Science, gambling, and novel writer Dr. Les Golden of Oak Park, Illinois, has been granted a contract for a book of intriguing essays in astronomy and biology. “The Body Shapes of Extraterrestrials and Other Essays in Astronomy, Biology, and Physics” presents his scientifically-sound analyses of issues from communicating with extraterrestrials, to designing science fair projects, to how the possibility of life was created in the explosion of supernova stars.

Science, gambling, and novel writer Dr. Les Golden of Oak Park, Illinois, has been granted a contract for a book of intriguing essays in astronomy and biology. “The Body Shapes of Extraterrestrials and Other Essays in Astronomy, Biology, and Physics” presents his scientifically-sound analyses of issues from communicating with extraterrestrials, to designing science fair projects, to how the possibility of life was created in the explosion of supernova stars.

After receiving offers from two publishers, Mr. Golden signed that with World Science Publishing Company of Singapore. An accomplished and widely read writer, Mr. Golden was given a sizable advance from WSPC.

POLYMATH

Leslie M. Golden is a polymath, with careers as a professional astronomer and retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, having obtained the Ph.D in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, and bachelors and masters degrees in Engineering Physics with Distinction from Cornell University. There he was the multiple award-winning editor-in-chief of the Cornell Engineer magazine. He is the director of the Near Earth Asteroid Reconnaissance Project, a project enlisting amateur astronomers worldwide to discover objects in possible collision course with the Earth. Golden is a professional actor with over 100 credits, and is a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. His agents are the Shirley Hamilton Agency in Chicago and Sonjia Warren Brandon in Los Angeles.

His editorial cartoons have been published, and he has a listing in comiclopedia, the international cartoonist database. He is a multiply award-winning writer in fiction and non-fiction, including a winner of the prestigious Lili Fabilli-Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize. He was one of the founders of the prestigious University of California Jazz Ensembles, and is a professional trumpet player, jazz vocalist, jazz festival emcee, and band leader. As Flash Golden, he was the play-by-play voice of the California Golden Bears basketball team, and was a jazz disk jockey at KALX-FM. As a stand-up comic, he has performed on the college circuit, at Playboy Clubs, and in comedy clubs from Los Angeles to Boston and Chicago to Puerta Vallarta. He was a featured regular on the Eddie Hubbard Radio Show broadcast live from Arnie’s Restaurant in Chicago as one of his comic characters, Jeffrey Clayton Maxwell, from Bhutan. He performs as himself and as Subrahmanyan Berkowitz (“What! Another comedian from Bangladesh!”)

As a gambling writer, Dr. Golden has written columns for five London-based gambling magazines since 2006, has published scholarly gambling articles in peer-reviewed journals, and was named a 2016 Scholar by the International Gaming Institute of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His novel, Never Split Tens, will be published by Springer International in the summer of 2017.

He was a letterman at Oak Park and River Forest High School and has managed and played third base for league-winning fast pitch baseball teams in and since college, including the Golden Rods (Cornell) and the Foul Balls (Berkeley).

He is an internationally known environmental activist and animal welfare advocate, being the leader of the eventually successful effort to save Onion the dog, leading to revision of animal control laws in western states. for the book. I had submitted the title to four publishers. Two for four isn’t bad, in any league! He is a knowledgeable and blistering critic of zoos, singling out the notorious Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and the Calgary Zoo (“Auschwitz for Animals”) as examples of concentration camps for imprisoned wild animals.

BODY SHAPES

Body Shapes of Extraterrestrials evolved from courses Professor Golden has taught at the university level since the 1980’s. His courses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, as well as his numerous public lectures on the subject, demonstrated to Golden the deep interest among the lay public in the issues of alien life. The astronomy and biology essays are meant to provide a more profound understanding of the issues of extraterrestrial life.

Consistent with Les Golden’s performing background, the book contains humorous anecdotes, cartoons, and logic puzzles. Dr. Golden’s work was influenced by his being associated with some of the major figures in the study of the possibility of extraterrestrial life. His early mentor at Cornell University was Professor Frank Drake, the first astronomer to search for signals from alien civilizations and the developer of the Drake Equation. His dissertation advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, was Professor William J. “Jack” Welch, who was the first chaired professor in extraterrestrial intelligence in the country. His classmate at Cornell University and a fellow graduate student at Berkeley was Jill Tarter, head of the SETI Institute in California.

OTHER BOOKS IN PROGRESS

Leslie M. Golden currently has other works of fiction and non-fiction for general reading and for the stage and screen which are in various states of completion. These include

“Dr. Baker’s Dozen Murders” (three-act stage play), “Endangered Species Love This Book: The Collected Outrageous Cartoons of Les Golden” (all proceeds to environmental groups), “Shakespeare’s Misfits: Malvolio, Caliban, and Other Misunderstood Villains” (scholarly treatise identifying their common traits as manifestations of Shakespeare’s personal philosophy; with Prof. Joyce Porter), “Astrology vs. Astronomy: Tripping Through the Zodiac” (astronomy, examining the most intriguing astronomical objects in constellations), “The Best Winning System for Roulette Ever Devised” (gambling), “How I Saved Onion the Dog from Dangerous and Vicious Human Beings” (animal welfare and law; with Richard Rosenthal, Esq., and Annoula Wylderich), “Your Great-Grandmother’s Old Country Jewish Cookbook: Our Bobes’ Ashkenazi Recipes as Passed on to Their Daughters” (cookbook, Jewish jokes, Yiddish words and phrases, historical essays), “The Bracewell Probe” (science fiction screenplay based on Prof. Ronald Bracewell’s hypothesis that aliens construct a network of eavesdropping spacecraft to determine planets best for occupation), “Art and Science Under the Medicis: Scientific Philanthropy in Late Renaissance Florence” (scholarly treatise on the role of government to foster scientific and technical advances for human betterment), “Confessions of a Card Counter” (autobiographical, gambling, humor).