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Review - The Planets - Dava Sobel

If you come to this book expecting the gripping historical storytelling of Dava Sobel's Longitude, slow down - The Planets is a very different beast. This book is likely to split readers. Some will find its poetic voyage through the solar system, as much a matter of art and myth as it is of science, entrancing. Others will consider it pretentious and over-laden with poetry and irrelevancy. Each is a perfectly valid assessment.

After a brief introduction, Sobel takes us chapter-by-chapter through the planets (with the Sun and Moon thrown in for good measure). Or at least through the planets with the exception of Neptune, which is bundled in with Uranus. Each stop along the way of this solar system odyssey is labelled with a particular "aspect" of the planet (Venus has "beauty" for instance, and the Moon "lunacy"), and each chapter combines poetical and mythological context with snippets of scientific fact and the history of discoveries about the particular heavenly body. Of these chapters, the Earth's is probably the dullest - it somehow lacks the spark of excitement in the others. (Interestingly, this book's reviewer in the science journal Nature reckons this is the best chapter, because it has more scientific facts than the rest. This is true, but Sobek's genius is not in relaying scientific facts in an interesting way, but in putting across the human and historical context of science.) This apart, each chapter presents an elegant combination of intriguing exposition and slightly flowery description and reaction.

What is slightly worrying is where aspects of religion and myth obtrude into the science - for instance when Sobel asks of the coincidence of the visually identical size of the very different Sun and Moon when seen from the Earth, "Or is this startling manifestation of the Sun's hidden splendour part of a divine design?" She also commits the unforgivable sin of spending a fair amount of time on astrology in a science book without ever pointing out how meaningless it is. (Again the poetic urge, as when casting a horoscope for the Galileo probe, seems to lead her astray.) Worse still, perhaps, are the technical errors, which occur more frequently than might be expected, and seem almost inspired by the poetic approach.

When Sobel tells us about the largely carbon dioxide atmosphere on Venus, she calls CO₂ "the most efficient and pernicious of greenhouse gasses." This is just wrong - to quote greenhouse gas expert Dave Reay in his feature Climate Change Begins at Home, "methane is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide". Elsewhere she tells us that the far side of the Moon is "the one place in the whole solar system deaf to Earth's radio noise". So how come orbitting behind the Moon blocks radio reception but (say) passing round the far side of Mars wouldn't?

If these concerns are remembered, however, it doesn't prevent The Planets from being a light and entertaining voyage, sustained by poesy, history and science. We can't in all honesty give it more than three stars as a popular science book, because it doesn't work brilliantly as such, but this doesn't stop it from being a personal, interesting exploration of human reaction to our planetary environment.

Also in paperback:

Also in large print: abridged audio CD: and audio CD:

Reviewed by Brian Clegg

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