JUST as Captain Kirk never said: 鈥淏eam me up, Scotty,鈥� so Carl Sagan never said: 鈥淏illions and billions鈥�. In the opening paragraphs of Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (Hodder Headline, 拢18.99, ISBN 0747220263), completed shortly before he died, Sagan reflects wryly on his image, explaining that to distinguish 鈥渕illions鈥� from 鈥渂illions鈥� in his Cosmos TV series, 鈥淚 pronounced `billions鈥� with a fairly plosive `b鈥�, which some people took for an idiosyncratic accent or speech deficiency.鈥� Thus are myths born.
Sagan was always more than an astronomer, and most of the book deals with themes such as extraterrestrial life, internationalism, the dangers of militarism and nuclear conflict, the ethics of abortion, and more. The style is uneven-some chapters are more akin to early Asimov than mature Sagan-but the middle chapters on ozone depletion and global warming make a strong plea for concerted world action to protect the planet.
At the end of the 20th century, the world is not as Sagan would have wished. We do not respect scientific curiosity, liberal values are in retreat and the environmental movement is faltering. Yet he held firm to the conviction that there is a way out of this mess to which science holds the key.
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Billions and Billions closes with a short but poignant account of Sagan鈥檚 battle with the rare blood disease that took his life. His widow, Anne Druyan, writes a moving epilogue.
This book is not one of Sagan鈥檚 best: there is none of the grandeur of The Demon-Haunted World, his epic assault on premillennial irrationality. But no matter. In his life鈥檚 work, Sagan鈥檚 bequest is a legacy of reason, optimism and compassion to a world left darker by his passing.
