Recap - Rain

On what was one of the sunniest and warmest days of the year so far, we met to discuss Ray Bradbury's 'Death-By-Rain', or 'The Long Rain'. Liz gave a fantastic introduction, which introduced not only Bradbury's own life and ambitions (to 'prevent' not just to 'predict' the future), and the film version of the set text (see above), but also set 'The Long Rain' in a context of 1920s-1960s Venus stories. Based on observations of the planet's cloud cover, these tales often depicted Venus as a water-world: a tropical jungle, humid, warm, and uniform, akin to a prehistoric Earth. Bradbury's story - Liz showed - used this setting for a extreme adventure narrative, looking at the psychological and sensory experiences of people trying to navigate such an unforgiving landscape.

Our discussion followed on from these themes, to explore how Bradbury focused on the reactions of his militaristic men to the situation they were in (with, perhaps, slight inconsistencies or unanswered questions of plot or detail), rather than providing an omniscient overview. We looked at his ways of describing the rain - whether through the repetition of the word 'rain', to place the reader, like his characters, under its ceaseless or even torturing presence; or through passages where the rain took on more of a character or agency, posing for photographs, turning into monstrous forms and storms. We considered how the protagonists became unmoored in time and space, with fast-growing vegetation and aimless wandering, bleached- and leached-out bodies and hopeless futures; and wondered what on earth (or on Venus) they were doing there. Finally, we considered the story's ambiguous ending: was the heavenly-sounding Sun Dome just too good to be true?

Our next meeting - continuing to be seasonally inappropriate, and to think about extreme adventures - will be a discussion of The Frozen Deep.

Recap - Breath

Our second meeting of this term was 'a gas', as we explored the poetics and possibilities of pneumatic medicine. Our discussion of Polwhele's 'Eclogue' focused on a few themes:

• 'Aero-medical science'

We considered the optimism around new gaseous discoveries and technologies, and the confidence that new kinds of air could be used as therapy and remedy. We explored the Romanticism of this kind of auto-experimentation, and the key role of figures such as Davy and Beddoes, and places such as the Pneumatic Institution. Comparison between epistolary, prose, and our set poetic descriptions of the effects of inhaling nitrous oxide, demonstrated how Polwhele drew on these other accounts, but pushed them to a satiric extreme.

• Scientific poetry

We also set the poem in the context of a long 18thC tradition of verses on the Universe, or Botanic Garden, from Pope to Erasmus Darwin. We thought about the different poetic forms this corpus engaged with: some epic, some didactic, some comic (as here). Overall, we discussed how poetry like this formed a key part of (elite) British scientific culture at the time, including commentary on recent discoveries, and conveying accurate information (via footnotes, etc.). Indeed, the use of footnotes by Polwhele was a key topic of conversation.

• Politics and fashion

We thought about how these publications were written in the shadow of the French Revolution, Terror, and Napoleonic Wars: in its very name the conservative Anti-Jacobin Review (where our text first appeared) echoed these concerns. We discussed the contrasting political commitments of conservative Polwhele with the more progressive politics of Beddoes, etc., hence the criticism of them under the guise of this poem. In general, we also thought about the contemporary fad or fashion for Laughing Gas (songs, satirical prints), and made comparisons with Davy's subsequently fashionable lectures at the Royal Institution.

• The poem's success?

We agreed we had all enjoyed reading the poem, and its often superbly awful choice of rhymes; but that perhaps not all of its references were that easy to 'get', and that not all of its humour survives over two hundred years later. We thought about the different voices and characters of the (real) people depicted, and whether or not the author - with contrasting poetic styles - had succeeded in conveying this variegated and personalised bodily experience effectively. As the only stimulant we had to hand was sugar (in the form of a birthday cake for Simon), perhaps a full answer to that last question was not possible.

We closed the evening with the promised performance of two historic songs about Laughing Gas: the songs can be downloaded here and here from the Wellcome Images site.

Yours truly at the piano, with members of the group looking on. Photograph by Charissa.

Laughing Gas sheet music. Photograph by Charissa.

Adrian

I first went along to the science and literature reading group in early 2004, rather unsure what to expect, not at all clear that a quantum physicist would fit in, but willing to give it a try for a session or two. It turned out to be one of the happiest discoveries of my time in Cambridge -- a group of people from diverse backgrounds, genuinely interested in interdisciplinary discussion, sometimes scholarly, sometimes conversational, almost always lively and interesting.

Over the last couple of years the group's discussions have ranged far and wide. We've looked at science in contemporary drama, Victorian popular science, Edgar Allan Poe's decidedly strange cosmological speculations, the splendid Moon Hoax, Charles Babbage's life, works, trials and tribulations, Luria's fascinating account of a Russian mnemonist, some eccentric seventeenth century views of other worlds, and much else besides. We've made a couple of trips to see Aristophanes' "Clouds" and Brecht's "Life of Galileo", and organised a screening of "Fermat's Last Tango", one of the regrettably few musicals to attempt an account of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.

What has all this taught me?

First -- and I suspect this is probably true of many scientists -- that although I read quite widely, there are some important senses in which I don't know how to read.

Second, despite that, it is possible to contribute. We all bring our own perspectives and insights to a text, and some of them may be fresh to others; we all miss things that others pick up.

Third, that it's a pretty good way to get yourself thinking about scientific practice, other people's views of science and scientists, and good and bad ways of communicating science to a wider readership.

And fourth, worthy though those reasons are, a more important discovery to me is that sharing thoughts and perspectives on an interesting text can be enormously enjoyable and intellectually stimulating in the right sort of company.

If you can spare an evening every fortnight during Cambridge term, I'm not sure there are many more life-enhancing ways of spending the time.