Book Review: The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy Moiya McTier

 

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy Moiya McTier 

256 pages, Hardcover  

August, 2022 by Grand Central Publishing

This is a remarkable book on many levels, and to start with I am not sure if it is fair to call it non-fiction entirely. This is a science book, and if you give yourself over to it, it will science the hell out of you.

The author and this book have been on my radar for a long before it was finished and out. McTeir was a regular guest on one of my favorite, now defunct podcasts - The Weekly Space Hangout. I also listened to her podcast Exolore. McTeir positioned herself for this book while studying at Harvard. The first person at that school (I heard it was pretty good) to study Astrophysics and mythology.

There are a buzillion books out there, and an equal number of podcasts, Tv shows, movies, and concerts so how does one get attention? They write a one-in-a-million book that only they can. Moiya McTeir did. Despite this book being hyped on podcasts, and in my Reading TBR shelf for more than a minute it lived up to the hype.

So the concept is what if our galaxy had a giant galactic brain and was telling us its story? As such this pulls on all of McTeir's abilities. Writing as the Milky Way is of course a creative writing exercise, and as such, it is impossible for this not to be just a little bit in McTeir's voice. That might lose some hard science folks. I personally liked that. I mean the reality is that you should come to this book not expecting a perfect galactic first person...what the hell would that be.

My favorite parts of the book are when we get the myths of the milky way. Larry and Sammy in this context are other galaxies. "Polynesian seafarers knew how to navigate by Larry and Sammy, the Maori in your modern New Zealand marked the clouds return in their sky to predict weather, and some groups native to Australia looked to them as the resting place for the spirits of their loved ones."

I use this as an example not just of some of my favorite parts of the book but the trick McTeir had to pull, writing like the milky way but using words and terms to communicate with the reader. and trust me it gets hard sciencey at times... "It's hard to maintain hydrostatic Equilibrium in anything heavier than 200 masses." (pulled out at random) but nothing was so far over my head I felt off-put. I admit that mathy math stuff in the new Sean Carroll book has put me off. It happens.

The Milky Way autobiography is going to get attention as a fun book, as a neat book. A fun concept for a science book but it is also an important book. We spend lots of time as a society figuring out how our planet works as our home. The milky Way in a larger sense is our home as well.

I love this book.