LabLit

I'm having a day off (is it sad that I do this sort of thing on a day off?). Via the familiar procrastinating internet directed random walk I came across this really interesting website: http://www.lablit.com/ "LabLit" aspires to be a literary movement rooted in the real lives of scientists. Its progenitor, Jennifer Rohn has written a couple of novels in exactly this spirit. One of them, for example, is an engaging romantic thriller set against the backdrop of contemporary scientific research. Sounds good. Even as ("just") a romantic thriller in an unusual setting it would be interesting, a way of illuminating the life of the professional scientist. But it goes further, apparently weaving science into the heart of the story, the resolution of the mystery; just as science tends to keep mattering in the lives of scientists after 5.30 in the evening.

LabLit sounds a great idea to me. "Scientists are humans" sounds trite but also goes to the heart of what science is and what it does, in a hundred ways: how it functions, how it impacts on society more widely, how the ideas current in society more widely feed into scientific discovery.... LabLit can only help this principle, and its consequences, to be understood.

Of course I'm thinking of astronomical LabLit examples. I haven't read the book, but Contact is one of the best science-fiction movies I've seen, partly because of its depiction of the life of the working scientist: the large facility locations, the collegiality that grows among small groups of people with shared aims and interests, the search for funding, for justifying your passions more widely, etc. I guess the movie is fairly close to the book in many ways and that it also does this job nicely. (Do I need to mention, however, that nobody I know has yet as part of their work traveled to the centre of the Galaxy or met aliens taking the forms of family members?)

My eye was caught by Total Eclipse when I spotted it in the Biblocafe. I liked its early chapters describing life in an Observatory: again a fairly realistic depiction of the community of researchers, mixed characters jumbled up together in their wee, closed world living a life both intense and dull at the same time. A total eclipse of the Sun is one of the most amazing sights possible in a human life, however, and the dismal account near the end of the book is just not on. There is a subplot involving accusations of data faking whose resolution, unfortunately, makes no sense in terms of actual research practice. This was the author's first novel and she may have fallen on the wrong side of the "building deliberately/boring" divide; my wife, who reads lots of crime fiction, ditched it after a chapter or two. Other people seem to have enjoyed it but as LabLit it's a bit of a mixed success.

Both of these examples predate Jenny Rohn's movement. There must be more I don't know about - maybe you could tell me in the Comments below?

Here's the usual DACE tie-in: in the adult education setting this human side of science comes out very naturally, the stories of personalities, arguments, how and where ideas developed, what it's like to spend time at CERN or big telescopes.... And it would come from the horse's mouth, maybe even better than from fiction. You all know this; we'll see you there.

Now, on a day off after several weekends of work commitments, I really should smell fresh air.