I've just finished a really fascinating book called Talking About Life, that was a gift from a friend. It's one of those books that's in the form of conversations, so the editor is present throughout the book but every chapter involves someone else. Some of these contributors are big names I recognise from astronomy and cosmology - Neil D. Tyson, Martin Rees, Paul Davies - but there's also science communicator Ann Druyan (Sagan's widow) and a whole bunch of top-of-their-field type people from palaeontology, microbiology, genetics, planetary science and the tech world. It's an exploration of the concept of astrobiology, or exobiology, which covers both the practical search for life elsewhere in the universe and the theoretical investigation of the possibility. So you've got people who've been instrumental in the setting up of the SETI programme alongside experts in terrestrial extremophiles and what this could mean for the possibility of life in environments that, at first glance, look extremely inhospitable. The penultimate chapter is a talk with a science fiction author (Ben Bova - yes, that's 'Bova' with a 'B' - not heard of him but apparently he's a pretty big deal) and the last chapter involves a philosopher and poet, which I thought was a nice way to round it out. Chris Impey is the editor, if anyone wants to check it out - sort of thing HMGovt might like, I reckon.
In other news I've finally given up on the Wake. I can appreciate that it's a work of great ingenuity and uniqueness but it got to the point where I thought "Am I reading this because I'm enjoying it, or because I like the idea that it's a clever book that clever people read?", and decided it was more the latter than the former. I haven't written it off, so maybe I'll come back to it in the future.