I recently read “Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson and just last night finished “The Dark Forest” which is the second book in the “Three Body Problem” trilogy by Cixin Liu. What these books have in common is that they look at a threat to humanity’s existence and probe our responses to it. This literature is timely because we face such a threat in the form of climate change. The message from the books is clear: only scientific knowledge and staying rational can get humanity past a global threat. T...
