Lab Lit

I’m a bit of a frustrated scientist at heart. Never mind that I spent my final year at University sulking over Petri dishes, leaving expensive reagents out of the fridge to spoil and breaking centrifuges. There is still a part of me that truly believes that my natural environment is in a lab surrounded by poisonous chemicals and glassware. So I was fascinated by the LabLit site.

As a may have mentioned before (ad nauseum) I’m a bit of a science fiction geek. So LabLit is a new concept for me. It’s fiction about science Jim but not as we know it. Lablit doesn’t concern itself about spaceships, killer robots and little green men. Rather it is literature with realistic depictions of science. Sometimes this is the same as science fiction but often it is not. It turns out that as a frustrated scientist my sci-fi faves are often also LabLit.

My lablit recommendations are

Contact – Carl Sagan. Lab coats, spectacles and radio astronomy
Timescape – Gregory Benford. Lab coats, environmental disaster and worried looks
Speed of Dark – Elizabeth Moon. Lab coats, clever maths and autism
Blood Music – Greg Bear. Lab coats, nanotechnology and quantum freakiness

And to prove I’m a well rounded individual (I’m not) here’s a lablit recommendation that isn’t sci-fi

Thinks – David Lodge. Lab coats, psychology and academic flirting