Interpunct: Thought Experiments in Real Space

In its heyday Science Fiction offered an infinitely variable set of propositions. Its downfall was arguably due to its reliance on a small range of actual scientific ideas. Wide-ranging in its applications, the bulk of the sci-fi canon drew from only a handful of scientific precepts: space and time travel, artificial and alien intelligence, social control and genetic engineering. The range of moral, human and artistic ideas that inspire the wider literary canon is vast beside this sparse sprinkling of cliches, and through the narrow prism of science fiction the wide spectrum of scientific enquiry was never truly represented. Long after science fiction slipped from view as a credible artistic discipline, interest in art-science crossovers has re-emerged. Currently there is nothing more popular in the visual arts than the challenge of incorporating and responding to scientific practice. Yet a bias remains in this artist-in-residence phenomenon: namely, it's the visiting artists who ultimately account for the science in the final work: the scientist remains inert in the process.
In a ground-breaking experiment, this anthology gives voice to scientists themselves within the artistic arena. Twenty leading scientists have been commissioned to write pieces of fiction that incorporate or explore their own theories, in a human, literary context. The scientists involved cover the full spectrum of disciplines - from evolutionary biology to language theory, psychiatry to quantum mechanics - and include leading figures in each field.