Play Book Tag discussion

Well that was weird.

This is a interconnected set of short stories about famous scientists. I was about 2 stories in when I went back to see how this book is classified by Amazon. GR tags are great but can be a bit random. I had "thought" this was non-fiction. But instead it's considered fictionalized biography, which explained everything.

I think the title of this book could have been "Secret Lives of Crazy Scientists", and the stories get wilder and wilder as the book goes on.

My big objection is the author's repeated use of dreams or hallucinations or other altered states to explain each scientist's discoveries. In many of the stories, major discoveries are made in these altered states, with the scientist having no clue how they arrived at their final theory or equation. This felt incredibly diminishing to the great minds who achieved fantastic breakthroughs in science.

Always fun to read something weird-however I probably would have had a DNF on this one.

I really enjoyed this book, and his next book, The Maniac. I thought the stories were fascinating, and I learned a lot about things like the singularity, nitrogen, and this unusual group of brilliant thinkers. He sure did pick a group with a lot of mental illness though, didn’t he? Was Tesla in this book too? I read about him in another book this year.

It definitely contradicts the stereotype of scientists as unemotional, steady and boring. Or maybe that’s a stereotype for engineers, not theoretical physicists. When you think of nuclear bombs and other ways that science has led to bad outcomes, it’s no wonder some are filled with regret or fear for the future. It sounds terrifying to be able to see (or think you see) just how the world will end.

I agree it is weird, but I liked it more than you did. The way I interpreted it is that it starts off mostly non-fiction and gradually adds more fiction as it goes along. I particularly enjoyed the rivalry between Heisenberg and Schrödinger, each having come up with a different approach to quantum mechanics. I just love fights between scientists about theories! I think it is an insightful exploration of the relationship between genius and mental instability.

ETA - I also enjoyed The Maniac. Labatut is one of those authors where I'll be reading everything he writes.