exactly that, and I was excited to hear the takes of taxi drivers on the universe.

While I don’t doubt the veracity of Cockell’s conversations, I do get a sense that the taxi drivers are rather used as a device to introduce ideas about space exploration, life, and the universe. Is that necessarily a bad thing? No - unless, like me, you anticipated a greater focus on the taxi drivers themselves.

That said, I always enjoy the level of philosophy that accompanies the teaching of a person who is truly an expert in their field. It reminds me of centuries past where scientists WERE philosophers. Cockell’s essays are fascinating because they ask questions beyond the binary: not, should or should we not colonise Mars?, but to what end. Not, is or is there not intelligent life beyond our planet?, but what will happen if there is - and will it even matter?

Cockell is a gripping enough writer, and quite funny, in a dry kind of way. His more complicated explanations sometimes drag on a bit longer than is strictly necessary - and I did find my attention drifting in parts.

While Taxi from Another Planet certainly is filled with science and fact, what I will remember most is the way of thinking about science it offers - an approach that is less about fact, and more about the interaction of our minds with those facts.

Charles Cockell takes a lot of cabs. He therefore has a lot of conversations with taxi drivers. As an astrobiologist, he is prone to want to talk about his domain – life elsewhere. This combination makes for an engaging book called Taxi From Another Planet. It is a fun topic and he approaches it with just the right dollops of seriousness and amusement. In 18 chapters, each headed up by where the taxi ride was from and to, Cockell uses his conversation with the driver to deliver a lecture on a specific topic: space travel, evolution, the stuff of life, why aliens have not appeared in these parts, and so on.

This is not my first review of a book by an astrobiologist. I find them attractive because it seems to be a paradox in itself – a biologist with nothing to study. So I want to read what they have to offer. Cockell is heavily involved in planning for space travel. He contributes to conferences and projects to investigate and populate other planets, notably Mars, which comes up often throughout the book.

He is expectedly enthusiastic about space travel. There is no question he would hop aboard the first flight offered to him. He can’t wait to see it all for himself. On the other hand, he is totally realistic about what is involved and what awaits.

Travelling to Mars for a monthlong vacation in a timeshare will not work. It would take about two years to get there, and two more to get back. If you think sitting in an airplane for 22 hours to get to Hong Kong from New York is all but unbearable, imagine two years. Once there, life quickly becomes unexciting, he thinks. The same weather – orange, with occasional gusts of red – becomes old really quickly.

Windows cannot open, as there is no oxygen to breathe outside. Every venture outdoors involves bulky equipment and life support. He does not say this, but it is really a one way trip. Those born on Mars and likely those who have been there a long time will find life on Earth impossible. They will be confined to wheelchairs here, as their leg and back muscles and their very bones won’t be able to support their bodies. Everything they try to lift here will weigh three times as much as it did on Mars, starting with their own shoes. The impurities in the unfiltered fresh air would likely prove toxic to someone who has only breathed office air all their life.

In addition, Mars has no radiation shield – no magnetic field to deflect the radiation from the sun. This has the effect of killing anything that tries to live on its surface. It is because Mars has lost its nuclear reactor. It must have run through all the uranium in its core, and petered out. The result is the loss of its atmosphere, surface water, and life.

Cockell does not discuss it, but Earth is undergoing the same process. Normally, the electromagnetic field reverses itself every few hundred thousand years. But it has become so weak, the latest pole reversal is hundreds of thousands of years overdue. Long before the sun turns into a gas giant, long before the Andromeda galaxy crashes through our Milky Way, the Earth will die from losing the nuclear reactor at its core. It will become another Mars.

He thinks of Martian living not as an escape from Earth (PLANet B), but a sort of honor, making humans the first multi-planetary species. But it is clearly not the solution to waiting out the Earth’s self-recovery from all the damage mankind is doing so we can come back and pick up where we left off a hundred thousand years later. Which seems to be the rationale for colonizing Mars.

Venus is even worse. Venus is on constant broil. This is the Greenhouse Effect so many like to deny as a hoax. Cockell says it is a free laboratory experiment in the Greenhouse Effect gone wild. We have no way at all of living on Venus. And if we’re not careful…

Intergalactic travel is yet worse still. It will require a gigantic ark of a spaceship, capable to maintaining a whole society of people, who need to eat, work and play together to keep from going mad. It will be a psychological disaster for the newly born to realize they have only one job in life – produce another generation that will also never leave the ship, as the journey will take at least a thousand years, depending on the state of technology. Their education will be for nothing; same for their careers. They will never go outside, never breathe fresh air, and never be alone. But they will be bored and depressed. They will be prisoners, born into the slavery of life on a spaceship. Cockell says “Given the fragility of the human mind and physique, we still cannot be sure that a crew of thousands, even tens of thousands, could stave off deterioration across ages and ages of travel.”

This is also a very good reason why aliens have not visited Earth. First, they would have to know about it, a large if in the scheme of things. It is only in the last hundred years that we have made our presence known with radio waves. Then they would have to decide to visit. Then they would have to travel, facing the same long haul we would have to make. They probably have their own problems to deal with. So intergalactic travel is likely too big a commitment for life in the universe. At least as far as Earth is concerned.

The lightest moment comes when Cockell asks readers to imagine a real episode of Star Trek. “In the first year of the mission, boredom sets in. The craft leaps across the universe, warp-speeding from one dead solar system to another. By year three, Captain Kirk has taken to drugs and spends much of his time listening to albums by The Doors, while his languid crew sit around watching B-movies and daydreaming about the better jobs they might have had in banking or real estate.”

And yet, Cockell is ready to go.

The book begins with a fanciful question from a cabbie – do you think there are cab drivers on other planets? After thinking about it for a chapter, Cockell says there must be, and he gives the reasons why. He also thinks we will be able to communicate with aliens because we both speak science. And science, notably physics, will be the same for all, all over the universe. That could be the basis for beginning to understand our languages.

But he doesn’t consider that aliens might not use language at all. They might not be carbon-based, a huge prejudice of most scientists. Earth did not always have oxygen in the air, and that did not stop evolution. Oxygen is a byproduct of cyanobacteria, which make the air seem blue. The advent of cyanobacteria actually killed off all other life on Earth, until new life that could tolerate oxygen evolved. Other planets might harbor life based on other combinations of elements. Their lifeforms might draw sustenance purely from their sun reacting with their atmosphere. They might communicate with what pass for eyes. We don’t know. But to assume they will basically have to be similar to us is just arrogance.

And then there is God. The laws of physics don’t mesh well with a universal God, overseeing and manipulating every single being and atom. “This sort of thing used to be a mystery, creating an opening for some sort of superior intelligence, God or otherwise, whose hand must have been at play in directing the workings of the animals. As long as life’s guiding principles were unfathomable, it made sense that there was a puppeteer pulling the strings. But we now see much more clearly that the forms taken by life, and the activities undertaken by living things, are not so difficult to explain … From bird flocks to herds of wilderbeest, we find the same principles at work, not the will of an awesome power. Nothing lies outside explanation; there is no élan vital. Humans and all other life on Earth and anywhere else in the universe are the organic manifestation of physical equations: mathematics given biological form.”

So what then is the purpose of life? “The quest to understand life in the universe is itself the purpose.”

One chapter I did not like was on quantum physics. Cockell tries to be cute, claiming to see real ghosts everywhere. By this he is referring to the properties of solo electrons that allow them to appear in two places at once, never be seen as a solid mass, and be both particle and wave at the same time. Also, atoms are largely empty space. From this he can winkingly say everything is a ghost, not solid and mostly transparent.

But this is only true of free, unassigned electrons. Once an electron is part of something larger, it loses those properties and behaves like a good citizen, doing whatever is required of it for the greater good. Just like people losing certain freedoms when they join a team. The team has rules, and they supersede the rules enjoyed by free agents. My left foot is not both on my leg and at the McDonalds in Times Square at the same time, even though it is chock full of electrons. Nor can my foot pass through a perforated metal screen like a wave can. Nor can the screen pass through my foot without a lot of force and bloodletting. It is absurd to claim that everything is a ghost in the real world. This is a misunderstanding of the very basic properties of the universe.

The taxi drivers come in all shapes and sizes. Some older, some younger, and a lot of women in Scotland and England. They have opinions and are not shy about sharing them. One worried aliens would take jobs away. Others couldn’t get excited about space travel at all. And sometimes, Cockell didn’t want to talk. That’s the thing about being human. It is less certain than even astrobiology. And we can see just how certain astrobiology is, right here.

David Wineberg

I really enjoyed this book by Charles Cockell! He uses conversations with taxi drivers as jumping off points for interesting essays about alien life, astrobiology, the origins of the universe and a host of other space-related topics including whether or not to be worried about a Martian invasion and are we actually an exhibit in an alien zoo.

Cockell's writing is very accessible and he explains tricky concepts very well. I learned a lot and had some science-y concepts that I only had a vague understanding of reinforced by his writing.

One of the things I found initially found compelling about this book is the idea that these chapters were inspired by conversations he had with taxi drivers. I'm sure they were (and I like that he includes a line about where he was going and what he was doing), but ultimately they are a very small part of the book. I would have liked to see a bit more of the back and forth with the driver (though maybe that just didn't happen).

I don't think the first chapter is his strongest - either in terms of clarity or engagement, so if you start reading and are tempted to put it down, do stick it out! It gets better.

My other favourite thing about Cockell's book is the curated and annotated bibliography! I LOVE an annotated bibliography and Cockell has kept it to the good stuff. Very excited to check out others (including his own books) that are listed.

Oh, and I also am keen to learn more about the program he started called "Life Beyond" which engages prisoners in learning about astrobiology and imagining the human future beyond Earth. What an awesome idea!

Definitely recommend!

Many, many thanks to NetGalley and Harvard University Press for letting me read an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!!

I had a great time reading this book, just as I expected!
Charles S. Cockell managed to get complex subjects - astronomy, astrobiology, physics - and turn them into conversations that were thoroughly readable even when approaching technical terms and concepts.

The book was fun and interesting to read. Cockell did a great job digesting the hard science for the un-initiated in this field of knowledge, managing to maintain a high level of scientific approach. In short, he never "dumbed down" the concepts or his storyline to make it simpler, it was just the pure magic of being a teacher and knowing how to ease subjects into your audience.

One thing that I particularly loved was how the author made sure to include situations that were vastly different in the book: from going to NASA, teaching a lecture in a prestigious college, and visiting the Prime Minister, to teaching in a prison and explaining about a program that gives inmates a chance to learn astronomical sciences. For me, this book was a show of humanity in its best level.

I missed a broader approach to some themes, instead of diving into some of the technical explanations, for example of the chapter about oxygen and its importance in life. This is not a big con, but as someone that likes learning a bit about everything the book sometimes was a bit too granular.

I loved the background of the taxi conversations, although at times they seemed very fabricated to touch on the topics the author wanted to pursue - nothing against it, though. Knowing taxi drivers, I'm probably wrong anyway...

This book was a very interesting read and I wholeheartedly recommend it!!
Bonus points for the references at the end!

Thanks NetGalley and Harvard University Press for the opportunity of reading an e-ARC copy this book and giving my honest opinion.

This book is wonderful. I went into it not quite sure what I was going to get out of it, but Cockell wrote this in very accessible language. Throughout the book, Cockell explains the potentiality of alien life on other planets. He does this through conversations with taxi drivers. At no point does he talk down to them, speak ill of them, or demean their knowledge of his specialty. In fact, he sees their insights into his work as a new viewpoint, a thing to be explored and contemplated. This is exactly what I want from popular science literature. While I knew quite a bit about what he was talking about already, I found the way he presents the knowledge to be fascinating. He winds and weaves the fabric of the universe until it creates a taxi driver. These are beautiful essays that show the wonder Cockell feels about astrobiology and the wonder of the people he speaks with.

I recommend this if you are interested in thinking about aliens, ruminating on the origins of life, or just like wandering the eons of the universe. This book is well-written, funny, and informative.