Review - 'Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth' by Avi Loeb

The Hawaiian word 'oumuamua . . . is loosely translated as "scout." In its announcement of the object's official designation, the [IAU] defined 'oumuamua slightly differently, as "a messenger from afar arriving first." Either way, the name clearly implies that the object was the first of others to come.

Holy cow, I'm not afraid to say this freaked me out a bit! Could evidence of intelligent life have really whizzed by our Sun a few years ago and we were none the wiser?

In the Fall of 2017, an object raced through our solar system and quickly left. It was traveling so fast that it could only have come from afar. Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth lays out all the data we have regarding this interstellar visitor, and makes a compelling case for why all the facts and anomalies point to this being a piece of advanced alien technology.

This completely blew my mind! It was utterly fascinating (and also kind of freaky) to follow along as each piece of data was presented and then matched up with the alien technology theory. And it seems academically sound and wholly plausible.

So why the low rating? Well, that discussion is just a very small part of this book. In the thirteen chapters, only chapters 1 and 3 were totally dedicated to 'Oumuamua.

And here's the crux of the issue: all the information, data, and facts collected regarding 'Oumuamua can be squeezed into a long article. So to make a book out of it, the author really had to expand upon the topic. It doesn't help that his expansions are heavily pedantic, often turning concepts the layman can understand into complex technical jargon that only those in the field could wade through.

To further expand and turn this into the length of a book, the author filled the majority of this book with information about his family and how he grew up, his professional career, summaries of pretty much every paper he has written that is even remotely relevant, every person he has worked with, his personal views on philosophy and science, and numerous rants against the scientific community's inability to consider new ideas.

It feels like the author decided to use this book as his personal soapbox and as a chance to show off how accomplished he is. Which is silly because I already believe he is someone worth listening to and his theory has plausibility, hence why I'm reading this.

If you're interested in 'Oumuamua, I obviously don't recommend this book. Instead you can just look up some articles or videos, get the gist of it, walk away slightly freaked out like I am, and save yourself several hours.

Readaroo Rating: 2 stars