“Reach for the Stars,” the author beckons us in Chapter Four, sweeping us from the time when prehistoric man gazed in wonder at the night sky to the time when Yuri Gagarin ventured into outer space.

This book seems to be all the more relevant when space travel is no longer confined to NASA and Russian cosmonauts, but seems to be on the verge of a new tourism venture. Are we going to give our kids a choice: “Where would you like to go this summer, St Martin’s? Madrid? The Moon? Mars?”
We may not be quite there yet, but Ishraq Uz Zaman has given us the will to believe in such a future. Nothing is impossible, this book seems to say.

At this point, I must point to a difference between Sagan and Zaman. The former was a professed atheist, but the latter is not. He writes, “I would like to think that the supernatural or divine power (or God, if you will) to whom is due the primal origin of the heavens and earth and the laws eternal and divine therein, also reserves the power to refute any of them as he does wish.” He quotes from the Holy Quran: “To Him belongs the keys of the heavens and the earth; He enlarges and restricts sustenance to whom He will; for He knows full well all things.” (Surah Ash-Shura, Verse 12).

As he draws to the end of the book, the author writes, “We believe only what we know. And what we know is limited by the confines of our current concepts and conventions. We do not know what lies beyond the grasp and power of our comprehension and the extent of our knowledge.”
This seems to echo the words of Bertrand Russell: “The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know.”