From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

This new edition of this book includes fewer essays than the original edition, which was too long to be issued in print form at a reasonable price. It has been shortened in order to offer paperback and audiobook editions of essays about space that the author feels are worth preserving in those formats. (The omitted essays and the appendix “Space Quotes to Ponder” will remain available at her website.)

Sylvia Engdahl became fascinated by the idea of space travel in 1946, and has believed since the early 1950s that expansion of our species to other worlds is vital to the preservation of Earth and the future survival of humankind. Many of the essays in this book express her conviction that we should not be discouraged by the public's reluctance to support space activity, since all past human progress has been brought about by visionaries who did not have the backing of their contemporaries. The shock of realizing during the moon landings that contact with the vast and perhaps peril-fraught universe is no longer mere fiction dampened the enthusiasm of the majority, but this was a natural reaction comparable seventeenth century people's resistance to the idea that Earth is not, as formerly thought, safely enclosed within crystal spheres that hold up the celestial bodies. It will pass, and we need have no doubt that generations who come after us will venture forth from this green Earth and find their way to the stars.

The following essays are included.

The Once and Future Dream (new)
Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
Breaking Out from Earth's Shell
Why Does the History of Outlook Toward Space Matter?
Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century
Space and Human Survival
The Only Sensible Way to Deal with Climate Change
Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil’s Relevance Today
Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal’s Wager
Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War
Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

1134882002
From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

This new edition of this book includes fewer essays than the original edition, which was too long to be issued in print form at a reasonable price. It has been shortened in order to offer paperback and audiobook editions of essays about space that the author feels are worth preserving in those formats. (The omitted essays and the appendix “Space Quotes to Ponder” will remain available at her website.)

Sylvia Engdahl became fascinated by the idea of space travel in 1946, and has believed since the early 1950s that expansion of our species to other worlds is vital to the preservation of Earth and the future survival of humankind. Many of the essays in this book express her conviction that we should not be discouraged by the public's reluctance to support space activity, since all past human progress has been brought about by visionaries who did not have the backing of their contemporaries. The shock of realizing during the moon landings that contact with the vast and perhaps peril-fraught universe is no longer mere fiction dampened the enthusiasm of the majority, but this was a natural reaction comparable seventeenth century people's resistance to the idea that Earth is not, as formerly thought, safely enclosed within crystal spheres that hold up the celestial bodies. It will pass, and we need have no doubt that generations who come after us will venture forth from this green Earth and find their way to the stars.

The following essays are included.

The Once and Future Dream (new)
Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
Breaking Out from Earth's Shell
Why Does the History of Outlook Toward Space Matter?
Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century
Space and Human Survival
The Only Sensible Way to Deal with Climate Change
Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil’s Relevance Today
Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal’s Wager
Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War
Humankind's Future in the Cosmos

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From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

by Sylvia Engdahl
From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward

by Sylvia Engdahl

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Overview

This new edition of this book includes fewer essays than the original edition, which was too long to be issued in print form at a reasonable price. It has been shortened in order to offer paperback and audiobook editions of essays about space that the author feels are worth preserving in those formats. (The omitted essays and the appendix “Space Quotes to Ponder” will remain available at her website.)

Sylvia Engdahl became fascinated by the idea of space travel in 1946, and has believed since the early 1950s that expansion of our species to other worlds is vital to the preservation of Earth and the future survival of humankind. Many of the essays in this book express her conviction that we should not be discouraged by the public's reluctance to support space activity, since all past human progress has been brought about by visionaries who did not have the backing of their contemporaries. The shock of realizing during the moon landings that contact with the vast and perhaps peril-fraught universe is no longer mere fiction dampened the enthusiasm of the majority, but this was a natural reaction comparable seventeenth century people's resistance to the idea that Earth is not, as formerly thought, safely enclosed within crystal spheres that hold up the celestial bodies. It will pass, and we need have no doubt that generations who come after us will venture forth from this green Earth and find their way to the stars.

The following essays are included.

The Once and Future Dream (new)
Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
Breaking Out from Earth's Shell
Why Does the History of Outlook Toward Space Matter?
Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century
Space and Human Survival
The Only Sensible Way to Deal with Climate Change
Update on the Critical Stage: The Far Side of Evil’s Relevance Today
Space Colonization, Faith, and Pascal’s Wager
Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War
Humankind's Future in the Cosmos


Product Details

BN ID: 2940163389056
Publisher: Ad Stellae Books
Publication date: 11/11/2019
Series: Collected Essays , #2
Sold by: Smashwords
Format: eBook
File size: 295 KB

About the Author

Sylvia Engdahl is the author of eleven science fiction novels. She is best known for her six traditionally-published Young Adult novels that are also enjoyed by adults, all but one of which are now available in indie editions. That one, Enchantress from the Stars, was a Newbery Honor book, winner of the 2000 Phoenix Award of the Children's Literature Association, and a finalist for the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year in the Rediscovery category. Her Children of the Star trilogy, originally written for teens, was reissued by a different publisher as adult SF.

Recently she has written five independently-published novels for adults, the Founders pf Maclairn dulogy and the Captain of Estel trilogy. Although all her novels take place in the distant future, in most csses on hypothetical worlds, and thus are categorized as science fiction, they are are directed more to mainstream readers than to avid science fiction fans.

Engdahl has also issued an updated edition of her 1974 nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets, which is focused on original research in primary sources of the 17th through early 20th centuries that presents the views prevalent among educted people of that time. In addition she has published three permafree ebook collections of essays.

Between 1957 and 1967 Engdahl was a computer programmer and Computer Systems Specialist for the SAGE Air Defense System. Most recently she has worked as a freelance editor of nonfiction anthologies for high schools. Now retired, she lives in Eugene, Oregon and welcomes visitors to her website at www.sylviaengdahl.com. It includes a large section on space colonization, of which she is a strong advocate, as well as essays on other topics and detailed information about her books. She enjoys receiving email from her readers.

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