   "Is it not, indeed, an absurd and almost a sacrilegious belief that the more a man studies nature the less he reveres it? Think you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye is but a drop of water, loses any- thing in the eye of the physicist who knows that its elements are held together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a flash of lightning? ... think you that the rounded rock, marked with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid a million years ago? The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume. Whoever has not sought for fossils, has little idea of the poetical associations that surround the places where imbedded tresures were found.... Sad, indeed, it is to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena - care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!" Herbert Spencer This is not intended by any means to be an exhaustive collection of resources on the subjects of interstellar intelligence or astronomy. Rather, it is a small collection of works which anyone with an interest in the ideas discussed on this site would find enjoyable reading. Many of the books listed below are available in local libraries, despite the fact they may be out of print. An alternative source is of course 'Amazon.com', which seems to have every book ever printed. We've linked some of the books below to Amazon. Science Fact
Science Fiction All of these are available on Amazon
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