Review: Alice Gorman, Dr Space Junk vs. the Universe: Archaeology and the Future

Abstract

When we look into the night sky, we look into the past. The light that reaches our eyes from stars has traveled for years, rendering everything we see a trace of how things were at some other point in time. This raises the question of how our own planetary past is preserved and cast outward, a question that has stirred excitement among science fiction writers, astronomers, and archaeologists alike. An entanglement of pastness and futurity is intrinsic to outer space; for while the night sky presents us visually with intermingling pasts, the idea of preservation entails a future into which these pasts are cast.