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    Review of Cloudy with a Chance of Starships

    #booksky Cloudy with a Chance of Starships princeton princeton university press rasmussen seven rasmussen

    Rasmussen, Seven. Cloudy With a Chance of Starships. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0-069-124622-2. $29.95.

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    The year was 1950 and, at a lunch meeting in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Enrico Fermi asked a famous question regarding extraterrestrial life: “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” 


    Astrobiologist and author Seven Rasmussen waits until page 137 of her book Cloudy with a Chance of Starships to present Fermi’s question. I think it’s a great decision…the question is presented about halfway (physically and narratively) through the book and provides a useful touchstone in the search for extraterrestrial life.


    Dr. Rasmussen focuses on the Drake Equation, which attempts to establish the probability that life exists on another planet within our Milky Way galaxy. The equation itself can be expressed as a product of seven values:


    • The yearly rate at which new stars are born
    • The fraction of stars that host planets
    • The number of planets per star that could potentially host life
    • The fraction of planets on which life evolves
    • The fraction of life that becomes intelligent
    • The fraction of intelligent beings that develop interstellar communication
    • The average lifespan of a technological society


    Simple, right? Absolutely not. As Rasmussen points out, we know a lot about a couple of these variables (star birth rates and the fraction of stars that host planets), a bit about how many planets could potentially host life, and discouragingly little about the rest. 


    The author takes great care to provide the background knowledge and context for readers to grasp the implications of the Drake Equation and the information required to even begin to evaluate it. One could describe the Drake Equation reasonably well in a 3,000-word article, but Cloudy with a Chance of Starships assumes nothing beyond an intelligent reader. Rasmussen includes topics such as star and planet formation, water as a basis of life, amino acid formation, protein formation, biosignatures, technosignatures, various and sundry ways for civilizations to die, and the future of astrobiology.


    I enjoyed Cloudy with a Chance of Starships, but my heart sank a bit when I saw the book’s title in the Princeton University Press catalog. The animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, based on a short story of the same name, was surreal fun that intended to entertain rather than educate. I worried the book would try too hard to be cute and funny, but Rasmussen pulled it off.


    Humor is a ridiculously individual thing, but I quite enjoyed lines such as “Here on Earth, we have millions of different species, but only one has invented the air fryer.” That bit landed on page 137, two paragraphs below Fermi’s famous question. Rasmussen liberally sprinkles her prose with jokes that I’m happy to report pretty much always work and don’t seem forced. I’m glad. Getting the humor wrong would have undone the terrific effort to explain the Drake Equation and provide sufficient context to understand its implications.


    Sorry...I almost forgot to mention that Rasmussen does provide and explain the current best guess as to the probability of at least one other intelligent civilization in our Milky Way galaxy. It would be unkind to spoil the surprise, so I’ll let you read Cloudy with a Chance of Starships and discover it for yourself.


    Highly recommended.

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    Review of The Irrational Decision by Benjamin Recht

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    Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0-691-27244-3.


    In The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us from Princeton University Press, Benjamin Recht of UC Berkeley examines the history of computer-driven risk analysis from its foundations in World War II to the present day. Many of Dr. Recht’s themes are familiar, but he provides ample new (to me, at least) perspectives and examples to advance the discussion.


    I particularly like his treatment of creating linear models, which have well-defined solutions, as a means of controlling physical systems. Another recent book from Princeton, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation (which I reviewed here) examines automation as applied to theme park ride control and optimization. Recht acknowledges the power of these systems but references a 1989 conference plenary address entitled “Respect the Unstable” by Gunter Stein, a Honeywell engineer, regarding the dangers of forcing linear control over nonlinear systems. Recht notes that Stein provided several examples of small perturbations that caused a nonlinear system controlled using a linear model to get dangerously out of control.


    Other examples include gameplay for checkers, chess, go, and poker. These three games are perfect information games with enormous game trees, while poker has a huge game space that includes hidden information. As a risk analysis and optimization problem, it’s theoretically possible to describe the entire game tree of a perfect information game. That has been done for checkers, which was solved in 2007, but seems comfortably out of reach for chess and go.


    It’s different for business problems. You can’t build a decision tree or evaluate simulation results without knowing the specific outcome of each play of the game. Defining player payoffs in all but the simplest cases is impossible, especially if you include non-monetary measures. To that end, Recht quotes RAND historian Robert Leonard:


    Repeatedly, one encounters the opinion that, as far as systems analysis was concerned, the value of game theory at RAND was not in providing numerical solutions to particular strategic problems, but in providing qualitative insight, in stressing the important of reciprocation, opposing intentions, the credibility of threats, and the like. Game theory played a role in systems analysis, therefore, but not as a generator of numerical solutions to well-specified problems.


    How, then, do humans make decisions? The Irrational Decision compares the competing theories of Daniel Kahneman of Thinking Fast and Slow fame, and Gary Klein, who wrote Sources of Power and Streetlights and Shadows. Kahneman focuses on heuristics and rules, while Klein created his Recognition-Primed Decision Making (RDM) model. Recht’s comparison of the two approaches and how the creators achieved a form of reconciliation was interesting to read and more information I hadn’t encountered previously.


    The Irrational Game is an excellent book. Even if you’re familiar with the popular literature on decision-making you’ll likely find new information and fresh perspectives. Highly recommended.

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    Review of Disneyland and the Rise of Automation by Roland Betancourt

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    Roland Betancourt, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN: 978-0-691-25587-3. $35.00.


    Roland Betancourt’s newest book Disneyland and the Rise of Automation, published by Princeton University Press, makes valuable contributions to industrial history and Disney studies. Theme parks in general, and Disney properties in particular, offer fertile ground for analyses at the intersection of automation and entertainment.


    Disney studies has taken off in academia, leading to the launch of the International Journal of Disney Studies and numerous books including Why the Magic Matters: Discovering Disney as a Laboratory for Learning, an edited volume from Bloomsbury. Betancourt’s exploration of how Disney incorporated industrial technology into its theme parks positions the theme park as a factory, relating it directly to post-World War II automation and the development of operations research to optimize those processes. As with social media companies, traffic matters—the more efficiently you can move people through your attractions the more money you make and the more data you can collect.


    After setting the analytical frame, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation builds a chronological history of technologies and techniques used to build Disney attractions, such as servomechanisms used on the assembly line Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant, through computerized programmable logic controllers used in contemporary systems. This analysis offers significant value to industrial and Disney historians, in no small measure because of Betancourt’s attention to detail and the bountiful historical record from Disney publications, employee recollections, and patent filings the author incorporates into the text.


    Walt Disney viewed his parks as a form of edutainment, offering a glimpse into the workings of the parks’ attractions. Automata such as those used in The Hall of Presidents are one example, but putting attraction control systems in full view rather than hiding them behind set pieces is another. This effort to “denude” the technology of its mystery normalizes its place in popular culture and offers at least the appearance of accessibility and comprehensibility.


    As someone who’s interested in the intersection of technology and society, I enjoyed Disneyland and the Rise of Automation. It’s not meant for a general audience but the broad interest in Disney studies and ongoing business and societal focus on efficiency through operations research expands its audience well beyond academic specialists. Highly recommended.