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Sergio Parra@SergioParra_Not all novels in which science is a major part of the plot are science fiction novels. Or, yes, but not quite: you already know that in this matter of literary genres there are no strict borders, but rather a huge Venn diagram that, more and more, adopts new forms and is continually subject to recursion.
All in all, we are going to try to explore a series of titles that can be perfectly excluded from the science fiction genre but, nevertheless, have many similarities with it, either because they novelize some first-rate scientific finding, because they address scientific issues from the everyday point of view or because they do not explore the possibilities of a technology at a technical level but they do at an emotional or social level.
1. 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon
The rainbow of gravity offers us another sample of complex and labyrinthine narrative brand of the mysterious Thomas Pynchon, of which we do not even have a current photograph (his aversion to the media is anthological). In the play he tells us the story of a soldier who was subjected to Pavlovian experiments by Harvard professor Laszlo Jamf, a mad German scientist who now works for the Nazis. Since then, every time a German V-2 bomb falls, the protagonist gets a boner.
2. 'The possibility of an island', by Michel Houllebecq
philosophical, social, political and scientific is what the verbose and enfant terrible Michel Houllebecq offers us in The Possibility of an Island. It tells the story of Daniel, famous for his caustic monologues, when he finds himself immersed in a sect whose members assure that the human being will achieve immortality.
3. '1Q84', by Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami's books always emphasize self-discovery, with many dream experiences and parallel worlds. And also science and conversations about it. In 1Q84 two parallel stories are narrated, that of a gymnast specialized in murdering men who mistreat women and that of a teacher who wants to be a writer. From here a plot that exudes science fiction dyes will be developed. In one chapter, for example, the protagonists get to talk about 1984, by George Orwell.
4. "Meek Sheep" by Connie Willis
In Sheep meek, the protagonist of this novel is Sandra Foster, a sociologist who studies fashions to try to understand how they originate and what role human behavior plays in all of it. Foster works for the HiTek company. There she meets Bennet O'Reilly, a researcher specializing in chaos theory who tries to shed light on the mechanisms of information transmission within a group through a group of macaques. It sounds boring? Not at all, Connie Willis is always a delightful writer when it comes to her stories...and terribly funny too.
5. 'Jurassic Park', by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park is more of an adventure novel with hints of horror than a science fiction novel. However, between the pages of his voluminous workmanship we find long disquisitions on the subject of genetic engineering, peleontology and even chaos theory. Nothing to do with the film adaptation by Steven Spielberg.
6. 'The invention of Morel', by Adolfo Bioy Casares
This is the particular tribute that Adolfo Bioy Casares pays to La isla del dr. Moreau (1896) by HG Wells, who is present throughout in Morel's Invention. Crime, persecution and exile fly over the plot of the novel, as well as the invention that Morel has developed, a machine that can reproduce images, snapshots that seem absolutely real, as if it were an antecedent of virtual reality. What is true, what is lie? How to distinguish both worlds?
7. 'The Measurement of the World', by Daniel Kehlmann
The Measurement of the World, by the German Daniel Kehlmann, addresses the complex relationship between the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician and astronomer, Carl Friedrich Gauss. Without a doubt, one of the few historical novels that base almost all of its plot on scientific figures and their discoveries.
8. 'The Dwarf Astronomer', by Chet Raymo
Frank Bois is 43 years old and five feet tall, and obsessed with the stars and astronomy in general. Chet Raymo is a professor of physics and astronomy at Stonehill College, Massachusetts, so he manages to instill the wonder that is above our heads through the thoughts and reflections of the protagonist in this wonderful novel called The Dwarf Astronomer. There is a movie based on the novel: Frankie and the Stars.
9. 'If you saw yourself with my eyes', by Carlos Franz
Fleeing from the simple consignment of findings made by the great Charles Darwin, in Si te veras con mis ojos we discover not only his scientific facet, but this work written by the Chilean Carlos Franz also explores the love rivalry between a young Charles Darwin and the traveling painter Johann Moritz Rugendas in Chile in the mid-nineteenth century.
10. 'On the skin', by Javier Moro
On November 30, 1803, a corvette set sail from the port of La Coruña for the American continent. In it, the doctors Francisco Javier Balmis and José Salvany and the rector of the Galician city orphanage, Isabel Zendal, transported the smallpox vaccine to America and the Philippines in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives. That expedition was known as the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition or the Balmis Expedition. This incredible scientific feat is narrated with an enviable pulse by Javier Moro in the recently published A flor de piel.
11. 'Guardian Angels', Almudena de Arteaga
The Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine or Balmis Expedition is such an impressive and little-known epic (for when a Hollywood movie?), that it deserves another narrative example about it, written a little more time ago by Almudena de Arteaga: Guardian Angels.
12. 'Around the world in 20 days', by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones
This is a true story, a slightly novelized on-board diary under the title Around the World in 20 Days. But what is explained is so exciting that it seems unreal. On March 21, 1999, at 06:00 GMT, Bertrand Piccard (Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist) and Brian Jones (English veteran of the Royal Air Force) landed their balloon, the Breitling Orbiter, over the Egyptian desert. In 19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes they had completed the first non-stop round-the-world trip aboard a hot air balloon. Undoubtedly, a way to get to know the technical and scientific details of flying in a balloon in depth.
- Will Ferguson's 'Happiness'
Self-help is pseudo-scientific in many of its manifestations, and this funny novel is starred by an editor who searches, to the last consequences, the truths and lies of the recipes to be happy. How much science is in them? How much trickery? Happiness, by Will Ferguson, is not just satire, it is also a lucid analysis of the mechanisms that lead us to happiness and the futility of searching for it; thus, paradoxically, Happiness could be classified as an excellent self-help book
14. 'You are a beast, Viskovitz', by Alessandro Boffa
An exquisite way of discovering what many of the animals that do not surround them are like, their defense mechanisms, their mating rites... all narrated as stories for adults full of technical terms. Charming and educational, well, it's Alessandro Boffa's You're a beast, Viskovitz. Although in all the stories the protagonist is called Viskovitz (and the rest of the characters also have the same names), in each story the protagonist is a different animal: a dormouse, a snail, a pig, a beetle, etc.
15. 'Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus', by Mary Shelley
Historians of literature therefore tend to consider Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel, although in reality we are dealing with a gothic horror novel with a strong background of the fears that aroused technologies that were not yet well known, like electricity. Frankenstein also served to warn about the danger that certain results of science can bring. The work, in addition, was written by Shelley when she was just a teenager, in an already mythical meeting in a mansion on the shores of Lake Leman, in Switzerland, together with other writers with whom she had bet who was capable of conceiving the most terrifying story. of all. She won.
16. 'The curious incident of the dog at midnight', by Mark Haddon
Getting into the head of a person suffering from a mental illness is the best way, at a narrative level, to understand and empathize with that illness, rather than reading long technical disquisitions about the disease being discussed. That is why Mark Haddon did much with The Curious Incident of the Dog at Midnight to divulge to the general public all the details of a mental characteristic that has always been distorted by fiction: the story is written in the first person by Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder. Pure psychological disclosure mixed with a story that you can't stop reading until the end.
17. 'The story of your life', by Ted Chiang
This is not a novel, but an anthology of short stories by one of the most interesting contemporary authors of the science fiction genre, slipstream and associates. For this reason, The Story of Your Life, by Ted Chiang, we will find purely genre stories, but also more realistic treatments in which science serves as a starting point to string together such profound reflections that you will probably change your mind every two pages. Especially representative of this sensation is the story Do you like what you see?, which is the transcription of a supposed documentary where everyone gives their opinion about a new scientific finding: the way to suppress us from capturing the beauty of others and, consequently, , let's discriminate against people because of their physique.
18. '2012', by Brian D'Amato
As in Jurassic Park, we are facing an adventure story where the historical novel is mixed with time travel. But the most striking thing about 2012, by Brian D'Amato, is his thoroughness and precision (he can devote entire pages) when describing new technologies, the development of certain fields of science and other herbs. He does it in a somewhat systematic way because the protagonist also has a systematic brain and the play is narrated in the first person. In the end, the story dedicates more pages to narrating the daily life of the leading scientist than anything else, and it is also very interesting.
19. 'Lost Moon', by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
Apollo 13 is a 1995 American film, starring Tom Hanks, which recounts the problems of the failed Apollo 13 lunar mission. Few know that the film is a free adaptation of the novel Lost Moon, by Jim Lovell (the commander of the Apollo 13 mission) and Jeffrey Kluger. Without a doubt, a non-fiction science novel that serves to understand what life is like for an astronaut out there.
20. 'A Beautiful Mind', by Sylvia Nasar
A Beautiful Mind is the fictionalized, unauthorized biography of Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Forbes Nash by Sylvia Nasar, economics correspondent for the New York Times. The 2001 movie with the same name is based on this book, but it leaves out many details of the day-to-day life of a brilliant mind trying to solve scientific problems that are totally incomprehensible to ordinary mortals.
21. The Temple of Heaven, by Enrique Joven
The novel takes us to the China of the Ming dynasty, where a group of European Jesuits want to introduce a new calendar. The Jesuits intended in this way to gain influence in the Chinese court taking advantage of their superior astronomical knowledge, which opens up an excellent opportunity to penetrate the real history of the development of ancient astronomy at the hands of Enrique Joven. Its title: The Temple of Heaven.
Share 21 fiction books with a great scientific background
