Sylvia Engdahl's Space Pages
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If you care about the future of Earth, you should care about space.
Because Earth's resources can't last forever--our descendants will need
power and materials from space. Because they'll need room to raise families
when Earth becomes too crowded. And because the only long-term way to
preserve Earth's beauty, and its ecosystem, is for some humans to move on.
From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward.
Permafree at all ebook retailers. (See the links below.)
Because of their length the essays may be easier to read in ebook form than online.
However, the ebook does not include the illustrations used online.
Essays in my ebook From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward
Why Lack of Public Support for Space No Longer Worries Me
Confronting the Universe in the Twenty-First Century
The Afterword to the 2012 edition of my book The Planet-Girded Suns, republished in The Space Review, and here including an optimistic 2016 update.
Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing
Why we haven't yet returned to the moon and why that shouldn't be discouraging
to space advocates.
Breaking Out from Earth's Shell
Written for my book From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward and also
available at the Lifeboat Foundation's site.
The Need to Move Outward Into Space
Space and Human Survival
Why our species must colonize space to survive.
The Only Sensible Way to Deal with Climate Change
The urgent need to develop space-based solar power on a large scale as soon as possible.
(Added to book in June 2022.)
Update on the Critical Stage
New thoughts about the theory of the Critical Stage that's presented in my novel
The Far Side of Evil -- of interest to everyone interested in my ideas
about space colonization, whether you've read the novel or not.
Is It Time to Send Humans to Mars?
My comments on how soon we should go to Mars.
From the Journal of an Alien Observer
My opinion about what an alien from an advanced civilization would think of the
evironmental movement on Earth.
Humanity's Distant Future in Space
Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War
The past must be seen in perspective with awareness of how our species has evolved,
and will continue to evolve, from era to era.
Space Colonization, Faith,
and Pascal's Wager
Essay published in The Space Review, arguing that it is not irrational to have
faith that space colonization can ensure the long-term survival of humankind.
Humankind's Future in the Cosmos
My personal views on our species' long-term future in space, written for my book
The Future of Being Human and Other Essays.
Reflections on Enchantress from the Stars
Why my best-known YA novel is relevant to young people's view of aliens, and why this
view is important to the future whether or not there is any ET contact during their lifetime.
The Mythology of the Space Age
Space Age Mythology Revisited
What changing trends in science fiction movies reveal about the public's current
attitude toward space.
The Significance of Belief in UFOs
Speculation about why people believe in UFOs and abduction by aliens, and what this
signifiies about the public's view of space.
The Meaning of Gaia in Space Age Mythology
If Earth is to be revered as a Mother it should be recognized that her ills are due to
her pregnancy.
The Mythopoeic Nature of Speculation About ETs
Ideas about subjects on which no data can be obtained arise through the mythopoeic,
rather than rational/scientific, mode of human thought, even in the case of scientists.
Special Sections of This Website
Space Quotes to Ponder
What famous people, and some not famous, have said about why humankind must expand into space. (Included as an appendix in the ebook From This Green Earth.)
The New Mythology of the Space Age
My "lectures" for a graduate-level online course I taught in 1995. (16 pages, contents on first.)
Excerpt from The Planet-Girded Suns
The Foreword to my nonfiction book The Planet-Girded Suns: Our Forebears' Firm
Belief in Inhabited Exoplanets, expressing my opinion about why the history of this belief
matters today.
Early Space Poetry
Passages about space from poetry of the 17th - 19th centuries. (There are more in
The Planet-Girded Suns.)
Other Essays and Commentary
Does It Matter Whether Humankind Survives?
Essay from my book The Future of Being Human and Other Essays.
The Mythic Role of Space Fiction
My acceptance speech for the 1990 Phoenix Award, about how today's emerging
mythology reflects our era's perception of the universe.
Introduction to The Apollo 11 Moon Landing
In The Apollo 11 Moon Landing (Perspectives on Modern World History series), a book I edited. Available in this preview, the "Look Inside," and the book's free sample download at Amazon. (It comes after the Foreword.)
Introduction to The Challenger Disaster
In The Challenger Disaster (Perspectives on Modern World History series), another book I edited. Available as a free sample of the book at Google Play. (It comes after the Foreword.)
Tragedy in Space
Posted February 1, 1986 on the early online service The Source, with a recent postscript
about why the Challenger disaster decreased public support for space.
Achieving Human Commitment to Space Colonization: Is Fear
the Answer?
Why the public gives so little support to the space effort, with a recent postscript about why
that's not a real problem. Also available at the Lifeboat Foundation's website.
Plus 50 Years and Counting
50 years after the first flight to the moon, we're beginning to count again after long years
of holding.
"Space Race," In Americans at War: Society, Culture and the Homefront, John P. Resch, ed., Vol. 4, Macmillan Reference, 2004. pp. 180-183.
(Available in Infotrac, an online database accessible through public and school libraries.)
Miscellaneous
Hymn for Spacefarers
A poem suitable for use as a hymn by churches, written in 1971 and first published in 1986
on the early online service The Source.
The Evolutionary Significance of Space Colonization
My 1980 proposal for a master's thesis in Anthropology.
My 90-minute radio interviews on The Space Show
(Archived in Windows Media Player format)
#1: Aired on October 26, 2003 ---
#2: Aired on May 9, 2004
Links to some of the best sites and books advocating space colonization.
You can download the free ebook From This Green Earth: Essays on Looking Outward at Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play (PDF format), and Smashwords, (Amazon sometimres prices it at 99 cents without informing me; if this happens get the mobi format at Smashwords.)
There is no print edition, but if you prefer to see pages rather than flowing text you can get a pdf edition at Google Play that's formatted just like a book (rather than like a manuscript) and you can print it if you want to. (It's called "original pages" rather than "pdf" on the order page.) Also, there is a short sampler paperback containing 12 essays from my essay collections, since the ebooks are too long to be issued in paperback at reasonable prices.
Last updated in January 2023