The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds

This book was a thrilling ride. To contemplate colonizing other worlds and how we are very close to achieving that is an exciting prospect. I can recall being a young man and at that time there were exactly zero known exoplanets. Now there are thousands. We know there are other earth-like worlds out there. And genetics will allow us to "engineer" ourselves and other creatures to join us in the journey beyond!However, I do not foresee any tool in the geneticist's toolbox that will optimally compensate for that very unpredictable basket of variables that nebulously can be described as human nature. Where we go, you can bet tragedy and drama will accompany us, in all its gory glory. Only a blind fool would think otherwise. Consider if you have the temerity the history of our own specie on this planet in just the last few thousand years, from Alexander to Genghis Khan to Hitler. Imagine a universe not just of technological marvels, but one of nearly limitless greed and lust and envy - envy all the way to the far reaches of the cosmos, driving sentient beings irrevocably into the primordial, eternal dust.That part of the exiting drama is too little described in this optimistic little tome.However, I did enjoy reading it.

Very technical, and if you think the government is into acronyms, try reading this book. Biologists have cornered the acronym market. Also, there were several typos, at least in the E-book version. There were missing prepositions, articles and verbs, for example, and even a few misspelled words. If you like complex mathematical formulas and acronyms you'll never remember, this is your book.

Chris Mason is a visionary who outlined in this sagacious, educational, and entertaining book the technological progress that will enable us to become a multiplanetary species. This book is a perfect read or gift for anyone with an interest in space and biology! Highly recommended - this was my most gifted book in 2021!

The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds gives a road map on how we as a species can utilize what we know about biology to accelerate the rate at which we adapt to more hostile environments like space! If you like biology and don't know what you're interested in focusing on, just pick one of the ideas from this plan and you can make a career out of turning fantasy into reality!

This book is compelling and accessible to all. It lays out a logical timeline for milestones our society can work towards so we can inhabit other planets in the future. I have already recommended it to all my friends who loved reading/watching The Martian as fiction, now we have an action packed real-world guidebook.

:-)

I read along side with my friends in our book club and it contained so much information. I am in the process of learning everything but it was an interesting read.

Beautiful book

If you were ever wondering where we go from here as a species, this book will give you the best, most realistic suggestions that anybody has ever conceived. Like the program it describes, 'The Next 500 Years' is ambitious, complex, challenging and, above all, significant. This excellent book could be dry and inaccessible, but it is far from it because Chris Mason has managed to fuse together clear descriptions of some of the most advanced contemporary scientific processes with informed speculation and predictions about what we will be like 500 years from now into a vibrant, compelling narrative. He informs but does not lecture; he talks to the reader, not down to the reader; he raises awareness and understanding, and in doing so he raises hope that there is a long term future for us here on Earth and elsewhere. His good humour is evident and adds a welcome and appropriate subjective human touch to this potentially drily objective subject. If you want to have an opinion on our human future, 'The Next 500 Years' is essential reading.