The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds, from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Science Fiction

This book differs from Dick's and Crowe's on the extraterrestrial life debate in paying as much attention to self-admitted fiction as to attempts at factual cosmography, but also in a focus on what the assumed existence, or non-existence, of extraterrestrials means for the status of mankind. Are we the pinnacle of Creation, the chief object of the Creator's concern, or just one rational creature among uncounted myriads, some of which incomparably more biologically, scientifically, and morally developed than us? Answers have varied wildly, but Guthke traces a trend whereby arguments, for whichever conclusion, becomes more purely scientific, religious and philosophical ones gradually becoming seen as inadmissible.

I found it quite show more interesting.

Note that the "modern science fiction" in the English subtitle is a bit misleading: coverage ends in the early 20th century, a couple decades before Gernsback. show less