{"id":706,"date":"2009-03-23T21:56:35","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T21:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2009\/03\/23\/in_which_i_am_given_weird_treasures\/"},"modified":"2009-03-23T21:56:35","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T21:56:35","slug":"in_which_i_am_given_weird_treasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2009\/03\/23\/in_which_i_am_given_weird_treasures\/","title":{"rendered":"In which I am given weird treasures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Novels about scientists going about their profession are rare, and over the past five years I’ve been busy trying to find them all, both hard-core lab lit (where what scientists do is central to the plot and the science isn’t watered down to homeopathic quantities) as well as ‘lab lit lite’ (where a scientist is a central character but readers are not shown a great deal of what they do \u2013 something a step above Ross from Friends<\/em> but nothing too obtrusive). We are also interested in books marketed as science fiction that have exceptionally realistic and central scientist characters, and of course plays, films and TV dramas or series. <\/p>\n

\nWe’ve been keeping a curated list over at LabLit<\/a> and at the moment, there are only about a hundred books on it. I assembled half of this list almost single-handedly after months of trawling through bookshops, Amazon and Google \u2013 you can read an account of my adventures in doing this here<\/a>. After LabLit.com took off, the rest of the books on the list were the result of suggestions sent to the editorial inbox from our readership all over the world. <\/p>\n

\nAlthough the SF section of the list is almost certainly not comprehensive (because our readers tend to focus more on mainstream fiction when they nominate \u2013 please feel free to rectify this deficiency), I am starting to feel that the non-SF novel section has reached equilibrium. It’s been months since anyone has nominated anything new, except for foreign language examples (which my readers are still sorting through). And this is not just because interest in nominations has waned \u2013 I think Ian McEwan’s Saturday<\/em> has been suggested about forty times. (Great book, but the protagonist is a neurosurgeon, not a scientist. One day if I ever have the time and energy, I’d love to add a new section to the List that highlights books with interesting science in them, even if they don’t contain scientists.)<\/p>\n

\nNevertheless, there have still been surprises. The most interesting suggestions recently have come from the older generation at the institute where I work, who have got wind of my quest and have noticed things on their bookshelves gathering dust. I heard about Trouble with Lichen<\/a> this way, when one of the lab heads came round one afternoon with a 1969 paperback edition, its torn cover taped up and its brittle pages almost orange with age.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nClassic SF<\/strong> Author of<\/em> Day of the Triffids dabbles with feminism and biochemistry<\/em><\/p>\n

\nJust the other day, another lab head brought me the most amazing specimen: a first edition of a novel I’d never heard of called Gloryhits<\/a> by the respected scientists Mark Noble<\/a> and Bob Stickgold<\/a>. The hardback was signed by Noble, who apparently worked here back in the Seventies when the book was published. (I didn’t even need to look at the copyright to work out the decade: just check out the glorious hair on the woman scientist on the cover!) <\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nRetro-chic<\/strong> Bioweapons are always a popular lab lit theme<\/p>\n

\nI haven’t started reading yet, but from flipping through it, it certainly looks like one of those rare examples of hard-core lab lit \u2013 most of the action takes place in labs and there is a lot of science being bandied about. From the sleeve blurb, we learn that the scientist protagonist couple conceive after an acid trip (those were the days, eh?) and then everything goes horribly wrong when it turns out the military is involved: “those with their fingers on the pulse of life have twisted DNA into a weapon of death and given one young couple less than nine months to stop an experiment that could destroy their world”. <\/p>\n

\nScientists meddling with things they were never meant to know and losing control of their experiments is one of the oldest memes in the book, but if it’s good, clean entertainment, I won’t quibble!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novels about scientists going about their profession are rare, and over the past five years I’ve been busy trying to find them all, both hard-core lab lit (where what scientists do is central to the plot and the science isn’t … 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-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","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=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}