This is not a review, and I don't hand out stars either. It is part of my annotated reading list. Whatever first comes to mind when I pick up the book. More about it in this blog post.
written on October 21, 2026, read October 2024
Whenever I hear about Neil deGrasse Tyson, I immediately think of Carl Sagan. And yet the two differ greatly, at least in public. Both are – or were – great science communicators. But each of them is also a product of his time.
I always saw Carl Sagan as the calm, quiet scholar with an uncanny gift for explaining things, while deGrasse Tyson – for all his scientific background (the man has two master’s degrees and a PhD) – sometimes seems to be, alongside his research, a somewhat loud entertainer as well.
Is that a bad thing? Probably not. Thinking about it – no, certainly not. Science today may need a Neil deGrasse Tyson, who can also strike a bolder, louder tone, more than a Carl Sagan in order to get through to people. You probably have to present yourself more loudly to still be heard in a world full of noise.
The irony of the story is that in his own day, Carl Sagan was considered the loud one. He only seems quiet in hindsight. Back then he fell victim to what was later named after him, the Sagan effect: the notion1 that anyone who is good at communicating science cannot be a good scientist. To exaggerate a little: he was too loud for the scientific establishment.
A few days ago I wrote about “Cosmos”. Neil deGrasse Tyson later followed in Sagan’s footsteps with the new edition of the series. There is also a lovely video in which he describes how Carl Sagan influenced him.
By now I own not only a number of books by Carl Sagan, but also quite a few by deGrasse Tyson. So far I have written a lot comparing the two, but not yet about the book this is actually supposed to be about. The last book by deGrasse Tyson that I read was “To Infinity and Beyond”.
What is this book about? Everything, really – at least astronomically speaking. From the Earth and its atmosphere to the outermost edge of the universe. And everything in between: planets, stars, gravity, light. Our path through this in-between. And, indeed, beyond.
The difference I mentioned at the beginning starts with the title: anyone who hasn’t completely missed the last 30 years will immediately recognize Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase. I don’t think Carl Sagan would have chosen a title like that. His books had far more poetic titles, such as “The Dragons of Eden” or “Pale Blue Dot”.2
In terms of reading flow, I find this book considerably harder than others – such as Sagan’s “Cosmos”, but also other books by deGrasse Tyson. In many places there are boxes with information that is genuinely interesting. But they are not part of the main text; they are self-contained digressions that pull you out of the flow of reading.
At the same time, they are laid out so prominently that you can hardly ignore them. Over the course of the book, I got into the habit of reading the entire chapter first and then going back to the digressions. Otherwise, all too often I found myself thinking: “Okay, where was I again?”
That is not the author’s fault, though. As the saying goes, he can do it quite differently. His book “Accessory to War”, for example, is structured completely differently. I think he has a different target audience in mind here. “To Infinity and Beyond” strikes me as a kind of coffee table book, just with more text – more of a magazine than a book. One you pick up, read a little of, and put down again shortly afterwards, knowing a bit more. And that fits our times, especially if the goal is to pass on knowledge to as many people as possible.3 And for that, in my view, he has found a very fitting format.
As a first introduction, I would no longer recommend Sagan’s “Cosmos” to someone who is just discovering an interest in all these topics. The Earth has gone around the Sun too many times since it was published. But I believe a teenager today would read deGrasse Tyson’s book with the same curiosity I had back then.
I have just one wish for future successors of Sagan and deGrasse Tyson: a book about the universe doesn’t necessarily need speculation about faster-than-light travel and time travel – not even when it is written for a broad audience. So I couldn’t do much with the last chapter. After so much knowledge, it feels like a shame to drift off into speculation. Then again, Sagan himself already wrote about such things in “Cosmos” – and with “Contact” he even turned them into an entire novel. And I know that these are exactly the passages where a teenage Jörg’s imagination would have been captured.
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Or prejudice. ↩
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Granted, he wasn’t entirely averse to somewhat catchier titles: “Billions and Billions” – the title of his last book – goes back to Johnny Carson, who put the phrase in Sagan’s mouth in his parodies.4 Just as Gene Kranz did not coin “Failure is not an option” himself – the line comes from the screenplay of the film “Apollo 13” – but only used it later, as the title of his autobiography. ↩
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I looked it up: the original edition was published by National Geographic. Lindsey Nyx Walker is also a co-author. She is responsible for “StarTalk”, which likewise aired on National Geographic. That might explain the structure. ↩
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Can you tell I’m an absolute Sagan fanboi? ↩