The Extraterrestrial's Guide to Humanity

The Extraterrestrial's Guide to Humanity is a philosophical, humorous and emotionally rich exploration of what it means to be human, written for an imagined extraterrestrial reader encountering our species for the first time.

Humanity is difficult to explain. We are capable of extraordinary kindness and breathtaking cruelty, scientific brilliance and complete irrationality, deep connection and spectacular self-sabotage. We build cities, write poetry, fall in love, start wars, create music, fear death, search for meaning and spend an alarming amount of time arguing about things that may not matter nearly as much as we think they do.

This book attempts to make sense of all of it.

Moving through the strange, beautiful and often contradictory realities of human existence, The Extraterrestrial's Guide to Humanity explores love, fear, identity, relationships, ageing, death, sex, belief, creativity, technology, science, war, culture, consciousness, time and the many systems humans have created in an effort to understand themselves and the world around them.

It also examines the ideas, mysteries and unanswered questions that continue to fascinate humanity, from the nature of reality and consciousness to the possibility of life beyond Earth. Science, philosophy, humour and imagination sit side by side throughout the book, allowing difficult subjects to be explored without demanding a single conclusion.

Rather than presenting humanity through a moral lens of good versus bad, the book approaches human behaviour with curiosity. It acknowledges the darkness without ignoring the light, the absurdity without dismissing the beauty, and the flaws without overlooking the extraordinary capacity humans possess for love, resilience, invention, compassion and change.

At its heart, this is not really a book about extraterrestrials.

It is a book about us.

By attempting to explain humanity to an outsider, the reader is invited to look at familiar ideas from an unfamiliar perspective and reconsider the assumptions, rituals, fears and beliefs that shape everyday life.

Funny, thoughtful, confronting and ultimately hopeful, The Extraterrestrial's Guide to Humanity is a celebration of the wonderfully complicated, deeply imperfect and strangely magnificent experience of being human.