With 27 contributors, including several in the prima donna class, it is a wonder that the editors managed to maintain such a consistent tone of voice, avoiding on the one hand a circus of hobby horses and, on the other, a bland affirmation of received doctrine. Instead, it is a model of balance, with difficulties carefully pointed out.
I hope that the readers of this book will include textbook writers, television producers and others who so often feel obliged to explain in a sentence or two how life must have started from proto-organisms feeding on an ocean of biochemicals generated in a methane-dominated atmosphere by thunderstorms and ultraviolet light. Well, maybe, but this is not the only model or even the preferred one. The best geochemical evidence now puts carbon dioxide and nitrogen as the major early atmospheric constituents, and it is not at all clear that such an atmosphere ...
