Hi everyone. I'm not quite sure how to begin. How do you begin a blog that's basically about everything? Well, not everything. Just science and science fiction. That leaves a lot to cover.
I've wanted to blog about these topics for a long time, but I've resisted the impulse to actually make a blog until now. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's because I don't like fads. But lately, the urge to blog about my literature has been irresistible. Especially since I've come to realize that much of the literature I love has been largely lost to history.
I came to this rude awakening recently when I went searching for a second copy of one of my favorite books. "A Dreamer's Dozen" is a collection of largely overlooked sci-fi short stories, edited by Groff Conklin. Conklin himself called the stories "undiscovered gems" in the book's intro, and I didn't realize just how true this was until, having decided to lend my first copy to some friends, I went looking for a second copy to serve as backup. And I couldn't find one anywhere on the Internet.
Those of you who are veteran searchers will understand my astonishment. There isn't anything you can't find on the Internet. Usually a quick search of Amazon will turn up a dozen copies of any given book, no matter how obscure. But not this one. And then it began to bother me. Although I know many sci-fi fans, I had never heard anyone talk about "The Ballad of Lost C'Mell" or "30 Days Had September." I had never heard anyone reference Zenna Henderson or J.F. Bones as a favorite author. How had these examples of great storytelling and daring speculation gone unnoticed? I started to feel a duty to let people know about these.
I soon realized that my "Dreamer's Dozen" was not the only collection of great sci-fi relatively unknown to current audiences. Many writers of the New Wave, many writers who do not write primarily in English are relatively unknown to American audiences. I'd like to do a little something to change that, and maybe help fans of classic science fiction like myself find some of these gems I've been so fortunate to stumble upon.
There's another aspect to this blog as well. You can't have science fiction without science. Science fiction relies on the scientist's speculation, about what is possible and what it means for humanity. Over the years, science fiction authors have predicted changes in human society, precisely by understanding the technological advances and scientific discoveries that were being made. I'm not only a science fiction fanatic, but also a devotee of science.
This seems a good time to say a little bit about myself. I'm a year away from earning my bachelor's degree in neuroscience, a marriage of biology and psychology which pleases me immensely. As a reader of literature, I am obsessed with how characters work; as a scientist, I am obsessed with how things in general work. Neuroscience seemed to be the best way for me of satisfying both of these curiosities, as it deals with both the physical mechanisms underlying the physical mechanisms and the psychological theories of thought and emotion. In addition to my neuroscience studies, I enjoy reading about practically every area of science. Astronomy, archaeology, biology, cosmology, paleontology, physics--you name it, I have probably been obsessed with it at some point.
Through this blog, I aim to bring a little bit of science as well as science fiction to anyone who is interested. There's so much happening in science right now it really boggles the mind. Just in the last week, the first man-made, reproductively independent species has been created, great advances have been reported in the use of gene therapy to treat previously untreatable diseases, new discoveries have been made about the orbital mechanics of planets circling other stars, and scientists have announced a way to directly measure the body temperature of dinosaurs.
So much science and so much literature, I don't know where to begin! I hope you all will enjoy the ride.
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