I've always wanted to be a scientist. But in the early 1970s, I dropped out of the University of Michigan, and married a stoneware potter. Two years later, we moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula with our 6-week-old daughter as part of the hippie/back-to-the-land movement. While we lived in a tent and built our tiny cabin, scavenged wild foods, and carried our water from a nearby spring, I devoured Discover Magazine and Scientific American.
I also enjoyed reading science thrillers like Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, and Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child's Relic and Reliquary. So when I decided to try my hand at writing a novel, naturally, that's what came out.
My first science thriller published in mass market paperback in 2008 from Berkley, a division of Penguin-Putnam. Freezing Point is about a solar energy company that wants to alleviate the world's fresh water crisis by melting Antarctic icebergs into drinking water.
I got the idea for the novel when I read a small feature item in the newspaper about a 1,000-square-mile section of the Larson Ice Shelf that had broken off due to global warming. The image of that giant iceberg intrigued me. What if a researcher had been there when the ice shelf disintegrated? What if they were stranded on the newly formed berg? What if the disaster was somehow their fault? I combined those questions with the greatest April Fool's hoax in Discover Magazine's history, and came up with a story about an environmental disaster in Antarctica and a grand philanthropic scheme that goes horribly wrong.
Because I'm not a scientist, I consulted with microwave experts, explosives experts, and medical experts in the fields that are touched on in my book. I also read the online journals of people who'd spent time in Antarctica - though after living for 30 years in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I knew and cold.
Still, I'll be first to admit the science in Freezing Point isn't completely accurate. The truth is, while scientists are exploring various means of melting Antarctic icebergs into drinking water, using microwaves from orbiting satellites isn't the most efficient way to get the job done.
But the image of a microwave beam ten times more powerful than sunlight shooting down from space to melt a lake in the middle of a giant iceberg is, well, sexy. Much more gripping than the alternatives my microwave experts suggested, such as using lasers or parabolic mirrors, and I knew my readers would agree.
When it comes to accuracy in thrillers, I've always loved what Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child wrote in their authors' notes for Reliquary: "It should be noted that in certain important instances the authors have altered, moved, or embellished what exists under Manhattan for purposes of the story."
As a writer, I find their hubris incredibly freeing. If the truth works, terrific. If not, I'll twist my science until it does what the story wants. A science thriller isn't a scientific treatise, it's fiction; meant not to educate, but to entertain.
My second science thriller, Boiling Point, is about an erupting volcano, a missing researcher, and a radical scheme to end global warming that centers on geoengineering. Once again, I consulted with experts. But once again, where the story calls for it, I play fast and loose with the facts. "In a novel," Preston once told me, "something doesn't have to be true; it only has to be believable."
There are times when I wish I had the education to give authority to what I write. But my lack of scientific training presents one distinct advantage: Because I don't know the scientific reality, I can conceive a story that a scientist might think outlandish, learn enough of the science in the fields that interest me to tell the story plausibly, and then people the novel with engineers and experts and every sort of -ologist and live vicariously through them.
I may not be a scientist, but thanks to my science thrillers, I'm a scientist by proxy.
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I just realized that you are the Karen Dionne of Freezing Point. I've been a fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs (starting w/ Cabinet of Curiosities, Relic, etc, then on to Deep Storm & more ), obviously getting hooked on science thrillers... so....... I just ordered Freezing Point on the advice of a friend.
I'm not a writer, but am a reader, and I love a little Suspension of Disbelief. Thanks for your believable disbeliefs :) . Looking forward to the book.
While that's true, it is only to a certain extent.
The counterintuitive nature of physical reality, coupled with Man's ever-changing relationship with it (thanks to science), is far grander than what we can invent literarily.
Black holes with masses of millions of suns; spacetime expanding faster than light-speed; and there mere thought of the Planck Length represent a minute amount of literary territory that easily trumps petty human interactions and social tensions.
Writing fiction in the context of scientific accuracy --- rather than molding science into the context of fiction --- is a niche not yet unpacked. And for any author to entertain *and* educate: well, that would be something worth reading.
Do watch this in its entirety:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGSv-uZCOyY
Now that you've frozen the world and melted the world, what's next? Room Temperature Point?
Very interesting about Douglas Adams. I've had a few readers object to some of the things my rats do in Freezing Point, but as it happens, my rat facts are all 100% true!
The quarterback pulls back --- the receiver sprints toward the end zone. The quarterback eyes him, plants his feet, then throws the ball 20 miles due east.
Tell me, would that physics inaccuracy dampen the story at all, considering the driving forces of the plot are the relationships unfolding off the field?
Of course it would. So when science is abused (often unintentionally) in films and books alike, I would argue the dampening is just the same. Scientific accuracy reinforces the validity of the story being told. And such accuracy isn't mutually exclusive from being entertained.