Hypothesis: When given a choice to labor over research in a lab or write science fiction, Caltech alumni and students would choose: both.
“Inner Space and Outer Thoughts: Speculative Fiction from Caltech and JPL Authors” is a first-of-its-kind anthology written by Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists, engineers and students.
“It turns out that real scientists write incredibly interesting and unique science fiction,” said Rachael Kuintzle, editor and writer. “These stories were like nothing I had ever read before.”
More than 300 people are expected at an author reading and Q&A from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 20, at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium, 332 S. Michigan Ave., Pasadena. Admission is free. All are welcome. Caltech alumni and award-winning authors S. B. Divya, David Brin and Larry Niven and first-time authors and experts in bioengineering, astronomy and geophysics will talk about the science behind their stories.
Kuintzle, a PhD candidate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics, said the idea to tap scientific minds to write scifi and fantasy started at a meeting for TechLit, Caltech’s creative writing club she helped start in 2017. All royalties from the book will benefit the club.
“It was amazingly fun to read the story submissions when they first came in,” she said. “We didn’t know what to expect when we first put out the call for submission. I mean, a magic system based on dark photons, written by an expert particle physicist?”
That story is “A Thousand, Thousand Pages” by Allic Sivaramakrishnan, a post-doctoral research associate in theoretical physics at Caltech. He said the story is a look at “anything that has kept you up at night, gotten you out of bed in the morning, and made you take each day in a headlong sprint.”
Kuintzle herself wrote two stories, including “The Bittersweet Magic of Neuroplasticity,” an examination of what love is on a cellular and molecular…
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