Higgs-boson-inspired story on Radio 3's The Verb

So on Monday I got a call, from Radio 3's The Verb. Would I be able to write a Higgs-boson and physics-inspired very short story by Wednesday morning to read and chat about on this week's show? Would I? Oh yes! I did, (and the very tight deadline definitely brought out something new, something I'd never done before) and then yesterday morning at the BBC here in Bristol I was recorded reading it and chatting to the fantastic host of the show, Ian McMillan, about physics & fiction, flash fiction and the wonderful words of science. It will be broadcast tomorrow night, Friday 13th, at 10pm UK time, and should be available as a podcast for 7 days after that. Find out more here>>

If you are a physicist, forgive me for what I have done to your words...:)

Synchotron-inspired short story competition!

Here's a contest after my own heart... and perhaps a few of yours, those of you who harbour secret desires to make it all up! Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchotron particle accelerator, is attempting a little bit of a PR boost by inviting writers to write short stories (max 3000 words) and flash fiction (max 300 words) somehow inspired by it: the Light Reading competition has cash prizes too! Here's more:

The rules are simple: we’re inviting you to submit a story of up to 3,000 words inspired by Diamond – the facility, the science and the people. There’s also a Flash Fiction prize for stories under 300 words. Stories can be in any genre and there is no minimum word limit. Diamond will shortlist the best of these stories, which will then be judged by an expert panel. The top three writers will receive a cash prize, and these, along with those highly commended by the judges, will be published in an anthology of short stories. Entries must be submitted via this website. The deadline is Wednesday 30 November 2011. 

Good luck to all!

Imagination is More Important Than Knowledge: Science-inspired fiction and poetry open mic night!

A wonderful time was had by all last night at the Grant Bradley gallery at the University's Changing Perspectives science-inspired fiction and poetry open mic night. I was host for the evening and, to kick the whole thing off, read my stories Experimentation (from the lab coat I'd written the story on for the Changing Perspectives exhibition) and Healing Wounds.

I was then more than delighted to hand the mic over to 14 readers, who read short stories, poems and excerpts from longer works, all in some way taking science as their starting off point. We moved from oxo cubes to cockroaches, aspirin to drowned cities, speculative Wessex fiction to gifted children, Brian Cox (!) to Pingu the penguin.

I have to say that I don't know about anyone else but I found it all extremely inspiring! We had such a range of readings, across many "genres" (although I hate labels), different styles and tones and subject matter. I loved it all: thank you to Jo, Cath, Stewart, Mary, Mazzy, James, Caleb, Amy, Franca, Tom, Colin, Gavin, Andy and Katrina!

Becky Jones - PhD student from the biochem lab I've been embedded in and organizer of the Art of Science competition - and I had the impossible task of picking just four people to give these wonderful books (above) to, so congrats to Jo, Caleb, Amy and Franca - but really congratulations to everyone, it was a wonderful celebration of using science as inspiration, whether you have any scientific background or not, none is necessary. As Einstein said: Imagination is more important than knowledge. I think he would have enjoyed last night.

The Perfect Egg in Nature

I'm delighted to have a short story in the Futures section of the venerable science magazine Nature this week - it's just gone online today and is in the print issue which I believe comes out tomorrow. It's called The Perfect Egg,  and it was sort of my first real attempt to write science fiction. Yes, some of the short stories in my book might be kind of SF-ish, but that wasn't my aim when I was writing them. Nature Futures is "a forum for the best new science-fiction writing, exploring some of the themes that might challenge us as the future unfold" and I never expected to get my first submission to them accepted. This story seems a bit different from the other Futures stories I have read, so I am delighted to have made it - and rather thrilled that in their email to me they addressed me as "Dr Hershman"! (Don't worry, I put them straight on that...) Anyway, comments can be left on the online version, should you feel moved to! (No pressure). Read it here.

Short story inspired by the discovery of GFP

Manchester-based independent publishers Comma Press are doing something very close to my heart: commissioning fiction writers to be inspired by "eureka" moments in science across various disciplines, pairing them up with a scientist, and asking them produce short stories that explore this concept which will be published in an anthology in May.

Being commissioned is both wonderful and fairly scary. First, there was quite a detailed brief for this project. And second, it had to be a minimum of 2500 words. For someone like me who hasn't written anything over 1500 for 3 years, that was like asking me to write a novel (ok, not quite, but fairly daunting!)

 Transgenic tadpoles expressing Green Fluorescent Protein

Well, I managed it by approaching it as a set of short short fictions, and got to 2500, just... And the result, We Are All Made of Protein but Some Of Us Glow More Than Others, is inspired by the discovery of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), which has transformed molecular biology, as I have learned well from the biochemistry lab here and from Nicholas Love, the researcher in the Amaya Lab at Manchester University that I was paired with. GFP allows a researcher to see inside a living organism in real time. It's amazing, as the pic above from his lab shows...

You can read my story here and Nicholas' afterword here. And there are more stories on the Comma site, for physics, chemistry and neuroscience, written by, among others, Annie Clarkson, Stella Duffy and Kate Clanchy. This is very exciting, I'm delighted to be involved...!

Coming soon: Review of the Oddest Titled Book of the Year!

I've been poorly this week so no lab time... but the exciting news is that I have been awarded an Arts Council grant to work on a collection of biology-inspired short stories. I will be embedding in one or two more labs, too, that are engaged in biology-related research, to inspire my writing, and will report on that as it happens.

In the meantime, I received this gorgeous-looking book in the post last week and will be reviewing it here shortly. It is Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, by Daina Tamina, a maths professor at Cornell University, who I also hope to interview. How did I find this book? I saw the announcement that it had won the Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year! Yup, that makes sense. More on maths and yarn soon.

The Painter and the Physicist

While I settle in to my writer-in-residence position at the Science Faculty, here's a piece of science-inspired flash fiction I wrote last year, which was read by an actress at a Liars league event in London (you can listen to the reading here) This story is entirely fictional, not based on spending any time with physicists or painters, or the two together! Just from my imagination.

The painter and the physicist
by Tania Hershman

The curtain is pulled back.
Yes? Says the assistant.
I've come... to see. To see the painter.
And you are...?
I... I'm the physicist.
One moment, says the assistant and the curtain falls back again.

The painter doesn't turn round.
Send the physicist in, says the painter, cleaning a brush.

The physicist sits on a stool, watching as the painter chooses colours.
So, says the painter, you're a physicist.
Yes, I... Theoretical physics.
Unseen. You imagine what's there.
The physicist is uncomfortable, shifting a little, the stool leg rocking. The painter is mixing two colours on the palette. The physicist watches the painter and wonders how it works, what the eye sees, what the eye knows.
I suppose, says the physicist. Yes, that is certainly one way to put it. Some might say we, umm, guess. We are just guessers. I mean, well, educated guessers! He laughs, shortly, quickly.
Electrons, says the painter. What do you think an electron looks like?
Looks like? An electron?
Does it have colour? says the painter, licking the tip of the paintbrush.
I... I don't...
Don't think, says the painter.
Blue, says the physicist, who doesn't see the painter grinning.
Blue. A blue electron.
Yes, says the physicist, whose mind is trying to ask what the relevance of this can possibly be to current research projects. Cobalt, says the physicist, unsure exactly what shade this. Or azure.
Cobalt, or azure. Very specific, says the painter. Wavelengths make all the difference, don't they.
Yes! says the physicist, who almost falls off the stool. The way a colour hits the eye. I mean.. I'm not a biologist, of course, I'm not familiar with the structure, the rods and the cones and...
Neutron, would that be white, says the painter, who has now added several brushstrokes to the canvas.
Well, I suppose so, although now that you ask, I imagine them more as, well, grey. The physicist looks at the canvas and wonders if a question would be appropriate at this point. Your painting, says the physicist quietly.
You want to know if I know what it is going to look like, says the painter.
You don't have to... please don't feel you, I mean, I just came to.. It's your..
There is something, says the painter, turning away from the canvas and towards the stool where the physicist, uncomfortable again, is fidgeting. The painter holds up the brush and then holds it out. Something. I can see it out of the corner of my eye, a hint of it. But, if I try and look at it directly, it vanishes. I have to move towards it...
Slowly, yes, says the physicist. Like a small animal, or a child. So you don't...
Scare it, says the painter. The painter smiles again, still facing the physicist. Theories, says the painter. For you, too?
Yes, says the physicist, who hasn't thought about falling off the stool for quite some time now.
Later, when the canvas is half-covered, the painter puts the brushes down and suggests they go for a drink. In the pub corner, the physicist has a single malt, the painter a glass of dry red. The painter picks up the physicist's glass and holds it to the light.
Look at that, says the painter. The shades of gold.
The way the photons hit the liquid, some are reflected, some pass through.
It shimmers, says the painter. Hard to capture that, hard to express the movement, the angles, the flow.
I could, says the physicist, tell you about flow, give you equations, write it down on a napkin.
Xs and ys, says the painter, grimacing.
Hey, says the physicist, tongue loosened. Those are my colours.
What colour is an X? says the painter, sipping the dry red, thinking of ochre, scarlet, black.
Green, says the physicist, who has never imagined it before, but now, once the word emerges, sees it all over the blackboards, the whiteboards, the pages of notebooks.
And if I said to you, X must be pink, says the painter.
No, says the physicist. Wrong.
Aha! says the painter.
Oh, says the physicist, and grins. I see. And if I said to you, paint the sky brown...
It's been done, says the painter, who doesn't like to be predictable. The physicist nudges the painter's elbow and then wonders where the boldness comes from.
Are you telling me, says the physicist, that there is no wrong?
Oh, says the painter. I don't... well. I couldn't. I mean...
Aha! says the physicist, getting up. Another round?

The next day, the painter paints; the physicist teaches a class. The day after that, they sit together again, in the pub. The following week, the painter visits the physicist. In the space between them, colours flow.



To read more of my short and short short stories, please visit www.taniahershman.com.