The Giant Leap: Mankind Heads for the Stars [Paperback]

Even if you don't believe it is ever going to happen, the idea of humanity's colonisation of far planets and persistence until the latter cold days of the universe has a certain attractive mad arrogance to it. Adrian Berry is a strong believer in a lot of things--dogmatism is perhaps an odd fault in one so determined to remind us of the martyrdoms of Galileo and Giordano Bruno--and the vast enterprise of galaxy-wide travel is one of the things he believes in. He takes us through the problems of travel--the speed of light has to be lived with or got around--and colonisation. Life on the frontier is tough and expresses considerable optimism about all of it; there are better explanations of topics such as relativity and cryogenic suspension--so-called "cold sleep"--but he is never less than fluent and clear. What is perhaps less convincing are his extended diatribes against government--he believes, thus far against the evidence, that private enterprise will take us to the planets and beyond--and his belief that computer games will keep people happy as they travel through infinite silent space. And when the universe ends, at least we will have tried. --Roz Kaveney

Andrew Berry's vision of the future - interstellar journeys that will carry people from our solar system to explore and colonise other planets. He writes with lucidity and humour but his ideas are firmly rooted in scientific fact.

Adrian Berry was for nineteen years science correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and he still writes that paper's monthy Sky at Night column.