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 – something a step above Ross from Friends 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.
We’ve been keeping a curated list over at LabLit 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 – you can read an account of my adventures in doing this here. 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.
Although the SF section of the list is almost certainly not comprehensive (because our readers tend to focus more on mainstream fiction when they nominate – 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 – I think Ian McEwan’s Saturday 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.)
Nevertheless, 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 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.
Classic SF Author of Day of the Triffids dabbles with feminism and biochemistry
Just 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 by the respected scientists Mark Noble and Bob Stickgold. 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!)
Retro-chic Bioweapons are always a popular lab lit theme
I haven’t started reading yet, but from flipping through it, it certainly looks like one of those rare examples of hard-core lab lit – 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”.
Scientists 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!
Great stuff! I tried reading the Trouble with Lichen years ago, having enjoyed the Chrysalids and Day of the Triffids, but I think I was too young. I’ll have to try again some time, having loved everything else by John Wyndham.
Come to think of it, I think the main character in Triffids was a plant research scientist who worked on the plants when they were first discovered. That could be Lab Lit Lite, perhaps.
I’ve never read Triffids, but giggled over the film for the first time last year. I know they were meant to be scary, but I couldn’t keep a straight face.
Yeah, I know, pretty hokey!
I keep thinking how great some of the old films and books would be if made into films with today’s technology. Triffids and The Kraken Wakes would both be awesome.
It’s not just the technology: it’s the painfully cheesy, melodramatic dialogue that kills most movies made before the mid-Eighties, for me. Oh, and the fake British accent that a lot of Hollywood stars felt they had to put on the be convincing.
Oh, I like the cheesiness. I’m a huuuuge fan of “so bad it’s good” films, especially in the sci-fi / B movie genre.
Some older films are still actually good though. I was watching Jaws a couple of weeks ago, and if you ignore the awful rubbery shark model, it still stands up. And I love all the old Hitchcock films. And the original War of the Worlds film was far superior to that Tom Cruise effort.
That Gloryhits novel looks too entertaining to pass up; I’m going to have to hunt down a used copy. What is up with the lab equipment on the cover, anyway??
John Wyndham is the win. My dad has a load of his stuff, not to mention E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith… the hero of the Skylark series is a scientist, by the way (although he loses to the evil scientist, DuQuesne, in the end).
Cath, Hitchcock is one of my big exceptions to the old-films-have-crappy=OTT-dialogue rules. Too bad he didn’t do SF — although ‘The Birds’ is pretty close.
Whatever that setup is on the cover of Gloryhits, I want one. Anything that can make an enormous flying snake is A-OK by me.
I would if they didn’t have the correct negative control in place. If you’re going to try and create a baby capable of destroying the world, then at least get your experimental design right. Without the correct controls, it just becomes an anecdote. Not even Nature would be interested in publishing it.
Well, Bob, we should reserve judgment ‘til we read the book. Maybe it’s all in the supplementary data!
Kristi – there are a few copies for sale on Amazon.co.uk. Just click the link I provided. Same cover as well, if you’re into the whole snake vibe. I love that big glass thingamabob — what’s it called, a retort?
I read all of John Wyndham when about 12 and loved them (probably that same edition of Trouble with Lichen!). They all have realatively serious, if lightweight in terms of details, scientific themes. The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes address reproductive technologies and oceanographic research, respectively. I agree that The Day of the Triffids is a much more solid book than the film version (from distant memory I recall quite a bit about the theory of how the plant mobility evolved as well as the flagellar aspects).
Have you got Jenny Davidson’s Heredity on your list?
You mention Saturday in your post, but A Child in Time is quite a scientific book of McEwan’s (and one I enjoyed a lot) – looks at various aspects of physics and the nature of time. Probably on your list already. (Endless or Enduring Love (I always forget the E word) is about a science writer but not about science, so I would not suggest that one for inclusion.)
I was Wyndham lover at about the same age as Maxine – wonderful stuff. I always liked Midwich Cuckoos best (the original film of that isn’t too bad) as well as a book of short stories, with a name that escapes me, but included one about a tube train going to hell.
Jenny – I would have thought another classic book that’s worth considering as lab lit (assuming you count a radio telescope as a lab) is Fred Hoyle’s A for Andromeda, which I recently re-read for the first time since being a teenager. There’s a lot about the politics of working in science – although, of course, it does have an SF theme, but then so does Lichen.
Agreed, Brian. The only Wyndham I remember disliking was (a late one?) Chocky.
The Black Cloud was a good Hoyle book (written by father and son). Science-heavy science fiction I think.
Fairly soon after I joined Nature, Hoyle (snr) wrote a non-SF novel about a scientist. All I remember about it is a scene where the main character (a thinly disguised Hoyle) walks into the editorial offices of Nature to show the Editor a manuscript – the Editor is so impressed that he publishes it immediately without peer-review.
But as Jenny writes, these are all old books (similarly, Carl Djerassi’s Cantor’s Dilemma and the even older Arrowsmith). We need the “post-Intuition” science in literature canon!
The Post-Intuition corpus is only a handful of books at the moment, but I’m quite keen to get the backfiles too. Sounds like I need to track down that Hoyle Sr novel — and idea what his first name is/was?
Brian, thanks for the tip. Someone working with a radio telescope definitely qualifies as a lab lit scientist. They don’t have to be in a lab – they can be in the field or wherever it is they do their work. Maxine, I’ve never heard of Heredity – how exciting to have another lead to chase down. Keep the suggestions coming, folks.
It seems odd to me, but I couldn’t find Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain in the list, even though it takes place almost entirely in a high-security virology lab. It has more hardcore science stuff than Jurassic Park, if you ask me.
Also, since you’re not limiting yourself to lab scientists, I’ve recently read Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and I think that it may be topical too, since one of the main characters is a young cetologist and the plot deals largely with a field study of the Irrawaddy dolphin. The Calcutta Chromosome, by the same author, may also be of interest, though the sci-fi elements there are more prominent.
Steinbeck’s Cannery Row is on the list, but not The Log of the Sea of Cortez – I think that might fit the bill as well?
Christian, thanks. To be honest, I thought Andromeda Strain was on the List in the SF section – it may have got inadvertently pruned during our last major edit. (Although most parts of LabLit are database-driven, I’m still doing the List by hand.) Thanks for the reminder. And I’ll look for those other things too. I like dolphins, so the Ghosh novel sounds great.
except that would be the log from…
Although a lot of very strange and diverse things happen in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, much of the plot (such as it is) revolves around psychological experimentation at the White Visitation. Psychoactive chemicals, operant conditioning of an octopus named Grigori, a paranoid Pavlovian Nobel-aspiring researcher named Ned Pointsman, the human subject Slothrop, etc. There’s also an individual who can change his pigmentation, like a cuttlefish.
It’s one of my all-time favorite novels, so I’m biased.
Kristi, there was some talk last time in the pub post-mortem of doing Gravity’s Rainbow for an upcoming Fiction Lab, but I’ve not read it yet. Do you think it would be suitable for a book group? We’ve been joking around that we need to get more highbrow.
Allow plenty of time for people to finish that one! It’s often very funny, but not exactly an easy read (or, in the words of the Pulitzer Prize board members, “unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene”).
On the other hand, it’s difficult to think of another example of post-modern lab lit.
Ha ha! That’s like the opposite of damning with faint praise: praising with strong damnation! I love it.
Jenny, I’m not sure whether Gravity’s Rainbow is suitable for a book group – as Cristian points out, it’s not an easy read, and it’s long. It’s extremely funny (and often disturbing), and stuffed with obscure cultural, historical, and scientific references, as well as a lot of clever word play. However, I don’t think I’ve ever managed to convince anyone to read it for the first time; I’ve always discussed it with friends who had read it previously at university or wherever. One lawyer friend was convinced that all scientists are paranoid, because the ones in Gravity’s Rainbow certainly have that characteristic.
I’d say a lot of scientists are paranoid – comes with the job description.
Thanks for that — I’ll see what everyone thinks about doing it.
On my snapshot page I keep reading the title of this post as “In which I am a weird treasure”. I guess my reading skills are not up to par for Fiction Lab any time soon (apart from being geographically challenged).
I see that Greg Bear’s Blood Work is on the list, but not Darwin’s Radio. The latter has a female protagonist who researches endogenous retroviruses, but it probably falls into the “crossover” category. The sequel, Darwin’s Children, has less hard science in it. Both are definitely worth a read (but then maybe I’m biased).
I would mention Michael Crichton’s Next, but it’s rubbish.
Steffi, I love The Log from the Sea of Cortez, but it’s non-fiction.
Eva, I first read it as “in which I am given weird trousers”, so you’re doing better than me.
Jennifer
This is a great project. Thanks for pulling this together so beautifully.
I dont see Kim Stanley Robinson on your book list. is trilogy 40 degree below was the best depiction of women in science that I have ever seen.
For films, What about GATACA?
Cath, I think that’s debatable – this is from the wikipedia link:
Although written as if it were the journal kept by Steinbeck during the voyage, the book is to some extent a work of fiction: the journals are not Steinbeck’s, and his wife, who had accompanied him on the trip, is not mentioned […]. Since returning home is a theme throughout the narrative, the inclusion of his wife, a symbol of home, would have dissipated the effect. Steinbeck and Ricketts are never mentioned by name but are amalgamated into the first person “we” who narrate the log.
The way it’s written, I think it goes much further than a ‘travel account’.
One aspect of Gravity’s Rainbow that does make it a good candidate for book groups is that each reader will catch different jokes and references. I first read Gravity’s Rainbow in an undergraduate course on 20th century fiction; I think we spent three weeks on that particular book. Since it was only a 200-level literature course, there were students from many other departments: the mathematicians would catch different references from the biologists, from the psychologists, from the engineers, from the historians, etc.
Post-modernism references led to one of the best nicknames I’ve ever seen on a messageboard (or anywhere, for that matter) – there was one young participant who was studying post-modern theory, art, and literature at university, and referred to it repeatedly. He was dubbed “Thoroughly Post-modern L- – - -” by one of the other messageboard participants.
Would Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein be acceptable, or is this too far into the realm of SF/Fantasy?
Pamela: Kim Stanley Robinson is all over the List, including the book you mentioned. Are you on the right page?
I don’t see GATTACA as being a film primarily about scientists plying their trade, so I wouldn’t call it LabLit. I did really enjoy it, though.
Richard, Frankenstein is not a realistic enough depiction of the scientific profession, in my opinion, to be lab lit.
Cath – you are right that the other Greg Bear books should probably be on there. Sometimes we get a bit lazy documenting series/sequels. Naughty, must do better.
Re Steinbeck — there are several books on the List that blur fact and fiction, including ‘A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines’ and ‘Periodic Table’. I have mixed feelings about including them but on balance feel it’s better to be comprehensive and a bit loose, since the list is so sadly short as it is.
Interesting about Cortez – thanks, Steffi! It’s a great book regardless of its classification.
The more you describe Gravity’s Rainbow the more I want to read it. If it’s available as an eBook for my Sony Reader, I’m sold.
If it helps, that’s how I read it first time too. I was a bit disappointed by what followed.
I checked the list, and saw that The Leaky Establishment was on there. It’s a great book, and the icing on the cake is this review:
Ha ha ha. It is sort of a weird feeling setting your novel in a thinly disguised place. I still feel a bit uneasy about having done it myself, but in my case the portrayal was largely positive, though around the launch I kept half-expecting to get an irate call from the PR department of the institute in question.
By the way, the weirdest trousers I ever owned were a lovely pair of shiny 100% silk sky-blue flares I bought in Amsterdam. I should see if I can dig out any pictures.
@Bob:
Wouldn’t that be happening thousands of times/day when non-destroying babies are born?
@Maxine: Chocky
just had gut wrenching, blurring flashbacks to 80s kids TV…and never finishing the story…
Here’s one LabLit book you don’t seem to have on the list – Here, Eyeball This by David Heddle. I haven’t read it, but I’ve interacted with the author online (he used to be an IDer, but eventually saw the light and called them on it on a private mailing list).
The synopsis doesn’t sound terribly lablitty – it’s about students, no?
That’s a fantastic cover, the Wyndham — I’ve got an old friend named Lichen, and somehow there’s always a miasma of trouble around her (it started with the goats, but the business with being an amateur stuntie in NZ didn’t help). Will have to send her a copy.
Gravity’s Rainbow is one of my all-time favorites too, not least for the scene with the disgusting English candy. But for a book club you might want to take it a section at a time, Ulysses-style, otherwise people won’t come close to finishing it. Someone’s written a disappointingly literal glossary to go with it, explains many references.
“it started with the goats, but the business with being an amateur stuntie in NZ didn’t help”
Sounds like a novel waiting to be written!