As the Queen of Lab Lit, a literary subgenre whose defining characteristic includes not being science fiction, people are often surprised to discover that I do actually like SF.
But it’s true. I read little else when I was younger, and though my tastes have broadened considerably since, I still enjoy the occasional foray into the speculative. I think a skilled writer can say everything she wants within the constraints of reality, but it can also be a challenge for both reader and writer to view reality through an altered lens.
Last year I was approached by Michael Brotherton, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming and an SF author. He was putting together an anthology of SF written by scientists for Springer. The collection would employ a format used quite extensively by Comma Press, which is to pair fiction about science with a factual essay on the scientific topic covered.
I weighed in with “The Tree of Life”, a story about genetic engineering. The rest of the anthology ranges across the scientific disciplines, and I can’t wait to read all the other tales.
It’s already out on Kindle on Amazon UK, and the print version can be pre-ordered there and on Amazon US. There’s also a nice review in Nature Physics.
Go on, you know you want to!
