{"id":2575,"date":"2008-05-07T10:46:47","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T10:46:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/07\/novels-of-science\/"},"modified":"2008-05-07T10:46:47","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T10:46:47","slug":"novels-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/07\/novels-of-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Novels of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in Scientific American<\/cite>, Mark Alpert argues that we need more novels about science<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/cite> (which I still haven’t read…), and also an older book by Updike. What else is out there, though?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Please note, I’m not talking about stories in which the scientific facts<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

The best novel I can think of for getting the feel of Big Science right is a book called Radiance<\/cite> by Carter Scholz<\/a>, about people working on Star Wars projects in a DoD lab. The end of the book was ultimately pretty depressing, though.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In a pulpier vein, Jack McDevitt’s Archeologists in Spaaaaaace!!!! books (The Engines of God<\/cite><\/a> 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<\/a>, but the feel is pretty good.<\/p>\n

Moving into the surreal, I’m rather fond of Jonathan Lethem’s As She Climbed Across the Table<\/cite>, but I’m not sure I’d call it a realistic depiction of anything…<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So, what’s your favorite fictional work about science?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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… Continue reading Novels of Science<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18,37,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","category-books","category-pop_culture","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}