Over the last couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in a handful of academically-inspired projects, mixing scientific writing with fiction. A few years ago, I was asked to contribute to I Am Because You Are, an anthology of writings celebrating the centenary of Einstein’s general relativity, and now I have two more projects to tell you about.
First up is Uncanny Bodies, an anthology of papers and stories reconsidering the thoughts of Freud on the uncanny body in light of twenty-first century advancements in medicine and technology. It’s a book of multifarious alienations and my contribution, Bunting, is a slipstreamish examination of dermatillomania.
Uncanny Bodies is out on August 4th, but you can pre-order it now.
The second anthology, which is due out a little later in the year, is called Biopolis: Tales of Urban Biology. This project, led by the University of Edinburgh, paired fiction writers with scientists whose focus of study is a a biological take on ways to improve our cities in the near future. I was paired with Dr Louise Horsfall whose work into using microbes as a basis for reclaiming metals is absolutely fascinating. For my story, Mudlarking, I used Louise’s ideas to springboard into not-so-rosy future where resources are managed to margins on the atomic scale and recycling is a matter of life and death, but hopefully I managed to find a silver lining at the end of it all.
I’ll post more about Biopolis very soon.
ayeahmur 