George Gaylord Simpson, The Dechronization of Sam Magruder, 1996

Simpson was the most famous paleontologist in the world with a specialisation in the early period of when dinosaurs and mammals co-existed, so with the posthumous publication of Magruder he surprised everyone with what is essentially a short but very competent science fiction novel in which a 22nd century time experiment throws a chronologist back to the Cretaceous Period. It was probably written for Simpson’s own amusement in the 1970s, given that that decade is bracketed by a 1970 theory on the possibility of warm-blooded dinosaurs (something that Simpson disagreed with) and the lack of any mention of the ‘asteroid impact’ cause of their demise, a theory which first surfaced in 1980. Magruder is very much in the reliable H.G. Wells Time Machine tradition, and the novel comes with an introduction from Arthur C. Clarke that puts the novel in its science fictional context and an afterword from Stephen Jay Gould that does the same for it paleontologically, and Gould also demonstrates why there’s far more going on in the novel than you thought. An unexpected find, and a good, quick read.  PY

MORE ON GEORGE GAYLORD SIMPSON : WIKIPEDIA

Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams, 1993

Einstein’s Dreams is a useful work to see how odd scientific notions can be embedded in the everyday. Lightman tries to get into the head of Einstein, as the latter entertains a series of ideas about time while tying in some detail of 1930s Europe around him: here, time is either running backwards, in circles, slower, faster, ad infinitum... and peoples lives are altered accordingly. This book’s construction is fairly simple, but the rather repetitive nature of the writing means it could have included any number of observations which make for a highly impressionistic composition. Nevertheless, it’s good to know that noted physicists such as Lightman can write – and think – like this.  PY

•  Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 PEN New England / Boston Globe Winship Award, and was also a selection for NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” Book Club. The novel is one of the mostly widely used texts in American colleges today.

MORE ON ALAN LIGHTMAN : M.I.T. HOMEPAGE  |  WIKIPEDIA