Lord Martin Rees' new book On The Future was reviewed in the Sunday Times by Tom Whipple, the Times' science editor.
"In On the Future Rees is clearly in an optimistic frame of mind. His previous book was titled Our Final Century, and prophesied all manner of existential anthropogenic catastrophe (he complained, in fairness, that his publisher removed the question mark at the end of the title). At least in the scenario offered by his new book there’s a good chance we will survive to see our own obsolescence.
In these pages Rees, best characterised as a sky-half-cloudy kind of astronomer, has gone from doom-monger to tempered-pessimism-monger. Yet while that may sound like a depressing read, it is hard not to be fascinated as he slowly builds his Eeyorish case — which is laid out with the dispassionate air of a superintelligent alien anthropologist observing our species’ eccentricities from afar."
