Paul Davies'' The Eerie Silence: Searching For Ourselves in the Universe is an engaging and lucid guide to the ''Fermi Paradox'' - why isn''t the universe teeming with alien life?

If aliens ever contact us, it will be the single most significant event in human history. And Paul Davies will be responsible for saying something back.

For fifty years the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has been scanning the skies. Now Davies, head of SETI''s Post-Detection Task Group, with ''a rare talent for making physics mind-bogglingly vivid and exciting'' (Times Higher Education), explores what the mysterious silence it has encountered could mean.

Here he looks at exciting new ways to make contact with extra-terrestrial life. He considers what form advanced alien intelligence is likely to take if it exists. And more importantly, what exactly it would mean if it didn''t ­- how extraordinary it would be if we were alone, to be human and here in this staggering, eerie silence...

''A magnificent cosmic tour of what might be out there in space''
  Sunday Times

''Rather wonderful''
  New Scientist

''Conveys excellently the fascination of the quest''
  The Times

''An authoritatively written, immensely clear, lay person''s guide to the many things we don''t know about the rest of the universe''
  Guardian

Paul Davies is Director of the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, and co-Director of the Cosmology Initiative, both at Arizona State University. An internationally-acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, Davies is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including The Eerie Silence: Searching for Ourselves in the Universe, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? and The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning.