Sorry for such a long pause between postings on the Skeptic magazine Internet hotline, but I've been away for the past month on Race Across America (my annual transcontinental bicycle race which, after 20 years, I have now turned over to my partner and retired for good), plus a family vacation to Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon. Isn't it amazing how that spectacular gash in the Earth's surface was cut in only 40 days of flood and rain? At least the good folks of Kansas will now have the inside skinny on real geology now that the board has voted 6-4 to ban evolution, deep time, the Big Bang, etc. What's next? You know, come to think of it, gravity is "only a theory." Heliocentrism is "only a theory." Will Kansas be banning those "mere theories" next? You never know: apples could start rising tomorrow, and maybe the sun really does "rise" over a stationary flat earth. Apparently anything is possible in Kansas, the land of Oz. (More on this in another posting.)

During the vacation I drug along half a dozen books to read (because I almost never get a chance to read books cover to cover but pick and choose select chapters, it's possible to read a book a day), but I made the mistake of starting with the bound galleys of Keay Davidson's new Carl Sagan biography (CARL SAGAN: A LIFE). I couldn't put the damn thing down and I ended up reading it cover to cover (the actual book is being released Sept. 24 from Wiley--you can already place an order through amazon.com and can probably find it at bookstores in a week or two). It's a great read and Carl's life was even grander than I thought. He was loved and hated by so many people (but more loved than hated), and involved in so many cutting-edge and weighty controversies, and Davidson (science editor for the San Francisco Chronicle) has spared no feelings in this "warts and all" portrayal of the great cosmic visionary.

There were very good reasons for why Carl was so loved and hated by so many. He had an enormous passion accompanied by an enormous ego. His drive to fame and fortune began in his teen years and never let up. Davidson got hold of a never-published teen paper Sagan wrote, under the auspices of "Carl Sagan Productions"! (It started that early.) In addition to interviewing Annie Druyan, Sagan's third wife, and getting the portrait of what has to be one of the great love stories of our time, Davidson also got the dirt on Sagan's first two marriages, which were, by nearly everyone's account, disastrous. Sagan, at least in his first two marriages, was a liberal and feminist on paper only (and, as Davidson put it so well, the sort of liberalism one finds in after-dinner keynote speeches by people like Adlai Stevenson, where it feels good to say it as long as you don't have to actually practice it). As far as Sagan was concerned, the duty of Lynn Margulis (nee Alexander, his first wife who went on to world-renownedness as one of the greatest biologists of the 20th century) was to cook, clean, and change diapers while the man was busy becoming the great man. As a consequence, she dumped him. Sagan's response was to persuade her to come back to him by listing his accomplishments and showing her his even greater potential! He didn't get it until Ann Druyan convinced him that you have to LIVE the principles, not just talk about them. Even here, however, my wife Kim (to whom I read much of the biography aloud while we were driving), pointed out that it is much easier for one to be a liberal and a feminist later in life when one is established, famous, and rich, where day to day chores can be hired done, when careers are crested, when the children are grown, etc. Sagan's first son with Lynn Margulis, Dorion, wrote Sagan a nasty letter late in Sagan's life, pointing out the hypocrisy of it all (summarized on page 395 of Davidson's biography, quotes are Dorion Sagan speaking, reflecting as well the pain of being largely abandoned by his careerist father):

"His understanding of markets, which I had been studying, was simplistic. I remember being up at the Ritz Carlton...with his friends and his new wife [Annie]. Top floor of the Ritz Carlton, getting all kinds of perks--and they were going on about the virtues of communism. And that's classic champagne socialism, you know?" Dorion wrote his dad a letter implying that his left-leaning economic views were hypocritical--a letter that was, Dorion admits, a pretext for his own inner hurts. "In the letter I said stuff like, 'You say that we should have an equal allotment of wealth.... Okay, why don't we cap [the maximum allowable wealth] at your earnings last year and we call the unit 'one sagan,' and nobody can make more than one sagan. While we're doing it, let's cap the number of books that anybody can write.'"

Davidson carefully and thoughtfully documents dozens of such incidents in Sagan's life, always sensitive to put them in their proper context. As such, the numerous blemishes in Sagan's life (e.g., Edward Teller's rant on Sagan, "Who was Carl Sagan? He was a nobody!" is just one of dozens of interview subjects who pulled no punches) were more than swamped by the greatness of the man's vision, by his courage and commitment to science, rationality, and skepticism, by his attempts (however feeble in the early years but still superior to most men of his generation) at equality and egalitarianism, by his bold speculations on countless scientific controversies some of which he turned out on the right side and even pioneered new research (e.g., Venus' runaway greenhouse effect), and, of course, for the fact that he was probably the greatest science popularizer in the long history of science from Francis Bacon, Galileo and Thomas Huxley to Loren Eisley, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Dawkins.

It is one thing to ridicule Sagan's mannerisms (e.g., the punched syllables--BILLuns) and histrionics (broad hand waving and overstated analogies); it is quite another to step on stage with Johnny Carson under the lights and cameras of a live studio audience being beamed out to 10 million people and perform with wit and humor and still deliver an important message. Most people freeze up. Sagan came alive. Try memorizing a series of lines to be delivered perfectly, with perfect inflection, emphasis, emotion, and clarity, in front of a camera with blazing hot lights and microphones hanging over your head, and a producer saying "okay, let's try that AGAIN. Do that one more time, this time emphasizing the final syllable of that key word. Oops, sorry, a plane flew overhead, do it again please." And again and again. Try keeping your cool under those pressures. Although Sagan was the iceman, Davidson shows that his need for control nearly brought ruin the the COSMOS series.

(When I first started doing media on live talk shows and for pre-taped documentaries I thought it would be a breeze because I had been a college professor for 15 years; but I quickly discovered that it is MUCH harder than it appears. The same is true of doing just audio voice over. I figured "how hard can this be--just reading a script into a microphone [for the audio version of my book WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS]?" It turns out it is MUCH harder than it seems like it should be. There really is a learned skill here, and no one learned it better than Sagan. I was watching some old Tonight Show clips with Sagan, and he really did come up with some great one-liners and witty comments, the sort that when you hear them you think "damn, why can't I think of lines like that?" I recall being a guest on POLITICALLY INCORRECT with Bill Maher, and he really came up with some zingers--I sat there thinking "being a professional comedian is really quite a talent most people don't have.")

Davidson does an elegant job of showing where it was reasonable for Sagan's colleagues to be irritated (and often furious) at him for getting so much public attention (as when, to no fault of his own, the media would credit him with some theory--"according to astronomer Carl Sagan's brilliant new theory about _______"--that was, in fact, a theory Sagan had absolutely nothing to do with or only had a minor role in), and when his colleagues just suffered from plain old human jealousy that either they were not getting that amount of attention for their work, or that Sagan was simply brilliant on stage and on camera, and they were not. In a life of 40 years in the public eye, there were plenty examples of both.

And Davidson has recounted in considerable detail (but not so much that it drags) all the great projects and controversies that Sagan threw himself into, such as his lifelong search for ET intelligence (dating back to his childhood), planetary atmospheres, the chemical origins of life, nuclear winter, etc., and his numerous best-selling books, such as THE DRAGONS OF EDEN, COSMOS, and SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (which Davidson believes is by far and away his greatest production, or co-production with Ann Druyan--no accident that this was his best work, says Davidson, since Druyan humanized Sagan and helped him see that most great issues require subtly and careful thought, which requires long years of research before writing the final draft). And, of course, the stories behind the production of the COSMOS television series and the CONTACT motion picture are gripping; as are the stories behind the development of the Pioneer plaques (featuring what the public thought was the "scandalously" naked humans), and the attempt at a politically correct record of humanity on the Voyager spacecraft (called Eurocentric by some feminists and liberals--which stung hard on Sagan, who was trying mightily, under the tutelage of Annie, to be as culturally diverse and egalitarian as possible).

I laughed out loud at Davidson's description as a "French sex comedy" the love triangle of Ann Druyan being engaged to science writer Timothy Ferris (at the time one of Sagan's best friends), but then Sagan falls in love with Druyan (but is married to his second wife Linda, who had herself become Druyan's close friend). But Sagan and Druyan's love is so strong that Timothy and Linda get the ax (but in the latter case Sagan is so worried about Linda's reaction that he sets up a meeting with friends present when he drops the bomb in her lap!) I'm sure there was a lot of pain on all sides making this anything but a "comedy," but it is a humanizing story because it shows that even the high and mighty in science have complex and quirky lives just like the rest of us.

I don't want to give away the whole story. Buy this book immediately. You won't be able to put it down. You'll laugh at Sagan's wit. You'll grit your teeth with anger at the sabotage of his nomination for membership in the National Academy of Science (to the point where it is hard to imagine why anyone would WANT to be a member of a club of science snobs who bemoan the public's misunderstanding of what they do yet shun those who make an attempt at public understanding).

And if you can keep a dry eye during the death bed scene with Carl, Annie, his children and friends, and Annie's final words to her beloved Carl, and his to her and his children, I'll personally refund your money for the book. I tried to read it out loud to my wife but couldn't get through it.

The humanization of Carl Sagan makes him an even greater man than he was in myth and legend.