Includes bibliographical references and index.

I. From stars to embryos: Galaxy gazing -- Handy humans and other protopeople -- A human with no nerves -- II. Cycles of life: From celestial furnaces -- Life cycles: animals versus stars -- The moment of conception -- III. In the beginning: A universe begins -- The opposite of a whimper -- Our internal evolution -- IV. Structures and functions: Spacious heavens -- The ecological theater -- Becoming an adult -- V. From boulders to brains: Rubble around the sun -- The very first animals -- Here comes the brain -- VI. Milestones of discovery: Exoplanets and aliens -- From Darwin to Darwinism -- Analyzing the embryo -- VII. Endings and enlightenment: The end of the world -- Extinction and how to avoid it -- From embryo to enlightenment.

We all had three origins: the origin of our own individual life, the origin of life on Earth, and the origin of our planetary home from a universe that initially had neither stars nor planets. This book tells the stories of these three origins and the evolutionary processes connected with them. It tells the stories in an intertwined way; and it considers the likelihood that intelligent life-forms on other planets exist - indeed are numerous - and had their own versions of these same three origins. The evolutionary story of the universe involves the origins of stars, planets, and life. The evolutionary story of life on Earth involves the origins of cells, animals, and intelligence. The evolutionary story of an intelligent alien living on an exoplanet somewhere in the Milky Way galaxy may have those same three origins, though here we're in the realm of hypothesis. But we come firmly back to Earth for the evolutionary story of the human embryo, which involves the origin of mulberries, sausages, and brains - though the first two of these are metaphorical creatures. These stories are not told in sequence; rather, the book intertwines them. It takes the form of a series of chapter-triplets, in each of which all of the stories feature. So we begin not with the big bang but rather by gazing into the night-time sky and using the constellation of Cassiopeia to locate extra-terrestrial life. And we end not with the rarefied skies of the distant future but with the prospects for human survival - or extinction - and the world-wide clash between intolerance and enlightenment, which may help to decide our ultimate fate.--