Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Recursive ... foiled again!

Two months back, in "Committing SF with my peeps," I announced the forthcoming anthology: Science Fiction by Scientists. Beyond those bare facts and my participation therein -- and my own (dare I say) amusing mock cover -- there was little I could say. 

(Well, I could say my contribution is called "Turing de Force." You're welcome to speculate about that story's underpinning science.)

Today, I'm happy to have an update. Amazon now shows the anthology as scheduled for release on November 7. That's getting close :-) As I type, Amazon remains light on information, but that will doubtless change as release day approaches. The product page already reveals this much:

This anthology contains fourteen intriguing short stories by active research scientists and other writers trained in science. 

Science is at the heart of real science fiction, which is more than just westerns with ray guns or fantasy with spaceships. The people who do science and love science best are scientists. Scientists like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Fred Hoyle wrote some of the legendary tales of golden age science fiction.  Today there is a new generation of scientists writing science fiction informed with the expertise of their fields, from astrophysics to computer science, biochemistry to rocket science, quantum physics to genetics, speculating about what is possible in our universe. Here lies the sense of wonder only science can deliver. All the stories in this volume are supplemented by afterwords commenting on the science underlying each story.

Meanwhile, courtesy of friend, astronomer, author, and editor Michael Brotherton, I can preview the official cover. Woohoo!

Mike, it turns out, isn't the first editor to come up with this idea. Way back in 1962, legendary non-scientist anthologist Groff Conklin put together a similar antho (long out of print, but here's a Goodreads link): Great Science Fiction by Scientists. That book had a tremendous cast of scientist/author contributors, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Willy Ley, Leo Silzard, and Norbert Weiner. In a word: wow.

Here's hoping that, a few decades hence, Mike's collection elicits the same reaction. 

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