orangepinyata

I'll admit I haven't read them that recently but from what I recall the Vital Question is slightly more readable than Oxygen. That said, all of his books are very 'thorough' in the sense that he's definitely posing them as trying to make an argument as opposed to just educational, which does definitely make them less readable than they could be. Less bedtime reading and more something to actually make time for I guess?

I have seen him give talks in person before and they've been a lot clearer - maybe there's some on youtube? He's been on a few of the 'In Our Time' podcast episodes, so they might be interesting too?

It's an interesting suggestion but I think given what we know of life it's unlikely. I guess (obviously this is all speculation - none of us were there!) the origin of life can sort of be thought of as going from chemistry/geochemistry to biochemistry. And purely from a rate of reactions perspective, in a nice solvent like water that's likely to be more conducive to the origin of life than deep underground (in solids/highly viscous liquid at best).

Then there's also flux - do you have temporal/spatial variation in your various chemical constituents that might give rise to potential gradients (as we find in life - chemiosmosis in mitochondria for an obvious example). These are very prevalent at the sort of Lost City hydrothermal vents, where you have a very nice solvent coming into contact with a large mineral flux, with large energetic and chemical gradients. Again, less likely to be found underground.

If you're interested in this kind of thing I'd heartily recommend Nick Lane's book 'The Vital Question' or 'Transformer'. He tends to frame the issue not so much as just having the chemicals available (we find these on asteroids/meteorites!) but in having the energetic flux to get life started. Sort of akin I guess to how the components of a lightbulb don't do anything until you add an electron flux.