Journey By Starlight: A Time Traveler's Guide to Life, the Universe, and Everything
*Starred Review* Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires hold nary a candle to this trip. Cannonball to the moon! Hitchhike on a comet! Pah! Flitcroft and Spencer give us Einstein and interlocutor riding beams of light originating 3,200 light-years from their destination, Earth, on which, when they start out, the Trojan War rages, but which looks just like 2013 when they arrive. As they more-than-rocket onward—at the speed of light, you know—they discuss stars and atoms, the atom bomb, the big bang and microwaves, dark matter and wimps, gravity, supernovas, black holes, the history of light, quantum mechanics, relativity, space and time, planets, the sun, life, greenhouse gases, and vision, in that order and roping in plenty of subtopics en route. Avoiding confusion and condescension for the entire duration, visual physiologist and eye surgeon Flitcroft proves an ideal informant, packing the dialogue with science and just the right amount of humor to amuse without trivializing by either silliness or shortchanging the subject. An extraordinarily proficient caricaturist, Spencer makes Einstein come alive on the page in gesture and pose, and he does the same for the giants on whose shoulders Einstein says he stood—the likes of Newton, Galileo, and Kepler—when they are cited. Also, exploiting perspectival effects adroitly, Spencer makes a very verbal book zip along as if it really were astride a photon. Science comics extraordinaire! --Ray Olson