How do scientists work? Do they spend a lot of their time holed up in big buildings with lots of fancy equipment, work in large teams or mostly alone, with rumpled air and just a blackboard and lump of chalk trying to figure out the laws of physics? What sort of social lives do they lead and how do they handle the political, business and personal demands that come their way? How do they deal with hostility from jealous colleagues, skeptical review boards and college principals worried about expanding their budgets?
If you ever wanted to know some of the answers to these questions as well as have a rattling good yarn told, then this book, an old classic by Gregory Benford, fits the bill. I have been engrossed in it for the last few days and I won’t spoil for any would-be readers by giving the ending or basic plot away. Let’s just say that this book actually gave me the feeling of actually working and living in a science lab, of hanging around scientists in the early 60s and later, in a sort of crumbling, environmentally troubled 1990s. Strongly recommended.
I read that book a few years back and it was indeed an excellent read, so when I got a craving for some good hard SF recently I chose another Benford book, Beyond Infinity. It’s set in the far future, and there’s a lot about all the various kinds of modified human that the transhumanist folks here would enjoy.
I’m a big Vernor Vinge fan. He’s a Professor of Computer Science and a libertarian as well. His works are high quality and excellent entertainment.
Check out “A Fire Upon The Deep” and its later prequel “A Deepness In The Sky”. You can also get two other linked novels in a single volume “Across Realtime”, the first novel in the latter showing a high-tech libertarian underground overthrowing a military dictatorship.
_Timescape_ was good stuff. I especially liked the descriptions of La Jolla before it turned into bustling San Diego.
I was disappointed to find that this novel about scientists was actually of the Science Fiction genre. There seem to be very few novels about scientists, compared with the Arts and Humanities Campus novels that started (?) with Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim”, continued with David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury and others I can’t bring to mind.
Perhaps scientists don’t have time to write convincing fiction about what their life is like. Their activity is certainly basically less futile than that of the Arts &c – as with Amis’s “pseudo-solutions to non-problems”.
C.P. Snow wrote “The Search”, “The New Men” and “The Affair”, but without, so to speak, giving the impression of the scientist at work. The best novel I can think of is William Cooper’s “The Struggles of Albert Woods”, set in pre-war Oxford. Watson’s “The Double Helix”, with its sometimes appalling frankness, is as good at conveying the excitement of research as any novel could achieve – but it’s strictly non-fiction.
Suggestions anyone?
Benford’s ‘Cosm’ and ‘Eater’ are also well worth reading
Robert E Hale
Findlay raises a good point.
Among scientists, the most prolific authors of novels appear to be physicians/surgeons. Why that is, I don’t know.
A physician who has written a lot of successful fiction about scientists/science fiction is Michael Crichton.
Don’t let the white coats fool you. Physicians and Surgeons are more like engineers than scientists. They started wearing the white coats to hide that fact.
Which is nothing against medical doctors, it’s just what it is.