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Disturbing the Solar System: Impacts, close encounters and coming attractions by Alan E. Rubin, Princeton University Press, 拢19.95/$29.95, ISBN 0691074747

THERE is a new kind of science book emerging, stuck between popular and technical texts. A writer begins work fondly believing that a bestseller is just around the corner, but the writing doesn鈥檛 quite make it.

Alan Rubin鈥檚 Disturbing the Solar System, splendid though it is, is this type of book. The phrase 鈥渕acroscopic objects鈥� in the very first paragraph must have been a giveaway that it鈥檚 not likely to sell as well as a book by Michael Crichton or Dava Sobel.

But Rubin does offer persevering readers a rich feast of topics, stretching from the formation of the Moon and the magnetism of the Earth through to our place in the cosmos. He discusses the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and has interesting ideas about how civilisation might respond to it, especially if it鈥檚 intelligent.

Much of the book is written from a historical perspective: who suggested what, when, and who argued with them. Most writers make the pursuit of science seem purely mechanistic, devoid of characters or human foibles. Rubin is a welcome contrast.

He鈥檚 a geochemist, rather than the expected astronomer or geologist. He brings a welcome alternative view of the Solar System. Unfortunately, he never quite shakes off his expertise. While he gives eloquent and straightforward accounts of matters such as the dinosaur extinction debates, whenever he gets into geochemistry the jargon takes over. On meteorites, for example, within a few pages we鈥檙e learning about 鈥渞efractory inclusions鈥�.

This is a noble first attempt at a popular book. I am sure that Rubin鈥檚 second will be more accessible.