Title:
Billions and Billions
Subtitle:
Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millenium
Author:
Carl Sagan
Publisher:
Random House, 1997
ISBN
0-679-41160-7

Only a few months after writing my review of The Demon Haunted World I chanced to see Carl Sagan giving an interview on television. I was appalled! His skin was grey, his hair a dry blow-away remnant of cobwebby whisps. He was clearly having difficulties with the interview - not that the session was intense, but that he seemed to be entirely exhausted.

I got on the internet, and found that he'd been ill. Some kind of bone cancer, or bone marrow cancer, it seemed, though I wasn't quite able to work out of several contradictory sites just what the problem was. (It was idiopathic myelodysplasia.) Only a short time after that I read his obituary. What I didn't know was that he'd survived the disease for more than two years.

How does a man who doesn't invest any faith in superstitions like souls or afterlife deal with impending death? Well, it seems that he writes another book. Billions & Billions is written in surprisingly good humor, even including the book's title which derives from a phrase that had become inextricably associated with him, though he never actually said it. "For one thing, it's too imprecise," he explains.

Sagan's concern for personal survival has been superceded by a concern for the survival of the human race. No doubt some Freudian or Jungian theorist can make hay out of notions like sublimation here, but Sagan has demonstrated for years his concern for the future, has looked ahead without letting wishful thinking blur his vision.

Billions & Billions is a very short book. Even the book's "Acknowledgements" were left unfinished, interrupted by Sagan's death. The book's nineteen chapters, in three loosely organized sections, resemble more a collection of independent compositions. No doubt, given time the book would have received more of a polish, but time was one thing Sagan didn't have.

But even without polish, Billions & Billions is a book worth your time. Sagan marshalls his thoughts on three subjects that have gained the most importance to him: humanity's place in the universe, global warming, and humanity's immediate future. Each subject receives careful and thoughtful treatment, leaving the reader with more understanding of the issues that matter. Several quite remarkable contributions in the book are in fact independent articles, included as parts of various chapters. These include an article on international cooperation published simultaneously in the former USSR and in the USA, during Michael Gorbachev's tenure, and a thoughtful discussion of the ethics surrounding abortion.

Billions & Billions might have been published on the strength of Sagan's name alone. But the book's content make it a contribution worthy of Sagan's legacy.