{"id":671,"date":"2008-09-22T22:14:55","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T22:14:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/09\/22\/in_which_the_world_gets_a_look_in\/"},"modified":"2008-09-22T22:14:55","modified_gmt":"2008-09-22T22:14:55","slug":"in_which_the_world_gets_a_look_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/09\/22\/in_which_the_world_gets_a_look_in\/","title":{"rendered":"In which the world gets a look-in"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re all aflutter here at Mind The Gap: TV cameras are coming to Fiction Lab! Yes, our humble scientific novel salon will be invaded next month by a full crew from Brook Lapping, a London production company interested in making a pilot programme of live footage of the debate, followed by me interviewing the author (more Lawson than Paxman, I hope; I’m a big softie, really). If the pilot gets the thumbs-up from the powers-that-be, it will become part of a regular, diverse series of scientific programming for the Newton Project<\/a>, a web-based based science channel run jointly by Brook Lapping, the RI and the London Science Museum.<\/p>\n

\nOf course there had been talk, and some demand, for web-streaming the Fiction Lab, but I’ll be honest with you \u2013 I’m a bit nervous about the ‘observer problem’. How will a book club, which is essentially a cozy, intimate affair, cope with the bright white lights and boomed mics of destiny trained upon it? One of the Brook Lapping guys, a nice chap called Jim who’s been gamely coming along and participating for months, assured me that after the first few minutes, people get used to the cameras and become as vociferous as ever. Some of our number, indeed, need no excuse to make a spectacle of themselves (you know who are…Stephen and Philip). After last month’s session demolishing Jonathan Lethem’s minimum opus, I took a straw poll amongst the regulars during the bar decompression stage, and even the shyest, bookish-ist types seemed game. I suppose the only problem is if word gets round (oops) and a hundred people show up, eager for their fifteen minutes of fame. Well, I’ll bring my trusty cattle prod.<\/p>\n

\nDetails of this month’s choice can be found on the RI website<\/a>. The book is Measuring the World<\/em> by Daniel Kehlmann (Quercus, 2007), which was a rip-roaring bestseller in its native German under the title Die Vermessung der Welt<\/em>. A fictionalized account of an intense meeting between mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and natural scientist Alexander von Humbold in Berlin in 1828, this book is billed as “injecting musty history with shots of whimsy and irony” by Publisher’s Weekly.<\/p>\n

\nDo pick up a copy and join us on 6 October at 7 at the RI for another exciting installment; Kehlmann himself may very well show up on the night. I haven’t read the book yet and am still awaiting my copy, so I’ve cribbed this extract from Amazon<\/a> as a teaser. <\/p>\n

\nDon’t tell. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re all aflutter here at Mind The Gap: TV cameras are coming to Fiction Lab! Yes, our humble scientific novel salon will be invaded next month by a full crew from Brook Lapping, a London production company interested in making … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}