MEANWHILE BACK ON EARTH . . .

A car trip through space becomes a journey back in time.

Keeping to a steady 37 miles an hour as they motor into the sky, a light-skinned parent, accompanied by two children squabbling over territory in the back seat, comments that “we humans have always fought each other over space,” drawing borders since our planet seemed so big. Readers will certainly see the fallacy in that last notion play out after the parent hangs a left at the moon and, looking back after a 78-year drive to Venus, notes that 78 years ago our entire world was at war. Similarly, the 150 years it would take to reach Mercury marks a time when Africa was being violently divvied up by colonial powers. As a zigzag course passes the sun and each outer planet, other conflicts in the Americas and on back 8,000 years to the end of the latest ice age pass in review, too. But the already-strained conceit collapses at Pluto with the astoundingly facile claim that 11,000 years ago people were “much too busy surviving to bother with fighting each other.” Scenes of a sedan wheeling through the vast distances of space past recognizably limned planets alternate with views of tiny figures on battlefields, waving national flags and wielding weapons; the book ends with the family back home, children asleep in parental arms beneath starry skies. The absurdity of humans continually fighting for tiny bits of our tiny planet comes through, but the confusing contradiction of the main premise results in a conclusion that feels less like a resolution than an abrupt loss of interest. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

The message is sound, the delivery decidedly otherwise.