LONELY PLANETS

Reviewed 5/13/2004

Lonely Planets, by David Grinspoon

Access to this book courtesy of the

LONELY PLANETS: The Natural Philosophy of Alien Life David Grinspoon New York: HarperCollins, 2003				Rating: 5.0 High
ISBN 0-06-018540-6	440pp.	HC/BWI	$25.95

Musical References

In addition to putting explicit song quotations at the beginnings of some chapters, Dr. Grinspoon has a penchant for dropping musical references into his text. Typically, he will put a line from a song into a sentence. Of course, this last could be unintentional — but my opinion is that he knows exactly what he's doing. Early in the book, he reveals that he was a Beatles fan, and the first such reference I noticed was a line from a Beatles song. So I decided to have a little fun and pick out as many as I could.

Page 70:	"Paradoxically, this provisional and changing nature of the story of Cosmic Evolution is what gives it its great credibility. We see it improving before our very eyes, admitting error and making corrections. It's getting so much better all the time."
	Man, it was mean, but it's changing its scene, eh?

Page 71:	"Why aren't we singing the song of the galaxies on television and doing the DNA dance in every town square?"
	So, Dr. Grinspoon: How do you feel about Dr. Fiorella Terenzi? [1]

Page 72:	"But we now know that our entire written history is just a one-sixteenth note in a long cosmic symphony of many movements."
	Not a reference to any specific song or band, but a musical reference nonetheless.

Page 189:	"When it comes to life on Mars, we've got a feeling we can't hide."
	I've got a feeling this contains a line from a song. But I just can't place it. Too bad he didn't write, "We've got this feeling that won't subside." Not his kind of song, I reckon.

Page 190:	"The more we learn, the more likely we won't get fooled again."
	Who won't get fooled again? No, no — Who: "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Page 193:	First footnote: "I actually appear briefly here in the television show: I'm the skinny geek with the improbably huge Afro, wide-eyed in the back of the room."
	Good Gravy — now I've been Dave Grinspoon'd and Art Garfunkel'd! Any more of this and I'll cry uncle. (The explanation might bring forth a groan...) [2]

Page 207:	"But, depending on the peculiarities of your randomly chosen subject, you might also conclude that everyone is way into heavy metal, that Falun Gong exercises at lunchtime are a daily ritual for all humanity, or that everybody must get stoned."
	Perhaps. But I would not feel so all alone.

Page 235:	Footnote: "You know, like how do you pronounce Io and Uranus, and is the hokeypokey really what it's all about?"
	Big questions indeed. For the answer to the last one, perhaps we should ask Alfie.

Page 399:	"Already, machines are us and we are them. Goo goo ga joob."
	But, who is the Walrus?

1 Dr. Fiorella Terenzi is an astrophysicist who turned natural interstellar radio emissions into musical compositions and released several CDs. The first of them is called Music from the Galaxies.

2 This one is definitely all in my head. When I think of white guys with Afros, I think of Art Garfunkel. That immediately triggered the memory of Paul Simon's A Simple Desultory Philippic, of which I recalled the fragments "I've been Roy Holly'd and Art Garfunkel'd" and "I just discovered somebody's tapped my phone". Being that it's so obscure (in multiple ways), I decided it should be explained.

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