New Scientist

It was great to see New Scientist, the publication that inspired many of the stories in Tania Hershman's collection The White Road and Other Stories, featuring the book on their website HERE.

As you can see, they were wonderfully generous, and included the whole of the title story in their feature.

It was very interesting to see the reaction of a few readers, those who, one assumes, do not have much contact with fiction. (That may be wrong, but do go and read a few comments... complaining about the lack of grammar in the story, narrated by a woman who runs a cafe in the Antarctic.)

And of course, there have been a few posts in reply gently pointing out that creative writing is creative!

I first met Tania at an event hosted by Lab Lit, an initiative that seeks to bring scientists and writers together. In an extraordinarily generous move, scientists in all disciplines have put themselves on a searchable database and are open to talking with writers who want to explore their particular field of research and use it in some way in their writing. Lab Lit website HERE, including a review of The White Road...

Lab Lit set up this initiative to encourage exploration of science in fiction. To bring together artists and scientists. I suppose it was not improbable that there would be conservative elements (forgive the pun) on both sides, perhaps, who would not see the positive outcomes in the move.

Perhaps the scientific community were expecting realist portrayals, with educated characters only? I doubt it. The scientists we met at that first event were open and interested in what the writers might do...

But it is very interesting to see the clash of art and science, albeit in a small way, acted out on the New Scientist website.