The Fox/National Geographic reboot of the 1980 PBS phenomenon, Cosmos, has plenty of star power to bring to its goal of “making science cool again.” Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is behind it along with the “Hollywood cool” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is also the host. The first episode on Sunday was introduced by President Obama. It even got the ultimate in cool promotions, its own Superbowl commercial.

Reviews of the first show are mixed, but cautiously optimistic for the rest of series. Unfortunately, as the L.A. Times reports, the ratings indicate that it drew “only” 6 million viewers and was “trounced by ABC’s premiere of Resurrection,” (reminder: that series is based on the book The Returned by Jason Mott, Harlequin/MIRA).

The original series made a best seller of Sagan’s  tie-in. With twelve more episodes to go, the new one could still do the same for the revised tie-in (RH/Ballantine).

It may also bring renewed attention to Tyson’s many books of his own, the most recent of which is Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier (Norton, 2012).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2014 at 3:38 pm and is filed under 2014/15 -- Winter/Spring, Books & TV, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.