Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: 4th Rock from the Sun
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Bristol, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/author/nicky-jenner
RESEARCHER NOTES: NOTE: I changed the publisher according to Worldcat.–DP
LC control no.: no2017082532
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017082532
HEADING: Jenner, Nicky
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372 __ |a Science |a Astrophysics |2 lcsh
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400 1_ |a Guttridge, Nicky
670 __ |a 4th rock from the Sun, 2017: |b title page (Nicky Jenner)
670 __ |a nickyjenner.com, accessed 21 June 2017: |b (Nicky Jenner, freelance writer and editor; based in Bristol; I previously wrote under the surname of Guttridge, and spent 2015-16 working in Hong Kong. I have a BSc in Astrophysics (UCL, 2011) and an MSc in Science Communication (Imperial College, 2012).)
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University College London, B.Sc., 2011; Imperial College, M.Sc. 2012.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and editor. Freelance science communicator; copywriter for the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory; freelances with the Giles Agency communications firm, Hong Kong, China; formerly the European press officer for the Hubble Space Telescope program.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including New Scientist, Nature, BBC Sky at Night, Astronomy Now, the Times Eureka, and Physics World.
SIDELIGHTS
Nicky Jenner, who lives in Great Britain, received her undergraduate degree in astrophysics and her master’s degree in science communication. She is a contributor to science based periodicals, primarily dealing with astronomy and physics. As a freelance science communicator, Jenner also helps establish media campaigns and oversee web copy and design. In her first book, 4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars, Jenner examines Mars in its entirety, from the planet’s general nature to its impact on human culture and the likelihood that Mars could be colonized.
Writing in 4th Rock from the Sun, Jenner recounts how humans have been fascinated by outer space and the planets in our solar system. She goes on to note: “However, one planet has captivated star gazers like no other and continues to do so today: Mars, the Red Planet.” Jenner points out: “Mars is the most-googled planet after Earth itself, and we’ve sent more probes to Mars than any body in the Solar System bar the Moon.” As a result, writes Jenner, “images and data flood in thick and fast from the NASA rovers trundling around on the planet’s surface, and from the international fleet of robots currently in orbit around mars.” Jenner also notes that many more missions are planned to the Red Planet.
Jenner begins her by covering the general geological and overall physical attributes of Mars. In the process, she discusses how the planet evolved and delves into whether or not Mars could support life or had supported life in the past. For example, Jenner points out that on the surface the planet is relatively barren but that scientist belie ve it was once a warm and wet planet that could have supported a wide variety of microbial life. Noting that 4th Rock from the Sun contains “stuff I’ve never seen in a popular science title before,” a Popular Science Books website contributor went on to remark: “Some of this is in the detail of the geology – how and why the two hemispheres are so different, and the future of the moons, for instance.” Keeping to the scientific discussion, Jenner explores the potential for the future colonization of Mars and the various challenges that colonizing the planet would present. In addition, she writes about how scientists are already preparing for such a colonization.
Jenner points out that human observations and beliefs about Mars permeates human culture, from The War of the Worlds novel by H.G. Wells, published in 1898, to cartoons featuring Martians and David Bowie’s song referring to the “Spiders from Mars.” However, as Jenner points out, human fascination with Mars is ancient and led to mythologies that depicted Mars as a harbinger of war. She writes about Mars in terms of astrology and how astrologers viewed mars in terms of human personalities and its effect on individuals. Commenting on the belief that persisted into the earlier twentieth century that Mars contained advanced life, E&T Online contributor Mark Williamson remarked that this belief stemmed the “Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli [reporting he] thought he saw ‘canali’, or channels, on the surface. Unfortunately, a mistranslation led American astronomer Percival Lowell to think that ‘canals’ implied intelligent life… and the rest is history.”
The book also includes an appendix providing a chronological listing of missions to Mars, including NASA’s Mariner program, a ten-mission program that used robotic interplanetary probes to explore various planets, including Mars. The list also includes future programs such as NASA’s 2020 rover expedition to actually hear the sounds that Mars makes as a planet. 4th Rock from the Sun will “satisfy readers with factoids aplenty and even teach space nerds something new,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Alex Yard, writing for the Run Spot Run website, believed the “book’s more interesting moments aren’t Mars-specific and instead pertain to space exploration in general.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 24, 2017, review of 4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars, p. 79.
ONLINE
Bloomsbury Publishing Website, https://www.bloomsbury.com/ (January 23, 2018), author profile.
E&T Online, https://eandt.theiet.org/ (April 12, 2017), Mark Williamson, review of 4th Rock from the Sun.
Nicky Jenner Website, http://www.nickyjenner.com (January 22, 2018).
Popular Science Books, http://popsciencebooks.blogspot.com (April 9, 2017), review of 4th Rock from the Sun
Run Spot Run, http://www.runspotrun.com/ (June 19, 2017), Alex Yard, review of 4th Rock from the Sun.
NICKY JENNER | Science writer, editor, and author.
Freelance science communicator | Specialising in physics and astronomy | Bristol, UK
Author of popular science book 4th Rock from the Sun, published with Bloomsbury in 2017.
I work regularly with the European Space Agency, European Southern Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, various magazines and publications, and a communications agency based in Hong Kong (The Giles Agency), on everything from interviews, image captions, and news and feature-length articles through to social media campaigns, web copy and design, image metadata, and general research.
Happy to consider pro/low-bono work for charitable causes, especially in the conservation sector.
BSc Astrophysics (UCL, 2008) & MSc Science Communication (Imperial College, 2012).
Nicky Jenner
Nicky Jenner is a science writer and the author of 4th Rock from the Sun (Bloomsbury). She regularly works with the European Space Agency and the European Southern Observatory (the organisation responsible for Very and Extremely Large Telescopes), as well as writing for various magazines
Nicky Jenner is a freelance writer and editor. Her news stories, features, interviews and reviews have appeared in a variety of international popular science magazines, including New Scientist, Nature, BBC Sky at Night, Astronomy Now, The Times Eureka, and Physics World. Nicky is also a copywriter for the European Space Agency, European Southern Observatory (the organisation responsible for both the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which will be the world's largest eye on the sky), and the Hubble Space Telescope, for which she was formerly the European press officer.
@nickyjenner1 / nickyjenner.com
Writes: Science & Nature, Popular Science
Author of : 4th Rock from the Sun
Quotes from pgs. 7, 8
Print Marked Items
4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars
Publishers Weekly.
264.17 (Apr. 24, 2017): p79.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars
Nicky Jenner. Sigma, $27 (272p) ISBN 978-14729-2249-6
Science writer Jenner illuminates the significance of Mars to humankind, covering geology, pop culture,
history, and more. With a quirky tone, she describes ancients mythologizing the red planet; modern authors
writing Mars into the Zeitgeist, including in such creations as The War of the Worlds and Marvin the
Martian; and scientists studying its geology to understand its watery history and the possibility of life there.
Though humans have only "been aiming spacecraft at Mars since the 1960s," readers get an exhaustive
mission chronology. It includes the Soviet Korabl 4 spacecraft, NASA's Mariner program, and the Mars
2020 rover that will allow scientists "to 'hear' Mars for the very first time." Jenner also recounts the largely
forgotten yet then-popular mid-20th-century belief in plentiful Martian vegetation. In reality, "Mars is a
planet entirely populated by robots," Jenner writes, though simpler life might "exist in pockets within cavelike
environments." While she praises box-office hit The Martian for its accuracies, she also in a more
serious way speculates on Mars's long-term habitability, namely on the possibility of engineering a
breathable atmosphere there with a magnetosphere to keep it secured. Though repetitious in phrase and
unrefined in style, this short read still laudably conveys the scope and weight of Mars's influence on our
ideas of the extraterrestrial. It'll satisfy readers with factoids aplenty and even teach space nerds something
new. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars." Publishers Weekly, 24 Apr. 2017, p. 79. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491250853/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0a1cd45f.
Accessed 22 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A491250853
4th Rock from the Sun - Nicky Jenner ***
April 09, 2017
It's rather appropriate that the title of this book seems to be based on the name of the so-so TV show '3rd Rock from the Sun' - like that programme, it shows promise and has plenty of good bits, but as a whole it's rather confused, lacks structure and could have been so much better.
What we have here is a rag bag of everything the general reader might want to know about Mars - or about anything vaguely related to Mars. Nicky Jenner has an engagingly open writing style, although I think the copy editor at Bloomsbury must have been on holiday - I've never known a copy editor let a single exclamation mark through in an adult title, yet this one is littered with them! That did make it feel occasionally as if I was reading a book for children! But it's not!
Getting off my punctuation hobby horse, the good news is that there is lots of genuinely interesting material about Mars here, including stuff I've never seen in a popular science title before. Some of this is in the detail of the geology - how and why the two hemispheres are so different, and the future of the moons, for instance - and some is in the cultural impact of Mars. I've never read a book on the subject that doesn't bring in War of the Worlds as a cultural marker - but I can't remember any waxing lyrical on the subject of Captain Scarlet, a series from the makers of Thunderbirds which I loved as a child (though I had forgotten the Martian aspect until Jenner reminded me).
There's plenty more to like. Jenner takes a realistic view of the various potential attempts to get humans to Mars and points out very firmly how far the concept of terraforming strays into science fiction. She emphasises the difficulties of making the trip (I knew USSR/Russia had suffered failures, but I wasn't aware of the sheer scale of disaster they've suffered with Martian probes). In a chapter called 'The Massive Mars problem' she dedicates far more to the oddities of Mars being a lot smaller than Earth in models of how the solar system formed than I've seen before, highlighting the unexpected nature of this planet (and, arguably, our solar system as a whole).
Unfortunately there are some issues too. Apart from the overall lack of structure, there are some chapters that just didn't work for me. I like a nice bit of tangential material as much as the next person, but chapter 2, titled 'The Wolf and the Woodpecker' and spending time on Mars as a god, astrology and even, somehow, the tarot, seemed too far removed from the topic. As the first chapter is very general, then we get this, I was really feeling 'Get on with it!' with the obligatory exclamation mark by the end of chapter 2. There are a few other chapters where there's the opposite problem of too much information. In one, Jenner goes through pretty well every Mars probe that has ever existed at some length. Similarly, the breakdown of the impact of microgravity on the human body, with around 15 sections such as 'Bones' and 'Blood and urine' just piles in too much detail. Its a mass of fact statements with no flow. Sometimes less is more.
Pulling a view of the book together, that lack of structure comes through very strongly. For the reader, 4th Rock lacks any sense of narrative drive. It presents collections of information on different topics, some fascinating, some rather tedious - but even all those exclamation marks aren't enough to keep a constant level of interest. Most readers will learn plenty about Mars they didn't know already, so it's definitely worth a look. But for me, it didn't work as well as it could have.
BOOK REVIEWS / NONFICTION0
4th Rock from the Sun by Nicky Jenner
BY ALEX YARD · JUNE 19, 2017
Bloomsbury, 2017
Bloomsbury, 2017
★★☆☆☆
Nicky Jenner presents Mars as the planetary neighbor that has most deeply captured the imagination of scientific and artistic communities throughout the eras. Unfortunately, her book 4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars fails to make a compelling case for this claim. With its slipshod structure and harrowingly large showcase of disproven pseudoscience, Jenner never pieces together the memorable “story” promised in the title. Since this book’s more interesting moments aren’t Mars-specific and instead pertain to space exploration in general, interested readers would be wise to select a different book within this field of scientific inquiry.
4th Rock from the Sun quickly reveals its structure, which resembles a laundry list. An early phase of the book documents at significant length all the ways Mars has been interpreted and portrayed throughout the history of civilization. Readers must plow through a comprehensive tally of Mars-inspired books, movies, songs—including Veronica Mars, which the author notes is a merely superficial nod with no deeper meaning. (Then why should we care?) With so little tying these references together, you would be more effectively served by the “In Culture” section of this planet’s Wikipedia page. It’s perplexing that this tedious account of depictions in media would get such extended treatment prior to a majority of the scientific analysis contained in this book.
More troubling is the vast amount of pseudoscience explored at length throughout. Mars has a significant presence in mythology, astrology, palm reading, and tarot card canon, but to say this hogwash is minimally interesting would be generous. Jenner intermittently recounts various Mars conspiracy theories, including the previously-suspected system of canals carved by well-hidden Martian lifeforms, as well as the formation of images perceived in the planet’s geographical surface features. Regarding the latter, we are treated to a list of no less than thirty examples, including Ted Kennedy, a wrench, a gopher and Kermit the Frog. That some of these perceptions are claimed by blogs like “UFO Sightings Daily” and other conspiracy theory factories only highlights the absurdity. To be sure, Jenner fully acknowledges the falsity of these claims. But ultimately, she devotes a significant portion of this book’s real estate to ponder this foolishness, so she’s not absolved. It would be a bit more acceptable had this content been quarantined to a specific chapter, but it’s increasingly irksome that the entire book is peppered with it.
With these choices of content in mind, it’s fitting that the book’s style and structure feels amateurish, especially since Jenner’s resume prior to this (her first book) is limited to science articles. Early on, Jenner explains how the sandstorm in the opening scene of The Martian is exaggerated for the purposes of dramatic artistic license, but seventy pages later she refers to the same film as an example of factually correct science fiction. In addition, the intertextual quotations often feel flimsy—there’s something undeniably tacky about citing multiple webcomics, podcasts and Reddit AMAs in a work of scientific nonfiction. It doesn’t help that of all the book’s footnotes, greater than half are skippable banalities. There are other ways Jenner intermittently undermines reader confidence in her presentation: Is it necessary to describe Roger Ebert as “a renowned film critic?” Is it sensible to use the word leonine if it’s immediately followed by the word lion in parentheses?
4th Rock from the Sun is certainly not without its interesting moments, but oddly, they are largely found at the beginning and end. The introduction features an overview of Mars’ geographical features—enormous dust storms, highly variable temperatures depending on elevation, polar icecaps, and the challenges of its low surface gravity. It sets the stage for an interesting story, but this stage never feels fully utilized. In the obligatory “Looking Forward” phase that concludes the book, Jenner highlights many of the interesting challenges that future astronauts will face when traveling to Mars: microgravity’s negative effects on muscles and bones, impaired vision, balance and appetite, and the largely untested gradual effects on social and mental health. But there’s a catch: though these tidbits are no doubt interesting, they apply to any realm of human space travel, and don’t add up to a compelling Mars-specific saga. What makes up the rest of the book? Chapters on the planet’s origin theories, its orbit, its moons, and the many robots that have roamed its surface. Unfortunately, none of these sections contain many memorable moments, and many are tediously structured like the aforementioned laundry lists of pop-culture manifestations.
Was this book was greenlit in the wake of The Martian film’s wild financial success? Regardless, the resulting book does not contain enough engaging narratives to justify its existence. With its tedious chronicles of disproven hypotheses and weakly structured presentation of ideas, 4th Rock from the Sun is largely forgettable. Readers would be better served by the works of Brian Greene or Richard Dawkins—for that matter, you could also just check if the film Interstellar is available on demand.
E&T logo
Review
Book review: ‘4th Rock from the Sun: The Story of Mars’ by Nicky Jenner
By Mark Williamson
Published Wednesday, April 12, 2017
A ‘wannabe space explorer’ brings us an engaging review of our enduring fascination with the Red Planet.
If ever a planet could be flavour of the month it would have to be Mars. On BBC Radio 4, programmes on Mars are almost as common as the shipping forecast. The audience of one live feature had no difficulty identifying the vegetable grown by Matt Damon’s character in ‘The Martian’, which suggests that Mars is truly part of our culture (or that Radio 4’s audience is mainly gardeners!).
Yet ‘the story of Mars’ has fascinated audiences for over a century now, since Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli thought he saw ‘canali’, or channels, on the surface. Unfortunately, a mistranslation led American astronomer Percival Lowell to think that ‘canals’ implied intelligent life... and the rest is history. Indeed, Lowell could almost have been a publisher’s agent, considering the subsequent cultural impact across the years, from ‘The War of the Worlds’ to ‘Spiders from Mars’.
In ‘4th Rock from the Sun: the story of Mars’ by Nicky Jenner (Bloomsbury Sigma, £16.99; ISBN 9781472922496), we have a cultural compendium of our continuing fascination with Mars. It begins with an analysis of ‘Mars Fever’, asking “Why do we want to visit Mars so badly?” and “Is Mars really so special?”. The author, who calls herself an “avid wannabe space explorer”, begins by explaining why Mars is so hostile to humans and wouldn’t make much of a holiday destination. “The trip there would be thumb-twiddlingly boring,” she says, although she quickly regains her ‘wannabe’ stance with the observation that Mars is potentially the best place to find extraterrestrial life.
One chapter covers the colour and name of Mars in society, mythology, astrology, palmistry and pretty much anything else that ends in a ‘y’. We all know that the colour red is “often naturally linked to sex”, but did you know that Mars is named Mangala in Hindu astrology “after their flame-red god of war” and that Mangala rides on a ram, the zodiacal Aries “ruled by the planet Mars” and associated with fire? It may be a long way from potatoes, but it shows how long we’ve been hooked on Mars.
Most of us would be able to conjure up a handful of cultural Martian references – from Edgar Rice Burroughs to Captain Scarlet – but you’ll find your memories revived by the fire-hose volume of examples in this book. For me, the book represents an eclectic mix of Martian memories, from science and technology to science fiction and belief.
Having hooked her audience in the early chapters, Jenner gets down to the serious science of Mars and its moons and our continuing exploration of them. The chapter heads – such as ‘Robot Cars on Mars’ – may be sensationalist, but the content is engaging and accessible. It’s not a serious academic source, but it’s high on the list of the first books to read about Mars.