The Early Days of a Better Nation

Wednesday, September 30, 2009



The Laboratory of Dr Latour, and Other Stories



The Social Sessions 01: The Laboratory of Doctor Latour, and Other Stories

Date: Wednesday 14 Oct 2009 17:30 - 19:30

Guests: Andrew J. Wilson (Writers' Bloc), Professor Steve Yearley (ESRC Genomics Forum), Dr Emma Frow (ESRC Genomics Forum), Dr Chris French (Lecturer in Microbial Biotechnology, University of Edinburgh)

Host: Ken Macleod, Writer in Residence, Genomics Forum

Organised by: Genomics Forum in partnership with Writers' Bloc and Transreal Fiction

Venue: Boardroom, ESRC Genomics Forum, 3rd Floor, St John's Land, Holyrood Road, University of Edinburgh

The Event: Drinks from 5.30pm in the ESRC Genomics Forum will be followed by a discussion, led by host Ken MacLeod and his guests, exploring how science fiction has portrayed scientific work.

The reckless 'mad scientist' like Frankenstein or Dr Moreau seldom appears in modern science fiction - some of whose writers are scientists themselves.
But do any of these fictional portrayals match what social scientists have found when observing scientists in their natural habitat? And how do scientists feel about sociologists watching them, and about SF writers imagining them?

The Social Sessions are a carnival of discussions about science and literature taking place October 2009 - January 2010.

This event is FREE, but due to venue capacity please RSVP to reserve a place. Email: genomics.forum@ed.ac.uk Tel: 0131 651 4747

Further details here.

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009



' ... to re-forge the alloy that once made SF great.'


Late last year Geoff Ryman invited me to take part in an intriguing experiment: an anthology of science fiction short stories, each story written in consultation with an actual scientist and based on that scientist's current research. My own contribution was inspired Dr Richard Blake's work on the project known as the Virtual Physiological Human. My immediate vague notion of taking the usual SF approach to such humane, beneficial developments (how could this advance be grossly misused, and what are the military applications?) suddenly came into focus and got an opening line and a title when I heard my son (a journalist) say: 'I hate death knocks.'

Looking down the list of other contributors, and recalling the research areas I was too slow to grab (the Large Hadron Collider! Antarctica! the Moon! Nanotech armour!), I'm really looking forward to seeing the anthology, and I don't have long to wait: When It Changed: Science into Fiction is to be published and launched next month.

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Monday, September 28, 2009



The Trease Project

Farah Mendlesohn is blogging her research and reading on the influential writer of children's historical fiction, Geoffrey Trease. Who he was:
Geoffrey Trease published his first historical novel for children, Bows Against the Barons in 1934. His last novel was published in 1997, in the year he died. I think it can be plausibly argued that he created the modern version of the historical novel for children, that lasted for most of the twentieth century, and he certainly helped to create a market for the likes of Rosemary Sutcliffe, Hester Burton, Ronald Welch and Henry Treece and many others. But he didn't just do that. Trease was quite left wing. He never joined a party as far as I know, but he set out to write a new form of history for children, which didn't focus on great men and women, but on the you and me of history. His works are full of sly little digs at the traditions of Empire, the assumptions of Progress, and the questions people should ask when they read history.

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009



Let's talk about genes ...

This young man seems to have the mission of the Genomics forum well sussed. (Via.)

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Monday, September 21, 2009



Skiffy skeptics



I suppose every job has its taxi driver question, and for SF writers it's: 'Do you believe in all that, then?'

'Believe in all what?'

'You know - little green men.' (Or flying saucers, or whatever.)

The first time this happened my lengthy explanation was trumped by the driver saying, 'I gave that Erich von Daniken a lift once.'

I've heard it said that SF fans tend to be more sceptical of UFOs and paranormal claims generally than most people, but in my teens I certainly wasn't, so it's cheering to see tale of how a bit of outreach can change someone's mind.

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Sunday, September 20, 2009



Special weird things

Kim Stanley Robinson's claim that recent British SF is 'the best British literature of our time' and that 'three or four of the last 10 Booker prizes should have gone to science fiction novels the juries hadn't read' has received a received a prompt smack-down from John Mullan, Booker Prize judge and professor of English at University College London, who said that he
"was not aware of science fiction," arguing that science fiction has become a "self-enclosed world".

"When I was 18 it was a genre as accepted as other genres," he said, but now "it is in a special room in book shops, bought by a special kind of person who has special weird things they go to and meet each other."
(Via.)

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Friday, September 18, 2009



More plugs

I clean forgot to mention that I have a flash fiction in the current issue of New Scientist and that I'm guest judge for the Edinburgh University Science Magazine's 'Edinburgh of the future' short story competition, which is open to all.

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Wednesday, September 16, 2009



Plugs

I have a Book Club article on M. John Harrison's The Centauri Device in the current issue of SFX; a story reprinted in Starship Sofa Stories Vol 1; and a very kind mention by John Jarrold in an interview for Fantasy Books Review.

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Sunday, September 06, 2009



Well, that explains a lot

'It is not clear how the advancement of science tends towards the mental and moral improvement of the public.'

- The Charity Commission, 28 September 2006, cited in Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, Bantam Press, 2009

... on page 436, the last page of a very good book.

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Friday, September 04, 2009



Evolution is so last Ice Age ...

Human evolution in the advanced world has slowed down or stopped, Professor Steve Jones will argue in a public lecture to be held in the McEwan Hall on Tuesday 22 September at 6pm. Prof Jones is a most engaging speaker [as I've said before], and places for this free but ticketed event are likely to go fast, so get yours now.

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Tuesday, September 01, 2009



Last Night of the Book Festival



Well-organised as always, I completely failed to get a complimentary ticket to the Richard Dawkins event at the Book Festival. But I had a £20 note birthday present that I was determined to spend on a signed copy of The Greatest Show on Earth, so I went along last night on the off-chance. The returns queue was ten or so long at 5.30, which didn't look promising. The book wasn't in the bookshop, and in the signing tent I was told it wouldn't be on sale until just before Dawkins' event finished. I ducked into the Yurt (the Festival's canvas green room), grabbed a coffee, had a chat with Faith Brown and Christopher Brookmyre - both of whom urged me to try for a return - and joined the queue about 6.10, by which time the queue was nearly twice as long, but made up of different people than I'd seen earlier. Every minute or two a return came in and we moved forward by one. I got a ticket at 6.28 and dashed to the main tent, getting in a couple of minutes before the doors closed.

Chaired by Ruth Wishart, the event went well: Dawkins read from his book, had a conversation on stage with Ruth Wishart, then took questions from the crowd. I asked him whether he thought scientists of the Left were doomed to misunderstand him. He replied along the lines that he had sometimes been misunderstood as thinking that how the world is was how it ought to be, or that we should model society on Darwinian nature, which was quite the opposite of how he thought society should be. He'd always thought 'the anti-Darwinian party' would be a good slogan for a decent political party. This statement got a round of applause.

So I got to hand over my twenty pounds and get the book signed.

Yay!

(I'm about two-thirds of the way through, and it's vintage Dawkins - good solid stuff, with lots of new material.)

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