Science-in-fiction novelist: Susan M. Gaines

In this episode, we hear about Susan’s zigzagging path from literature to science and back again.

 

We chat about Susan’s novels, Accidentals and Carbon Dreams—which deal with the science and politics of species extinctions and climate change—about incorporating knowledge of sciences like ornithology, wetlands biology, and geochemistry in realist fiction, and about how she got talked into writing Echoes of Life, a non-fiction book about the history of organic geochemistry.

 

You can learn more about Susan’s work—including all the birds in Accidentals!—on her website.

 

And if you’re interested in reading more of these novels about science—which have been variously called “science in fiction,” “lab lit,” and “nerd novels”—you can search for your favourite topics in the Fiction Meets Science database of novels about science.