Moving nimbly from the moon to Mars, from the depths of the Atlantic to a nuclear reactor, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair artfully traces a history of amazing mechanical rovers through the Cold War, the Chernobyl disaster, the 9/11 attack, and his own upbringing near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Instigated by the discovery of old photos after a devastating wildfire, Space Rover clears an astutely unpredictable and philosophical path from Sinclair’s boyhood in Southern California through a rich cultural history of mechanical wanderers. Space Rover is an auspicious call for – and at times, a solemn caution against – wandering. What a thought-provoking exploration of the purposeful meandering that humans and their mechanized, roving proxies do!