Eureka! Where Science Meets Story

23rd October

To many people, science and literature could not be further apart, working in different worlds in different ways. Yet, as the Manchester Literature Festival draws to a close and the Manchester Science Festival kicks off, one event ties them together and makes them inseparable. Comma Press and the Institute of Physics united in an effort to bring writers together with scientists to develop stories around the “Eureka Moments” that become legendary in science.

The event began in the wooden Godlee Observatory, which was built with money from Francis Godlee, a prominent cotton baron in Manchester during the 19th century. In a cramped, octagonal room, a winding iron staircase barely wide enough for an adult reaches up through the ceiling to the original refracting telescope originally installed for 1903. Posters of the sun and the stars adorn the plain walls, and all gatherings are overseen by a picture of Godlee himself, bearded with a long pipe clamped between his teeth.

In groups of seven, we were admitted into a world as magical as Harry Potter’s, climbing the narrow staircase up to admire the telescope, which still boasts its original wooden box camera. The stairs are ornate, but not for the faint of heart. From the top, the view down into the room below is giddying, while above the telescope itself is held on girders, rather than the wooden floor. A modern computer still collects data for the Manchester Astronomical Society, which boasts at least one member nearly as old as the telescope itself.

Once we had all been given the chance to see the telescope, we were ushered into a teaching room for the readings. Writers Zoe Lambert and Stella Duffy read from stories composed by working directly with scientists and historians of science for the Eureka Commissions. Zoe’s story was a very immediate take on the struggles of Lise Meitner, a member of the team of scientists who discovered nuclear fission, while Stella Duffy created the impression of being a train speeding through the developments in space-time theory from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth, following the life of the mathematician Hermann Minkowski.

Zoe’s story was a clear, conventional narrative, covering Lise Meitner’s life and work in Germany during the 1930s. She handled the complex physics brilliantly, unafraid to use detail in conversations about the deeper mechanics that the physicists would have discussed. There was no attempt to gloss over anything complicated, and would have made a brilliant learning tool for those wanting to discover more about the development of nuclear fission. She interwove the story with the politics of the age. As a woman, Lise had struggled to gain recognition as a nuclear physicist, and just as she found her place alongside Fritz Strassmann and Otto Hahn, she then faced barriers because of her Jewish background. The flow was so seamless it was impossible to tease out the scientist from the woman dealing with the pressures of discrimination for both gender and race.

Stella Duffy’s approach was entirely different. Rather than relating a strict narrative story, she presented a work in a prose poem that travelled like a train through history, pausing at stations where significant events were described in detail. Like Zoe, Stella wove together the personal and the scientific completely seamlessly, making the scientists not gods of their discipline, but humans with their own foibles and struggles with the wider forces of society and relationships.

What both stories brought out was that the idea of a single heroic character suddenly experiencing a flash of inspiration that changes the world is false. From Isaac Newton’s apple tree encounter to Otto Hahn’s revelation about nuclear fission, the stories that we tell about great scientific breakthroughs hide the hard work and dedication of not one, but many individuals who are often lost to history. Both writers had chosen individuals whose work went largely unrecognised; as James Sumner, a historian of science and collaborator on the project, pointed out, many of the people who have contributed to great breakthroughs have been forgotten. In other cases, such as Einstein or Newton, it is because society highly values their findings that they become giants of science.

The evening highlighted the way that story has become just as powerful a part of science as it is of literature. Stella Duffy remarked during the debate that followed the readings that its a natural human thing to boil down events and memory into story, and that this has spilled over into science. James Sumner was keen to emphasise that this is often highly useful, especially when people (and indeed, scientists) are learning about the history of science. If they had to learn every single detail of every breakthrough, they would get lost. Synthesising is essential; the downside is that it means that the work of many scientists remains unseen.

Sumner describes himself as being there for the scientists who are written out of the story. The effect of the project, judging by the subjects chosen by both writers, has been to re-write the great eureka stories from the perspective of those who missed out on awards and recognition the first time around. From both stories and the discussion afterward, it was clear that what drives both writers and scientists is a passion for their work that overrides almost everything else. Yet rather than cutting them off from others, this passion spills over into every aspect of their lives.

The debate itself covered many angles, from the women “computers” who processed calculations for scientists in basement rooms to the difficulties of collaboration between scientists and writers. Zoe described herself as being about as easy to collaborate with as a cat, but Stella “felt my brain expanding” during the process. What has been created is work that presents a new telling of vital moments in science, giving the spotlight at last to the complexity of the scientific process. It will be interesting to see what the final book presents from other writers on the project.

by Joely Black

Joely is a freelance writer and author who writes epic fantasy and drinks large quantities of tea. Two of her books, The Execution and The Inheritor, are available as ebooks from Smashwords.

When it Changed: Science into Fiction

I associated the moment of ‘change’ with scientific breakthrough. It was surprising to learn that the title came from a favourite short story of Geoff Ryman’s. As chair of the panel and editor of the collection from Comma Press, he told the audience that not only was it the name of Joanna Russ’ story, but should be the title of every story. This synthesis of science and fiction was something mentioned by each of the panelists. The great imaginative leap required to shape both fiction and scientific research was the point of contact for each of the pairs.

The idea was a simple, but fantastic one; to team a writer with a scientist. Each pair collaborated on a story based as accurately as possible on current scientific thinking. The other people on the panel were: Steve Furber, ICL Professor of Computer Engineering. Adam Marek, a writer who has been nominated for the Frank O’Connor Award. Tim O’Brien, an astrophysicist working at Jodrell Bank. Patricia Duncker, a writer of fiction and Professor of English Literature at Manchester University. Liz Williams could not make the launch due to illness, but her short story was performed by Geoff Ryman.

Steve Furber was self-deprecating and humorous. He talked in an accessible way about his work with microprocessors, explaining that there are now more microprocessors than human beings on the planet. He is interested in artificial intelligence and is currently building a machine with one million microprocessors to attempt to recreate one percent of the function of the brain. This interest in intelligent machines and their similarity to the human brain is represented by his favourite film – 2001: A Space Odyssey. Steve explained that HAL had the right mixture of logic and emotional subtlety to be one of the most sinister fictional robots. He also told the audience that he felt the best science fiction left things unsaid. His concluding comments on the similarity between fiction and research summed up the points of contact between the collaborators. He said that both required ‘imaginative speculation, creativity and risk-taking’.

Geoff Ryman explained that Liz Williams was a writer who also had a PhD in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. Her story came about as a result of working with Tim Furber. He then began, quite unexpectedly, to perform the part of Wittgenstein in Liz’s story in a German accent.

The story was quite beautiful. Liz used mathematical and logical concepts to set the scene in an alternative Cambridge where Wittgenstein was living. The windows were perfectly proportioned, the light golden, the stones grey and ‘more like bone than stone’. This glorious symmetry hints at something sinister which becomes apparent. The other character in the story is an imagined Alan Turing. Wittgenstein becomes upset by the sight of an apple core in the room, which he does not remember eating. He talks of a mathematician named Alan whom he ‘recognised for what he was’. The eating of the apple is surely in reference to Turing’s scientific and symbolic death by eating poisoned fruit as a result of his persecution on account of his homosexuality. The opening of the story sets up a challenge to binaries – The characters both are and are not historical figures, Cambridge is both beautiful and a prison, The intelligent machine can be caught out by a ‘false note’ but it is not certain what this might be. There is a sense that in questioning the philosophy behind artificial intelligence, wider issues of discrimination and violation can be explored. In the last line of the section, nature had been inverted. The sky was black.

Tim O’Brien dates his interest in science to a fancy dress party when he was five or six. He had arrived wearing cardboard boxes covered in tin foil, dressed as either an astronaut or a robot. He worked with two writers: Patricia Duncker and Frank Cottrell Boyce.

Patricia and Tim spent some time together at Jodrell Bank where Tim works as an astrophysicist who, in his own words, ‘discovers galaxies all the time’. When Patricia was there they discovered one together. Patricia described the telescope as a kind of ‘unicorn’ which is surrounded by smaller telescopes, almost as though it has spawned. She said that she has spent many nights out on the Cheshire plain, watching the telescope move in time with the stars.
Patricia has written a narrative which blends religious experience with scientific accuracy. Both Patricia and Tim describe religion and science as a kind of ‘working through doubt’ as opposed to the certainty of faith. The religious vision which her young protagonist experiences at the end of the story takes elements of the ‘woman in the wilderness’ of Revelations and combines it with a scientifically accurate description of the life of a star.

Tim’s mind-blowing prophecy that in a few years from now we will have evidence of a planet much like Earth, containing life forms is tempered by the fact that there is no way that humans can travel more than a little way from the planet. He reminded the audience that though scientists may be able to tell that there are life forms much like ourselves by testing the atmospheres, colours and temperatures here on Earth in laboratories, it is frustrating as we will never be able to advance any further in our knowledge.

This unknowing, was a subject of Geoff Ryman’s questions at the end, directed at Tim, Steve and Patricia. All three agreed that the amount we do not know is increasing all of the time, and that the term ‘dark matter’ is there to fill the void. Dark energy is said to account for 96% of what is on the earth. Patricia Duncker suggested the term ‘dark knowledge’ could be used to cover what we do not know.

Adam Marek’s story was called Without a Shout and blended two ideas which he learned from a professor at Liverpool University. He works in nanotechnology and is developing a suit which measures heart rate, blood pressure, temperature etc. He is also developing face cream which can repair damaged skin. Adam Marek imagined a world where these ‘intelligent’ products were used to protect middle-class school kids from terrorist attacks. In the story, suicide bombers attacked the school children on an increasingly larger scale when they were fitted with suits which repaired their bodies. The chaos and horror of being blown to bits and then rearranged by ‘intelligent’ clothing is nicely contrasted with the more normal fights they have with the poorer school down the road. An audience member mentioned that what works so well about the story is that it follows normal laws and logic. Technology changes some aspects of the children’s lives, but so many others are universal and remain the same. Adam said that he has long ‘danced on the edge of science fiction’ and enjoyed the process of basing a story on actual science.

Geoff Ryman closed the readings by performing the first part of his story You. His concept of ‘life blogs’ concertinaing out of one another and allowing the spectator to experience virtual lives, the lives of celebrities and even of those long dead was fascinating. As a comment on the way in which technology has changed communication, it was not straightforward . Rather there was wonder in the proliferation of aspects. There are some beautiful images in You– ‘red soil bare of plants’, ‘silhouettes of cliffs’ and ‘shadows long and cold’ show the expanse of this unknown world. Perhaps in this space, behind the shadows and the silhouettes, there is a place for dark knowledge.

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Laura Joyce runs the Red Shoes Workshop in Manchester and has a blog at www.metafiction.wordpress.com.