The idea of a guide book to the Universe is not new. At different times it has been tried by the likes of Stanislaw Lem (‘The Star Diaries’) and Douglas Adams (‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’). It is the American writer and physicist Les Johnson, however, who with ‘A Traveler’s Guide to the Stars’ (Princeton University Press, £22, ISBN 9780691212371) adds solid scientific and engineering foundations to that so far nebulous, utterly fictitious, and, in the case of The Hitchhiker’s Guide, humorous, concept, which, incidentally, Johnson does not reject. On the contrary, he uses a quote from Douglas Adams as an epigraph to one of his opening chapters: “Space is big. You won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s peanuts to space.”
I’ve reproduced that beautifully tongue-in-cheek quote in full because, to me, it neatly sums up the main message of Johnson...