On Another Planet They Can Save Me

An electrifying and genre-defying memoir charting Lieke Marsman’s unflinching journey through a terminal cancer diagnosis and a raw search for meaning in a world that offers none

In 2017, poet and novelist Lieke Marsman was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer. After being told her illness was incurable, Marsman embarks on an intellectual journey that challenges the limits of the rational, secular worldview she once trusted. As she undergoes radiotherapy, immunotherapy, and multiple surgeries—including the amputation of her arm—she turns to theology, philosophy, mythology, and science in an urgent quest for hope.

Marsman weaves the arguments of Christian thinkers with quantum physics, and the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and William James with Greek mythology. Her research and reflection eventually transforms into an obsession with UFOs—and the manifold implications for us on Earth if life does, in fact, exist somewhere out there. She explores the possibility that meaning—or even salvation—might lie outside the boundaries of what we know. Extraterrestrial life becomes a poignant metaphor for faith itself: “When everything in the here and now turns out to be utterly hopeless, I allow myself to think: On another planet they can save me.”

The result is a poetic, philosophical, and fearless exploration of living with illness and death and nonetheless cultivating hope in the face of the unknown.