SciTalk

PGT · Jul 18, 2005

http://scitalk.org.uk/index.php?id=15

Thought some people might be interested in this, I've never used it though.

Science fusion

Ann Lackie on a new project that links scientists with fiction writers

Monday July 18, 2005

What is reality? Creative artists deal in artificial reality; reality can be anything they choose and the fiction writer's reality can become reality for readers too. Creative scientists search for real realities, which may be more complex and intricate than any mental construct.

Some notable fiction-writers - novelists like Clare George and Ian McEwan, playwrights Michael Frayn and Caryl Churchill, and poet Jo Shapcott, for example - have made the connection. But many others haven't.

This is partly because the uninitiated (and science does require initiation rites, from GCSEs at the most basic level to doctorates gained by research) see that all vaguely "scientific" topics are hidden beneath clouds of jargon and acronyms. They may also believe that they themselves will be embarrassed by their ignorance and incomprehension when they ask for explanations. But, as with all puzzles, whether or not the solution is made clear usually depends on who asks - and who answers.

Creativity, like problem solving, derives from asking questions and then seeking answers in surprising places: this is equally true for writers, artists and scientists. The images of science in all their intricacy, elegance and beauty - ranging from simple equations and graphic plots, traces of atoms, to pictures of molecules or whole ecosystems - offer stepping-stones for the imagination, either in their own right or when overlaid by the shifting frameworks of political and social context.

But science has so much else to offer the fiction writer in terms of inspiration. It offers explanations for how humans and - it should not be forgotten in our anthropocentric viewing of the world - how the rest of the animate and inanimate universe "works". It offers the ethical dilemmas that the applications of research raise - never as "black and white" in real life as they might seem from the debating platform and, in the end, focused on the intimate private drama of individual lives. And it also offers exploration of the effects of the technologies that influence the lives of everyone on the planet.

Science is all around us, but scientists are all around us, too. The young man in shorts by the cash machine, the young woman with the pushchair and grumpy toddler, the middle aged couple choosing shrubs, the father fighting with the canvas windbreak on the beach... and that wild-haired man with white socks and sandals, scrabbling in the heather on the moor? No, not him, he's the local novelist. For every man or woman who is the "public face" of science - on television, the radio or in the newspapers - there are probably 20 other scientists who are unknown, and yet whose work has been essential in the production of the latest headline-grabbing result.

There are technicians who look after the basic functioning of the lab and its equipment, the postgraduate students working all hours (or not) for their research doctorates, postdoctoral assistants on short-term contracts and perhaps with families to support, museum curators, technicians who care for the animals or plants: the support groups are large and diverse, and the people who do these jobs are just that - ordinary people, scientists, all ages, all stages, with the same range of ordinariness or eccentricity as a group of non-scientists, even writers. They, as well as the scientific elite, provide a huge, untapped resource of characters and lifestyles for writers, and they can also offer insights into every scientific discipline and the way scientists work.

Fiction writers - novelists, poets, playwrights - can now take advantage of this through SciTalk, a website and database of scientists who are keen to meet with writers and show them where they work and how. The SciTalk project, funded and supported by Nesta, has been set up by myself, a scientist who is also the novelist Ann Lingard, and Peter Normington, a physicist and information scientist.

SciTalk is unusual because it promotes the idea of face-to-face meetings between scientist and writer - a conversation, an exchange of ideas, questions, and answers. A writer can browse the subjects on the SciTalk database and make contact with a scientist and, since the scientists who register on SciTalk are self-selected enthusiasts and communicators, the meetings promise to be entertaining as well as helpful. Visiting writers will have the chance to see the labs, workplaces and images, and will discover more about the research and the jargon - all the important information that helps a writer understand and create a "sense of place".

As the novelist Philip Pullman says: "I'm all for writers and scientists talking to one another ... anything that helps put us all in touch with one another is excellent." And Sir John Sulston, former director of the Sanger Institute, notes that SciTalk "will give scientists an insight into both the curiosity and the concerns of non-scientists about work in the laboratory. It will be particularly valuable if it can open doors to scientists who are normally hidden from view."

· Ann Lackie is a writer and novelist. Publishing under the name of Ann Lingard, she threads her science background into her work. Her latest novel is called Seaside Pleasures.
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PGT · Jul 18, 2005

I would swear I put this in the Workshop... for rather obvious reasons, if it was moved could it be moved back, if it wasn't there in the first place could it go there?

Borgs · Jul 18, 2005

PGT · Jul 18, 2005

garamet · Jul 18, 2005

Interesting. I'll have to look into this. I've personally been lucky, in that I have a pet physicist to run things by. Got a fan letter for Strangers from the Sky, from a guy who, among other things, is an expert on comets, and responsible for determining what goes on the pallets for the shuttle flights, saying he loved it but there was a rather egregious error regarding radio waves on page-whatever.

He was right, of course, and I can be blamed for being an English major, but my editor should have picked up on it. I wrote back to the physicist and asked if he'd like to be my unpaid advisor. He volunteered, and any time I get myself into a tangle, he helps me out.

But a chance for writers and scientists to interact on this large a scale is exciting.

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SciTalk

PGT Fuck the fuck off

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garamet "The whole world is watching."

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SciTalk

PGT Fuck the fuck off

PGT Fuck the fuck off

Borgs Guest

PGT Fuck the fuck off

garamet "The whole world is watching."

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