Fiction for Grown-Ups
Skillful authors weave real science into plots featuring swashbuckling heroes, famed physicists and a Dorothy clone lost not in the Land of Oz, but of Quarks. These novels and plays probe the human spirit while transporting you deep into the past, far into outer space and other colorful settings.
Atlantis Found
Author: Clive Cussler
Ages: Adults
Publisher: Berkley, 2001
Science Concepts: Archaeology, oceanography
This novel mixes adventure, engaging storytelling and scientific fact to draw the reader into the world of underwater discovery. Using the U.S. National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) as the base for his story, Cussler combines his real-life discovery of more than 70 lost ships of historical significance with the discovery of ancient remains in the western United States.
Excerpt:
The sinister and dead relic of the past remained in frigid isolation. An expedition consisting of two ships was mounted from Liverpool in 1862 to recover the Madras’s cargo, but neither ship was ever seen again and were presumed lost in the great ice floe around Antarctica.
Another 144 years would pass before men were to rediscover and set foot on the decks of the Madras again.
Contact
Author: Carl Sagan
Ages: Adults
Publisher: Pocket, 1997
Science Concepts: Space and time, celestial geography, technology, space travel
Both an astronomer and prolific author, Sagan combines scientific facts about the universe with fiction as a way of exploring questions about space travel, time travel and how we comprehend the way the universe is formed.
Excerpt:
When it happened, it was Willie once again, this time on the graveyard shift, who first noticed. Afterward, Willie would attribute the speed of the discovery less to the superconducting computer and the NSA programs than to the new Hadden context-recognition chips. At any rate, Vega had been low in the sky an hour or so before dawn when the computer triggered an understated alarm. With some annoyance, Willie put down what he was reading – it was a new textbook on Fast Fourier Transform Spectroscopy – and noticed these words being printed out on the screen:
RPT. TEXT PP. 41617-41619: BIT MISMATCH 0/2271.
CORRELATION COEFFICIENT 0.99+
Copenhagen
Author: Michael Frayn
Ages: Adults
Publisher: Anchor, 2000
Science Concepts: Quantum physics, the uncertainty principle, science history
Frayn imagines a scientific "what if?" as he describes the meeting of two Nobel laureates: Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr. Both worked in atomic physics in the 1920s, and this dramatized version of what might have been said during a visit to Copenhagen deals with the science of quantum physics and the uncertainty principle. The author describes how the events that unfolded changed the men forever.
Excerpt:
Bohr: I had to get away from it all!
Margrethe: And you worked out complementarity in Norway, on your own.
Heisenberg: The speed he skis at he had to do something to keep the blood going round. It was either physics or frostbite.
Bohr: Yes, and you stayed behind in Copenhagen. . .
Heisenberg: And started to think at last.
Margrethe: You’re a lot better off apart, you two.
Heisenberg: Having him out of town was as liberating as getting away from my hay fever on Heligoland.
Margrethe: I shouldn’t let you sit anywhere near each other, if I were the teacher.
Flowers for Algernon
Author: Daniel Keyes
Ages: Adults and young adults
Publisher: Harvest Books 2005
Science Concepts: Medicine, medical ethics
This began as a short story, then morphed into a television drama, then a motion picture. The novel deals with the ethics of science and scientific experimentation on humans. Charlie is subjected to an experimental treatment that turns him, at least for a while, from a low-functioning but self-sufficient person to a highly intelligent, "normal" member of society.
Excerpt:
"Let’s face it. You’re not the Charlie who came in here seventeen years ago – not even the same Charlie of four months ago. You haven’t talked about it. It’s your own affair. Maybe a miracle of some kind – who knows? But you’ve changed into a very smart young man. And operating the dough mixer and delivering packages is no work for a smart young man."
Proof
Author: David Auburn
Ages: Adults
Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2001
Science Concepts: Mathematics, scientific method
This play is the emotional story of a young woman who has lived in the shadow of her brilliant father. A mathematical genius, he left behind 103 notebooks that his daughter uses to solve one of the great mysteries of mathematics. This play is about science and scientists as well as the human spirit.
Excerpt:
Hal: You wrote this?
Catherine: Yes.
Claire: You mean Dad dictated it to you?
Catherine: No, it’s my proof. It’s mine, I wrote it.
The Wizard of Quarks: A Fantasy of Particle Physics
Author: Robert Gilmore
Ages: Adults
Publisher: Springer, 2001
Science Concepts: Particle physics
This is the second physics fantasy by the author of Alice in Quantumland, which portrayed Lewis Carroll's Alice as a physics teacher. This time, Dorothy from Kansas and Oz finds herself in the world of subatomic particles. A fun way to learn about a difficult concept.
Excerpt:
"I should like to hear more about leptons," stated the Tin Geek. "And bosons," cut in the Scarecrow, just to show that he was still there. "Yes, certainly," agreed Dorothy. "Bosons and leptons and quarks, certainly," she repeated. Somehow after that they all found themselves singing Bosons and leptons and quarks, oh my!
Browse other Science in Literature titles:
For more information please contact Center Director Roxanne Hughes at hughes@magnet.fsu.edu or (850) 645-8179.
Classroom Outreach
