His current book is a shorter and updated version of the latter. The book deals with the intensive search for incontrovertible evidence of alien life. This hardly constitutes a debate, as the subtitle suggests. He acknowledges that evolutionary biologists familiar with the probabilities of organic combination remain profoundly pessimistic about the existence of extraterrestrial life, but he does not dwell on this as a counterpoint to the prevailing view. To the extent that debate appears in this book, or in the American culture as a whole, it is a debate over avenues of inquiry and thresholds of proof.
Some people look to Mars, others to Jupiter's moons.
Some search for planets around nearby stars, while others scan the skies for alien radio broadcasts. A substantial number of people, impatient with scientific standards, accept eyewitness accounts from people with unexplained visions. Dick treats them all with respect and enthusiasm. From this perspective, each avenue of investigation becomes a manifestation of an overarching belief. 5 Dick traces much of his explanation to the findings of astronomers and evolutionary biologists.