Under The Literary Microscope

“Science in fiction,” “geek novels,” “lab-lit”—whatever one calls them, a new generation of science novels has opened a space in which the reading public can experience and think about the powers of science to illuminate nature as well as to generate and mitigate social change and risks. Under the Literary Microscope examines the implications of the discourse taking place in and around this creative space. Exploring works by authors as disparate as Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Powers, Ian McEwan, Ann Patchett, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Crichton, these essays address the economization of scientific institutions; ethics, risk, and gender disparity in scientific work; the reshaping of old stereotypes of scientists; science in an evolving sci-fi genre; and reader reception and potential contributions of the novels to public understandings of science. Under the Literary Microscope illuminates the new ways in which fiction has been grappling with scientific issues—from climate change and pandemics to artificial intelligence and genomics—and makes a valuable addition to both contemporary literature and science studies courses. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Anna Auguscik, Jay Clayton, Carol Colatrella, Sonja Fücker, Raymond Haynes, Luz María Hernández Nieto, Emanuel Herold, Karin Hoepker, Anton Kirchhofer, Antje Kley, Natalie Roxburgh, Uwe Schimank, Sherryl Vint, and Peter Weingart.

This open access book considers science and empire, and the stories we tell ourselves about them. Using British Nobel laureate Ronald Ross (1857-1932) and his colleagues as access points to a wider professional culture, Empire Under the Microscope explores the cultural history of parasitology and its relationships with the literary and historical imagination between 1885 and 1935. Emilie Taylor-Pirie examines a wealth of archival material including medical lectures, scientific publications, popular biography, and personal and professional correspondence, alongside novels, poems, newspaper articles, and political speeches, to excavate the shared vocabularies of literature and medicine. She demonstrates how forms such as poetry and biography; genres such as imperial romance and detective fiction; and modes such as adventure and the Gothic, together informed how tropical diseases, their parasites, and their vectors, were understood in relation to race, gender, and nation. From Ancient Greece, to King Arthur’s Knights, to the detective work of Sherlock Holmes, parasitologists manipulated literary and historical forms of knowledge in their professional self-fashioning to create a modern mythology that has a visible legacy in relationships between science and society today.

To the world you are an abomination; a monster with unholy abilities. You're shunned and left to fend for yourself. Your only chance of survival is to tap into that dark potential - would you do it? In an isolated mountain community, sometimes a child is born with two hearts. Such a child - a striga - is considered a dangerous demon, which must be abandoned on the edge of the forest to protect the community. The only choice the child's mother can make is whether to leave her home with her infant, or stay behind and try to forget. Miriat made her choice. She and her nineteen-year-old striga daughter, Salka, now live a life of deprivation and hardship in a remote village, where to follow the impulses of the other heart is forbidden. But Salka is headstrong and young, and when threatened with losing everything, she is forced to explore the depths of her true nature, testing the bonds between mother and child. File Under: Fantasy [ Breaking Taboos | Hidden Shadows | Hungry Like the Wolf | Slavic Story ]

"Books, let's face it, are better than anything else." Nick Hornby Turn the pages of The Literature Book to discover over 100 of the world's most enthralling reads and the literary geniuses behind them. Storytelling is as old as humanity itself. Part of the Big Ideas Simply Explained series, The Literature Book introduces you to ancient classics from the Epic of Gilgamesh written 4,000 years ago, as well as the works of Shakespeare, Voltaire, Tolstoy, and more, and 20th-century masterpieces, including Catch-22, Beloved, and On the Road. The perfect reference for your bookshelf, it answers myriad questions such as what is stream of consciousness, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, and what links the poetry of Wordsworth with that of TS Eliot. Losing yourself in a great book transports you to another time and place, and The Literature Book sets each title in its social and political context. It helps you appreciate, for example, how Dickens' Bleak House paints a picture of deprivation in 19th-century England, or how Stalin's climb to power was the backdrop for George Orwell's 1984. With succinct plot summaries, graphics, and inspiring quotations, this is a must-have reference for literature students and the perfect gift for book-lovers everywhere. Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics along with straightforward and engaging writing to make complex subjects easier to understand. With over 7 million copies worldwide sold to date, these award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.

Herbert George Wells was perhaps best known as the author of such classic works of science fiction as The Time Machine and War of the Worlds. But it was in his short stories, written when he was a young man embarking on a literary career, that he first explored the enormous potential of the scientific discoveries of the day. He described his stories as "a miscellany of inventions," yet his enthusiasm for science was tempered by an awareness of its horrifying destructive powers and the threat it could pose to the human race. A consummate storyteller, he made fantastic creatures and machines entirely believable; and, by placing ordinary men and women in extraordinary situations, he explored, with humor, what it means to be alive in a century of rapid scientific progress.