While some might insist that science is strictly factual, I think most would agree that speculation links discrete scientific data – facts – resulting in a narrative that becomes modified with additional data and knowledge. Speculation is not factual. In that sense, I view science as partly fact and partly story, and propose that reality [...]
Recently Ricardo stepped out of Jellyfish Have Eyes looking for tell-tale signs that his troubles with science in the mid- 21st century were sinister developments of earlier times. As he suspected, he found an article in The Washington Post that he believed foreshadowed the demise of ivory-towered basic research. I remember that he looked depressed [...]
Ricardo’s back and apparently in a talkative mood. I want him to remain at this website for a little while, but he said that there’s a website for Jellyfish Have Eyes (jellyfishhaveeyes.com) where he plans to settle in. That’s his real home. However, he’s happy to speak out in both websites for now so that he [...]
Writers are both atypical midwives and partial parents to their characters. As atypical midwives, they deliver babies of every age in the form of words. As partial parents, they give a sliver of themselves to each character, selected genes from the author’s repertoire, not their whole genome. When the book is finished – the story [...]
My science colleagues asked me how I could switch from research to stories – from science to fiction and back again – as if the two activities were so different that the same person couldn’t do them both. My answer was usually, "I don't know. I just sit at my desk and start writing and [...]
Bob Bausch (left), friend and author, and I at a writer's workshop in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. In my last blog of this series, I'd broken the ice and started writing fiction. But I needed to find a way to fit writing into my busy schedule as a scientist and to learn the [...]
