Fact or Fiction

Some books for the public are based on communicating one's own (or one's field's) research to the public. Some books, like Frankel and Whiteside's On The Surface of Things focus on the visual aspects of science. Others, like the Physics of...(the Buffyverse, Football, Golf, Basketball...) series use popular culture to engage people in learning more about science. A whole genre of stories dubbed lablit includes fiction. You can find mini-reviews of these books by John Hubisz in an article in The Physics Teacher

Scientists sometimes raise the question about whether we should use fiction to teach science. My favorite answer to this comes from Jim Kakalios, author of The Physics of Superheroes, which I paraphrase as: We usually teach physics by fiction anyway because when is the last time you walked down a frictionless surface with no air resistance?

You have to remember, of course, that books are a business. An article in Nature warns that many science books are considered successful if they sell 5 kilobooks in hardcover and another 5 kilbooks in paperback.

Scientific content isn't the only purpose for writing a book for the public. Scientists, mathematicians and engineers have been primary characters in literature for a very long time, but many portrayals are unfortunate stereotypes, as pointed out by Jennifer Rohn of lablit.com (which includes information on television shows, movies and cartoons). Books like Allegra Goodman's Intuition show a glimpse of what working in a lab is like, the pressures researchers are under and the passion they have for their work.

If you've ever wondered if communicating scientific ideas to the public has any impact, author A.S. Byatt explains that "My world has been changed by all the scientific writers who have made their understanding approximately available to me, in plain English and working metaphors."² and discusses how this has impacted her writing in an excellent essay from Nature. In another Nature article, Malcolm Longair explains how a book by Sander Bais can inspire young people who aspire to become mathematically oriented scientists.

So You Want to be an Author...

Becoming an author isn't for the faint of heart, although preparing grant proposals certainly gives you good preparation for the inevitable rejection e-mails you'll get.

• Nick Evans, a theoretical particle physicist e-published his own first novel. He opted for self-publishing rather than a traditional publisher because "...brief investigations of the publishing industry suggest it is rather conservative and entrenched - this is not unreasonable of them since they are deluged by would-be authors and need to take considerable financial risks every time they publicize a book. I prefer to establish a position of strength before assaulting their bastion! I hope that by using the web I can demonstrate the existence of a substantial audience for this sort of book."¹
• You can learn a lot from interviews with scientists-turned-authors such as Chris McCabe (aka John McCabe and John Macken)
• How to Write Science Fiction by Bob Shaw explains how to create the basic ideas, devise fresh plots and build imaginary worlds against a background of futuristic science and technology.

Writers Wanted!

Do you have experience in writing popular science books? We'd like to divide this page into fiction and non-fiction. If you can share your experience by writing a short piece that explains the basics, please e-mail diandra2(at)unl.edu and put "Broader Impacts Toolbox" in the subject line so that it doesn't get stuck in the spam filter. We're looking for people wh