Writing in Scientific American, Mark Alpert argues that we need more novels about science:
A good work of fiction can convey the smells of a laboratory, the colors of a dissected heart, the anxieties of a chemist and the joys of an astronomer–all the illuminating particulars that you won’t find in a peer-reviewed article in Science or Nature. Novels such as Intuition, with their fully fleshed out characters and messy conflicts, can erase the ridiculously sinister Dr. No cartoons. And most important, these books can inspire readers to become scientists themselves.
As you might imagine, this is right up my alley, what with all the preaching I’ve been doing lately about the need for more and better public outreach. I absolutely agree that fiction about science would be a good way to humanize scientists to the general public (at least, the ones who read), and that this could help with some of our collective image problems.
It’s really hard to come up with good examples of novels that do a good job with science, though. Alpert cites the most obvious recent one, Allegra Goodman’s Intuition (which I still haven’t read…), and also an older book by Updike. What else is out there, though?
Please note, I’m not talking about stories in which the scientific facts are right– the SF field has produced a lot of those, but they’re frequently absolutely awful at depicting the process of science and the characters who are scientists. Lone genius stories aren’t really any more appealing than mad genius stories– the only real difference is whose side the author is on.
The best novel I can think of for getting the feel of Big Science right is a book called Radiance by Carter Scholz, about people working on Star Wars projects in a DoD lab. The end of the book was ultimately pretty depressing, though.
In short fiction, Ted Chiang has a number of stories about researchers that ring true, in the details of how research is done. “Story of Your Life” is fantastic, and “Division by Zero” likewise. Even in the fantastical setting of “Seventy-Two Letters,” he gets the right feel for the science, though its basis is radically different than our own.
In a pulpier vein, Jack McDevitt’s Archeologists in Spaaaaaace!!!! books (The Engines of God and sequels) do a pretty good job, mostly from the political side. The actual science presented is probably crap– more Indiana Jones than Martin Rundkvist, but the feel is pretty good.
Moving into the surreal, I’m rather fond of Jonathan Lethem’s As She Climbed Across the Table, but I’m not sure I’d call it a realistic depiction of anything…
Other obvious candidates would be Greg Egan (the two early novels I’ve read bugged me, though, so I haven’t read much of his stuff) and Kim Stanley Robinson (whose global wrming trilogy could apparently be subtitled “Thrilling tales of bureaucratic maneuvering!”). I feel like I must be missing some others, though.
So, what’s your favorite fictional work about science?
Lablit is a site more-or-less devoted to that very idea. They have a pretty good list of novels too.
I thought some of Gregory Benford’s stuff was focused on Science process. “Timescape” comes to mind. Also, there was a good mystery novel set in Hawaii at some lab with some kind of science fiction background that seemed to really be about the politics of doing science. It might have been written by Paul Preuss, but I am really only guessing – it did stick in my mind.
In most of the novels about science that I have read though, the more realistic they try to be the more they are about lab or office politics and the less about actual work.
As obscure as anything else from a vanity press, but for field biology Mojave Fringe gets it all dead-on.
Well, The Search by C. P. Snow is a classic one; and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams is wonderful about the scientific imagination.
Several of the novels of Richard Powers feature scientists as characters, and I think he does a good job of presenting their lives. Galatea 1.2 and The Gold Bug Variations come to mind…
So, what’s your favorite fictional work about science?
I did enjoy Greg Benford’s Timescape years ago. But I’m hoping the one I’m writing will become my favorite (if it ever gets published)….
Written works of fiction? I say what we need is Scrubs style TV show about grad students and/or post-docs. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t exactly show the science process and plays more at the anti-social stereotypes about scientists. Bones is pretty good but that falls into the CSI realm of applied science. Basic research scientists need be humanized as well.
A surprisingly good description of a scientist in action can be found in China Meiville’s Perdido Street Station. True, the science of crisis energy is really magic, but Isaac goes about it in such a methodical/haphazard way that it feels just like real science.
My wife, a physician’s assistant, can’t bear to watch medical shows on TV. I told her once “I’m sure if they ever had a show about scientists, I wouldn’t be able to watch it either.”
She said “I hate to break it to you, Matt, but there will never be a show about scientists.”
I had high hopes for Herman Wouk’s “A Hole in Texas” (about the search for the Higgs and the fall of the SSC) but I found it so dull that I never even finished it.
Carl Djerassi (inventor of the Pill) has some good ones, including Cantor’s Dilemma and The Bourbaki Gambit. Thought-provoking, if you can get past the pretentiousness that occasionally leaks in.
The absolute classic has to be Hal Clement’s “A Mission of Gravity”, closely seconded by his other novels. James P. Hogan writes pretty hard SF mostly. Greg Bear of course, and Gregory Benford.
I like Connie Willis’ Passage and Bellwether very much.
I second the Carl Djerassi note, with a warning that his tactic for explaining the science is always to have a prominent non-scientist character who exists pretty much specifically to ask basic questions from time to time. Overall, though, it’s pretty good stuff.
I still haven’t read Intuition either, I’m afraid, although my wife said it was a little slow-going. I still plan to give it a try sometime — maybe when I’m not working on my dissertation!
Do we count Rosemary Kirstein’s series? It’s not Big Science, but it’s all about the idea of the mindset that investigates the world.
How is Neal Stephenson not on this list yet? The Baroque cycle is an amazing fictional exploration of science in the time of Newton and Hook and the establishment of the Royal Academy.
Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon is perhaps more math oriented than science. But, like the author’s Baroque Cycle, is really more about the history of scientific thought. (but what do *I* know? I was a medieval studies major back in the day, and never made it past trig and chem)
I love Kirstein’s Steerswoman series, and thought of it immediately, but didn’t suggest it because it’s about the scientific method, yes, but as practiced by pre-industrial thinkers, which seemed not quite what Chad was after.
There is a novel by Janna Levin, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines, about Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. I haven’t read, so I don’t know how much it contains about science being done — but it’s likely to be a good book anyway, and since the author is a scientist she knows the world.
The novel Dark Matter by Rodman Philbrick gets the scientists right — I might have recommended that before.
Of course my favourites are Kim Stanley Robinson’s books (all of them!).
It surprises me that no one has mentioned Andrea Barrett yet. She has two short story collections, Servants of the Map and Ship Fever, in which just about every story is about science or scientists in some way. In addition they are well-characterized, wonderfully written, and just basically good literature, which (my apologies to Djerassi) I am afraid I can’t say about Carlo Djerassi’s work.
On the sfnal side, I am extraordinarily fond of Cherryh’s Cyteen as a novel about practicing scientists.
Kagan’s Mirabile is also quite fun and pro-scientific thought.