A Teaspoon and an Open Mind: What Would an Alien Look Like? Is Time Travel Possible? and Other Intergalactic Conumdrums from the World of “Doctor Who”
by Michael White
Penguin Books, £8.99 (pb), ISBN 0-141-02481-X
Although the book claims to look at “intergalactic conundrums from the world of Doctor Who”, there are only brief references to the show; the author is really just cashing in on the revival. There is a glance at Tardis technology in the Epilogue but most of the sci-fi technology could equally be taken from Star Trek, which he often mentions.
This is mostly a review of the current state of technology and recent discoveries, with some speculation about the future. White does use solid science, keeping an open mind where this is the scientific thing to do. He debunks Atlantis but is open to alien life and cautiously open to telepathy, for example. The chapters are loosely themed around Dr Who ideas – time travel, aliens, teleportation, robots and so on, concluding that we do not currently have the technology to make these possible but in some cases may do in the future.
Teleportation, time travel and galaxy-hopping would take vast amounts of energy, quite apart from minor considerations like the known laws of the universe. There are the usual fears about sentient robots and extending human life indefinitely, although White does embrace the idea that imagination can lead from fiction to fact. As he says, it is the ability to develop that separates science from “mere belief systems”. He speculates about what aliens might look like, based on sound evolutionary and environmental principles. But if they do exist, would they want to visit us, given what they may have picked up from TV and radio emissions?
For any sci-fi nerd (sorry, expert), the book covers very familiar ground adding little new, and Dr Who fans will be disappointed. That said, this is an intelligent, readable introduction to ideas like wormholes, cyborgs, antimatter, temporal paradoxes and the laws of physics, that make science fiction staples possible, impossible or just very unlikely to become science fact.
Tessa Kendall
