The subtitle is 'short stories from modern science' so I thought it would be like Tania Hershman's excellent collection of short stories The White Road, which takes science news as first seed of an idea for a story, but then provides a straightforward piece of fiction or science fiction. That works wonderfully well. But the approach that this book takes is much more directed to getting a scientific message across, and it suffers because of it.
What Litmus provides and this is why it has made it into this site is a series of short stories that are, in essence, historical fiction based on history of science. Each typically describes a key scientific moment, or someone being influenced by a key moment in scientific discovery. In theory this could have worked very well, but I found most of the stories stiff and not particularly interesting reads. Where they put information across, it seemed forced - and when they didn't, there didn't seem a lot of point in the story.
Then you would get the rather worthy essay, often unnecessarily deferential to the fiction it supported, which turned the whole thing into something that seemed like a school exercise rather than either a collection of good short stories or useful popular science. There were some good stories - I'd pick out Tania Hershman's, inspired by the glowing jellyfish gene.
There were some mediocre stories, and some that seemed trivially pretentious Stella Duffy's piece, for example. Just to take one specific example in a bit more detail, there is a story set by Michael Jecks called Special Theory. Set in Bern, where Einstein worked in the Swiss patent office, it is an interaction between an unhappy British physicist, who is an Einstein fanboy, and a waitress. It sort of works as a story, though it's a bit plonking in its conclusion. But I wasn't comfortable with the historical context several of the 'facts' about Einstein are dubious nor, for that matter, that a physics professor would regard Einstein like a teenager looks to a pop star.
The professor would know very well that Einstein's contribution in special relativity was not the unique, light bulb moment he seems to suggest, and for that matter that Einstein was only one contributor to the development of the theory, not the sole, solitary genius behind it. Without doubt the most important contributor - but not working in isolation. Overall, then, yet another attempt to marry fiction and popular science that has ended up on the rocks of incompatibility.
A brave attempt - and I do still believe this ought to be possible. But it is clearly very difficult to do well. Review originally published on www. Mar 07, Jeanette Greaves rated it really liked it. The scientific process is based on the sharing of ideas and information. Behind all discoveries lie a multitude of stories.
The human need for a narrative, for a hero, encourages us to ignore the reality of science in favour of the 'Eureka' moment. We want a name, a date, on which we can hang the story.
the short review: Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science
The creators of Litmus acknowledge this by giving us the stories, by telling us about individual scientists, illuminating in a fictionalised form the discovery or invention they are known for. Th The scientific process is based on the sharing of ideas and information. This book is no paean to the greats, however. We find in this anthology tales of scientists hitherto relegated to the shadows of history, and find ourselves engrossed in stories that shed new light on familiar figures. Each tale is accompanied by an individual afterword, explaining the science and giving historical context.
These afterwords are fascinating in their own right; articulate, and knowledgeable of the literary form. Twinned with their sister stories, they make a satisfying whole. Litmus is all about the broad sweep, taking in almost five hundred years of science, and covering the start of everything to the end of consciousness. It is an anthology that is best dipped into, rather than gulped straight down. Every tale deserves to be savoured before the next one is tasted.
I loved this story, not just because it is set close to home, or because it reminds me that greatness can happen anywhere, but because Bryce illustrates so well the desperate passion of scientific endeavour, the need to gather information and knowledge, the need to test the hypothesis. Prudence, by Emma Unsworth, is a story about how some of the greatest breakthroughs are achieved when thinking outside the box.
The story of the periodic table, one of the most beautiful documents created, is a long and fascinating one, at the heart of it is a man named Mendeleev and a moment of revelation. We return to the elements, guided by Zoe Lambert's Crystal Night. In the decades since Mendeleev set the challenge of absence, the game had moved on, and the new goal was the transuranic elements. Lise Meitner's work led to a discovery that changed the war and changed the world.
Science is a whole. Mathematics, biology, astronomy, physics and chemistry are increasingly artificial divisions and the stories in Litmus range across the entire field, celebrating the multidisciplinary approach.
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Some stories fade from memory. Edison is famed for inventing the electric light bulb, but at the same period in time, a Yorkshire industrialist came up with the same idea. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity shapes our understanding of the universe, and in 'The Special Theory' Michael Jecks obliquely tells the tale of how Einstein's great revelation came about. It's sister story, Stella Duffy's 'Everything is Moving, Everything is Joined' is an almost poetic look at the development of the idea of space time.
Litmus: Short Stories from Modern Science
From Osamu Shimomura's dream and the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein in Hershman's beautifully measured story, We're All Made of Protein But Some of Us Glow More Than Others to the brilliantly cinematic The Pitch, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, where eighteenth century astronomer Jeremiah Horrox worships the perfection of the universe he measures before dying tragically young, there is no talking-down to us non-scientists. We are obliged to engage with scientific theories as well as with the often troubled, struggling personalities behind them.
This is the real stuff, but often so cleverly and intelligently presented that almost anyone can understand how the narrative of theory and discovery impinges on the narrative of everyday life; though I have yet to resolve, even after long discussion with my mathematician partner, a residual problem with Minkovski's theory of the fourth dimension in space-time and its relevance to part of Einstein's Special Theory.
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More accessible was Michael Jecks's The Special Theory, with its delightful characters; the sympathetic waitress and the bereaved and dishevelled scientist who comes to Switzerland visit the spot which inspired the similarly bereaved Einstein, before taking himself off to an assisted suicide clinic. I loved the atmosphere created by Sarah Hall in That is the Day, set in modern AIDS-ridden sub-Saharan Africa and focused on an antiretroviral therapy centre for sufferers, most of whom trek many miles through the bush for testing and treatment.
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For many, including babies, death will even now be the only possible outcome. Equally delightful is Alison MacLeod's warmly personal story of the mathematical model of the heart cell in The Heart of Denis Noble, with a postscript by the heart specialist himself.
Adam Marek's In Search of Silence is a masterly and entertaining insight into the work of a teenager in the 's who heard what turned out to be cosmic microwaves in his head. So crystal clear in its scientific detail and the very human story of two young men, Nobel laureates Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, whose work began in Wilson's bedroom, Marek's story stands out for its literary as well as for its scientific merit. Tim O'Brien's explanation of their work on light waves from the time of the Big Bang is eminently readable, too. Click here to see more Tap here to see more Tap here to see more.
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