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What sparked your interest in science?There were scientists in several generationsof my family. My father was an electricalengineer. I grew up in the university town ofAmes, Iowa, which was the best place to growup in the history of the world, if you were a kidwith an interest in science. My friends’ parentshad PhDs or were studying for them. Respectfor science was implicit. I am drawn to ‘hard’sciences because I have tools for understand-ing them, and it is the culture I came from.

How did you become a writer?As a kid, I read a lot of science fiction andClassics Illustrated comics, and had a seriesof gifted English teachers — so it wasn’t acompletely alarming career choice. In collegeI took a mishmash of physics, geography andcomputer programming subjects that neveradded up to a marketable degree. I foundmyself working as a typist at the University ofIowa libraries, writing my third novel sittingon a milk crate with a fan, beer and a fancyrented typewriter. It was so hot that July thatthe typewriter’s plastic ribbon kept sticking toits internal parts. I figured out that it only gotstuck if the ribbon stood still for long enough,so I hammered the thing out. It was acceptedand editor Gary Fisketjon spent a year clean-ing up my “loose and baggy monster”. That

became my first published novel, The Big U(1984, Harper Perennial), a broad, science-fiction-inflected satire of college life.

How much background research do you do?I veer back and forth between trying to do theright thing and blind panic. After The Big U ,I thought I would write about physics. Theidea was that the huge explosion in Tunguska,Russia, in 1908, was caused by a primordialsingularity — a tiny black hole — popping inand out of Earth. I had a conceit that peoplefollowing it put the equivalent of a bungeecord around it and got pulled out into space.I spent years writing this thing — and it wasterrible. I was so scared that I had blown mychances of being a writer that I wrote another

book in 30 days. Thatturned out to be mysecond publishednovel, Zodiac (1988,Atlantic Monthly).

How does attendingscientific meetingsinform your writing?I go on the spur of themoment. It is good tobe in touch, to see whatpeople are working on.

literature and science. Journey to theCentre of the Earth (1864) is about scien-tific method and its misuses. ScientistsProfessor Lidenbrock and Axel enterEarth through an Icelandic crater and,after improbable adventures involvingmastodons and underground oceans, areejected through the Italian volcano Strom-

boli. Lidenbrock ignores data that disturbhis schema. Axel is a romantic who failsto examine observable facts. Yet the bookprobes scientific wonder: when Axel is lostand terrified in subterranean darkness, thereader experiences awe contemplating thecomplete absence of light.

The French-language genre advancedsignificantly with the uncompromis-ing scientific approach of J.-H. RosnyAîné — the pseudonym of the BelgianJoseph Henri Honoré Boex. In the 1910Death of the Earth , Rosny’s vision ofglobal environ mental crisis is prescient.

An imbalance created partly by humansturns Earth to desert. Targ, the last man,succumbs with Darwinian altruism. Real-izing that carbon-based life must perishso that the iron-based Ferromagneticscan inhabit the stricken planet, he invitesthem to take his blood. Rosny excised theanthropomorphic from science fiction.

The 1950s and 1960s saw an invasionof space-age Anglo-American sci-fi,quickly rejected by French critics. Itsmain portal was Fiction , launched in 1953as a French edition of the US Magazineof Fantasy and Science Fiction . From theoutset, its editors used it as the platformfor a new French sci-fi school relocatingspace expansionism to ‘inner space’ andexploring ‘mind travel’. In Gérard Klein’sThe Overlords of War or Kurt Steiner’sThe Scratched Record (both 1970), timetravel occurs in a vast mindscape gener-ated by huge computers.

In French neuroscientist Jean-PierreChangeux’s scientific treatise Neuronal Man (1983), consciousness is linked tobrain biology, breaking Descartes’ dual-ity. Yet mapping the mind in the brain isa work in progress. There remains plentyof scope for Gallic sci-fi to explore con-sciousness: the Cartesian ghost still lurksin the French vision of mind and matter. ■

Danièle Chatelain is professor ofFrench at the University of Redlands,California. George Slusser is professorof comparative literature and curatoremeritus of the Eaton Collection ofScience Fiction and Fantasy at theUniversity of California, Riverside. Theyco-published the critical editions andtranslations of Honoré de Balzac’sTheCentenarian and Three Science FictionNovellas by J.-H. Rosny Aîné.e-mail: daniele_slusser@redlands.edu

Q&ANeal StephensonThe sci-fi optimistBest-selling science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson’s works cover everything from cryptographyto Sumerian mythology. Ahead of next year’s novelSeveneves , he talks about his influences, thestagnation in material technologies, and Hieroglyph , the forthcoming science-fiction anthologythat he kick-started to stimulate the next generation of engineers.

HieroglyphEDITED BY ED FINNAND KATHRYN CRAMER

HarperCollins: 2014.

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The Human Age: The World Shaped By UsDiane Ackerman W. W. N ORTON (2014)The incisive yet optimistic science writer Diane Ackerman slicesinto the chaotic age of turbocharged technology and environmental

crisis that we call the Anthropocene. She zips from deep history tospeculative futures to contextualize snapshots of our vivid, freneticpresent. We meet an ocean-column farmer and an orang-utanwielding an iPad; consider cross-border wildlife corridors andinvasive species; wonder at the human microbiome and printeddrugs. As Ackerman deciphers our grave new world, one messagereverberates — that we “still and forever remain a part of nature”.

A Buzz in the MeadowDave Goulson J ONATHAN C APE (2014)In 2003, leading bee researcher Dave Goulson bought a run-downfarm in France. His aim was to provide a haven for the insects hehas devoted his life to studying, notably the bumblebee. He writesbeautifully of the panoply of creatures — from deathwatch beetlesto dragonflies — that often pass unnoticed under our noses. But forall its easy charm, Goulson’s account is permeated with awarenessthat biodiversity is now often confined to managed sanctuaries. Whatbegins as a scientific rural idyll becomes a journey into the imperilledterritory of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where,and Why It HappensBenedict Carey R ANDOM H OUSE (2014)Learn how to learn, enjoins science journalist Benedict Carey in thistour of past and present research on the process. Hard graft is justpart of the package; what is key, Carey argues, is exploiting the brain’squirks. He lays bare the biology, cognitive science and “ways toco-opt the subconscious mind” that ensure mental labour becomesingrained. Carey is an adroit guide to techniques for comprehensionand retention, whether exploring the value of forgetting, distractionand interruption, or examining the power of studying in varied venues.

Virtually Human: The Promise — and the Peril — of DigitalImmortalityMartine Rothblatt S T M ARTIN ’S P RESS (2014)In this explication of cutting-edge artificial intelligence, technologistMartine Rothblatt argues that software brains will “express thecomplexities of the human psyche, sentience, and soul” surprisinglysoon. Aeroplanes, she notes, lack the complexity of birds but still fly;similarly, cyber-doppelgängers or “mindclones” will emerge whensymbol-association software is combined with personal informationgathered on social media (“mindfiles”). Rothblatt lays out a seriousanalysis of the ethical and scientific implications.

The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Faceof Natural CrisisRuth DeFries B ASIC B OOKS (2014)Vastly boosted agricultural production and cheaper food have driventoday’s human boom — the “big ratchet”, or explosion in populationover the past six decades — argues environmental geographer RuthDeFries. Now, we are embarking on the vast experiment of feedingtoday’s 7-billion-plus people, with no sure outcome. DeFries unpicksthe historical patterns to parse the uneasy equation of people and

food — our most powerful link with nature. Barbara Kiser

I can also get a sense of personalities andideas — although I try to avoid focusingon specific living people in my books.

What is Hieroglyph ?It was born from a friendly argument withMichael Crow, president of Arizona StateUniversity in Tempe. I was complaining

that progress in material technology haspetered out. We have taken the creativitythat went into designing rockets and chan-nelled it into information technology (IT).A lot of bright people are dedicating theirlives to inconsequential things: writingapps and so on. There is a lack of grandeur.Crow said, “It’s your fault. You sci-fi writ-ers need to give us something to work on.”So the university, with my input, foundedthe Center for Science and the Imagina-tion and launched Project Hieroglyph asan online forum where science-fictionauthors could write in an optimistic vein,

positing attainable technologies for youngengineers. The collection Hieroglyph, outthis month, showcases work by 20 vision-aries, including astrophysicist and award-winning writer Gregory Benford, andscience-fiction authors Cory Doctorow,Elizabeth Bear and Bruce Sterling. Mycontribution is ‘Atmosphaera Incognita’,about the construction of a 20-kilometresteel tower and the resulting adventures.

What do you think about the trend forapocalyptic science fiction?In the 1950s we could see that we have arocket and if we build a bigger rocket, wecould go to the Moon. But with advancesin nanotechnology and IT, there are manyimponderable outcomes. It is easier topredict a gloomy one. But that has led tolazy, derivative, predictable stories, espe-cially on television and in movies.

What do you think about the rise of anti-science feeling in the United States?It is a surprise to me. Growing up in Ames,I went to a Methodist church filled withprofessors who never would have ques-tioned the validity of evolution. I think alot of opposition to global warming andevolution is not about science. The major-ity of people who identify themselves asglobal-warming sceptics, for example, dobelieve it is happening. But they think thatadmitting that will open the door to exces-sive regulation by the government. Theydon’t come from the scientific commu-nity, where it is important to say what youmean. They come from a political com-munity, where what really matters is thefinal outcome. I think it’s self-destructivein the long run — people who refuse toface reality are infantilizing themselves. ■

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