Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos

Sagan is my least favourite thinker for behind his smiling face and potent intellect there hid a womanizing wife abuser who disinherited some of his children, was estranged from his children, stole his best friend’s fiancé, held grudges, and was a self-centered, egotistical, high maintenance husband and father. I wish everyone would look behind the pretty memes with their Saganisms and see the psychologically abusive personality lurking behind. Poundstone’s book is filled with examples of Sagan’s abusive, caustic, abrasive personality with the best comment coming from Lynn Margulis who described her marriage to Sagan as “a torture chamber shared with children.”

This is Carl Sagan: astronomer, planetary scientist, writer, political activist, popularizer of science for the public, and the driving force that led lots of 80s kids, including me, to decide that astronomy looked so awesome they wanted to do it, too. (Me, I never got beyond a bachelor's degree and a job as scientific support staff, but I'm not blaming Sagan for that. Well, OK, maybe I am, but I forgive him.)

This biography covers both Sagan's personal and professional life, but the emphasis is definitely on the latter, making it a pretty good read for those who are interested in the idea of searching for life in the solar system and beyond. Among other things, it features a very detailed description of the 1970s Viking mission to Mars show more and the complicated tests it used to attempt to detect life in the soil. (Although it wasn't until 2008, well after the book's publication, that the strange and inconsistent results from those tests were finally properly explained.)

Sagan was something of a controversial figure, and Poundstone does a very good job of dealing with that in an even-handed way. He certainly makes no attempt to whitewash the man. The character flaws that people who knew him agreed on are presented pretty frankly, but his positive qualities are also very much acknowledged and respected. And where there was disagreement -- and there was a lot of disagreement -- both his critics and his admirers are allowed to offer their own perspectives. The result is a portrait of a very human guy.

My one complaint is that the book is a little choppy, being divided up into short -- usually 1-3 page -- segments that sometimes follow on naturally from one to another and sometimes don't. I sort of get the impression that the author couldn't be bothered coming up with any decent segues. Definitely worth reading, though, for those of us on whom Sagan had an impact. You know who you are. show less