Today is the official release date of Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space! And yet, here you are, reading this newsletter instead of the book. Well, no judgement here: if you’re in a hurry today or just don’t have room in your enormous To Be Read list, I’ve put together a quick list of my favorite single sentences from each chapter.
If these pique your interest, of course, you can still order Off-Earth in hardcover or ebook here! And if you did preorder the book, you’re invited to attend a special author Q&A event on March 16 at 8pm EDT. Britt Duffy Adkins of Celestial Citizen will be hosting the virtual discussion and taking audience questions. Registration is free with preorder; just use this registration form to submit a screenshot of your receipt.
Without further ado: my favorite sentence from each chapter of Off-Earth:
Introduction
Raised on a steady diet of Star Trek and American exceptionalism, this generation is coming to power on the crest of a different technological revolution: the digital era.
Chapter 1: Should We Settle Space?
But as we work through [these questions], we should heed the words of the shrewd, if fictional, Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Chapter 2: Why Are We Going?
The language we use to describe our visions of space matters, because it tells us (and each other) what kind of future we want to build.
Chapter 3: Who Gets to Go?
It will be human ingenuity, creativity, and opposable thumbs that may well save the day when technology breaks down or natural disaster strikes.
Chapter 4: Who Owns Space?
An insignificant patch of rock on the Moon or Mars that’s barely visible to us today might one day become the place where someone met their first love, or taught their firstborn how to walk, or even, eventually, where their ancestors are buried.
Chapter 5: How Will We Share the Space Environment?
The costly cure we face for overcrowding in Earth orbit could provide the motivation we need to implement an ounce of prevention around other worlds.
Chapter 6: How Can We Protect the Space Environment?
Long after humans have gone extinct, the scars we leave on other worlds will remain.
Chapter 7: Where’s My Money?
Even if we manage to avoid repeating the mistakes of our past, there are undoubtably plenty more forms of labor exploitation that we haven’t even invented yet. Is that the kind of innovation we want?
(I cheated, that’s two sentences)
Chapter 8: What If Someone Steals My Stuff?
The expediency of airlocks and the heartlessness of orbital mechanics will not absolve us of our responsibilities to our neighbors in a space settlement.
Chapter 9: Who’s in Charge?
Even more common in science fiction than the idea of revolution is the trope of violent, military conflict in space— a kind of “star war,” if you will.
Chapter 10: What If I Want to Have Kids?
Fortunately, the human body has a built-in mechanism for increasing population via reproduction, one that works so well that people frequently initiate the process unintentionally here on Earth.
Chapter 11: What If I Get Sick?
Of course, if we bring the entire American health care model to space, the settlement may end up using a different metric for distributing medical care, one that is neither utilitarian nor just: the ability to pay.
Chapter 12: Which Way is Mecca?
Our art will depict alien landscapes that are no longer alien to the artists, and we’ll create sports and dance styles impossible to recreate in Earth’s gravity.
Chapter 13: What Can We Do to Prepare?
If you can picture a better world in space, why not on Earth?
Other News
I’ve recently had several really enjoyable conversations with journalists and their recording equipment, and now they’re online so you can enjoy them too!
Casey Dreier interviewed me for the Planetary Society podcast, for an episode titled Space Policy Edition: The Tricky Ethics of Space Settlement.
Ramin Skibba published a conversation with me in WIRED: What Will Ethical Space Exploration Look Like?
I was also interviewed by Five Books, who asked me to recommend The Best Sci Fi Books on Space Settlement. I hadn’t heard of Five Books before, but all of their interviews are in the form of these five-book recommendations, both fiction and nonfiction, and I’m having a great time going through their archive.