Michael Sheringham's piece on "Archiving" was immensely rich and suggestive in its exploration of the city as a repository of memories, as "layer upon layer of compacted material detail". I was particularly struck by his idea that as well as the written history of a city, there is a unique and personal history experienced by each inhabitant - the Tube station where you met your lover on the first date, the street where a grandparent used to live, the anonymous office block where you used to work. The city's street corners are dense with histories both written and unwritten. The city, says Sheringham, is "a memory machine."

It reminded me of Calvino's beautiful fantasy, Invisible Cities, in which he says that a city’s past is written into its fabric like the lines on a labourer’s hand, “in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.”

You can read my review of Restless Cities on the Guardian's website.

I have to say I was initially sceptical, not to say cynical, about the whole idea. As Will Wiles (@WillWiles) said, it seemed a bit too much like "panhandling". Science fiction author Tim Maughan (@timmaughan) was similarly negative about the idea. 

But having thought about this and listened to Deanna's side of things I see that it certainly can work. Although, as she says, it clearly works best if you are talking to a community that is open to this approach. I'm not sure it would work for the kind of cultural history books I write, for example.

Tim Maly (@doingitwrong), co-founder of Capybara Games, pointed out the advantages of this way of funding books and other artistic projects. As he said, if it works for Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) at Kickstarter, why shouldn't it work for other authors?

Anyway, it's an interesting debate and Tim Maly has collated the various comments from people and written a fascinating blog on the issues it raises which is well worth reading.

Michelle Pauli (@michellepauli) at the Guardian has also written a rather more sceptical piece highlighting the ethical problems involved. For example, she points out that "as [Deanna Zandt] is writing about social networking it might be relevant to the reader to know if, for example, the MD of Facebook has contributed a large sum to the writing of her book".

One nagging fear I have about crowdfunding is that if it catches on then publishers may stop paying advances altogether. Authors are already having to make do with much lower advances. And today I see in The Bookseller that an agent has struck a deal where there is no advance and the profits are split between author and publisher.

Perhaps the new age of the eBook will change things, allowing authors to reach untapped audiences and making writing more rewarding. I hope so. If not then crowdfunding books may well be the only option for some authors.

Yesterday I saw a comment from science writer and broadcaster Colin Stuart (@skyponderer on Twitter):

"Anyone else worried that science and defence are now inextricably politically linked? with @lorddrayson doing both jobs!?"

Yes (I thought) that does sound worrying and I tweeted it on my page too. Within forty minutes Lord Paul Drayson himself replied (to me, note, not Colin - perhaps the Science Minister doesn't quite get Twitter?).

"What are you worried about?" he asked me.

I have to admit I was surprised. Actually that's a serious understatement. I sat in front of the screen for a few minutes wondering if I was seeing things. Don't Her Majesty's ministers of state have more urgent matters to attend to than dealing with comments on Twitter by authors? Perhaps it was a practical joke? A fake Lord perhaps?

But no, it really was Lord Drayson - Twitter bio “Father of 5, Minister For Science and Innovation, Labour peer, car nut: http://www.draysonracing.com/". Yes, that's him.

So I replied: "You shd ask @skyponderer - but history shows we shd all be concerned abt links between sci & defence." (Excuse the abbreviations but you only get 140 characters on Twitter.)

Then Colin joined in (no doubt justifiably peeved that the minister was ignoring him): "I agree with @PD_Smith, but I am also disappointed that science is undervalued enough not to need a full time minister...".

At the same time, other people began to contribute equally useful comments - @DrLucyRogers, @dr_david_w, @joergheber, @imascientist etc. But thereafter, silence - at least until this afternoon, when the Minister replied. Except he's not just "one" minister, but two.

Lord Drayson is now (thanks to Gordon Brown's latest Cabinet reshuffle) two ministers in one - he is both Science Minister and (reverting to a former role) Minister for Defence Procurement. Hence Colin's consternation, which I share.

This afternoon the two-in-one Minister again asked what was worrying us. I got my response in first (I should have been writing a review but was Twittering instead):

@PD_Smith: "1. why does Science not deserve its own minister? 2. Are there not ethical issues re unifying sci + military under 1 minister?"

This time @lorddrayson answered immediately: "In my view the more the sci minister is connected to wider roles in govt the more influence science has to the whole agenda."

@PD_Smith (two tweets in a row this time): "The logic of that is that you'll soon be taking on more portfolios? Sounds to me like a reduction in the import of sci. And what about combining sci + defence procurement? Does it send out the right message in an age of nuclear proliferation?"

In reply, the Noble Lord fired off five tweets in quick succession: "Science deserves a minister at the cabinet table. Thats key. Tick. Sci desrves a cabinet committee. Thats key too. Tick."

"But, many ministers have dual roles.. it really helps departments work together better. Silos in whitehall are not helpful."

"Many science issues are cross-departmental. Take GMES as an example. MOD / DECC / BERR / DIUS all had a view on earth observation"

"Re ethical issues. You have a point. I have to be absolutely clear on the separation between the 2 roles. Civil service r key."

I was pleased to have got him to at least concede that there was an ethical issue involved here (although also slightly confused by the idea that there might be silos in Whitehall. Nuclear bunkers I'd heard about, but missile silos?).

@PD_Smith: "I'm v glad to hear you accept there has to be separation. But I still say it sends out a mixed message to the rest of the world."

Side-stepping that, @lorddrayson continued: "However, many science breakthroughs originated in defence research: ultrasound, radar to mention 2".

@PD_Smith: "That's undeniable. But science should, and can be, about so much more than military hardware."

"I agree," @lorddrayson replied. "Defence is but a small part of the whole. "Science so what; So everything"....will continue from BIS... @sciencesowhat".

And with this rather hand-waving allusion to the grandeur of science and a website, @lorddrayson moved on to deal with other people's questions on this issue. As an exercise in government engaging with the public I give him full marks. Indeed, let's have more of it. But it didn't really cast much light on the question as to why this government thinks a full-time science minister is not needed, let alone deal with the ethical issues raised by lumping science and defence together under one minister. Maybe he will discuss these matters in more detail in the opinion piece the Times Higher Education Supplement offered him afterwards.

I have to say, chatting with the Minister for Science & Defence Procurement is one of the most intriguing Twitter experiences I have had to date. But I hope it doesn't happen every day. It's very distracting. And I have work to do.

Winter has arrived in Hampshire.
I haven't seen this much snow since I lived in Munich...

Have a great Christmas and a wonderful 2009!

There was also a good review recently in the scholarly journal Survival: Global Politics and Strategy (Volume 50, Issue 5, 2008, pp 209-10). Bruno Tertrais writes:

"Doomsday Men by P.D. Smith tells the story of the 20th-century search for the perfect weapon. [...] Doomsday Men points out that many weapons scientists - including Haber, Sakharov, Szilard and others - saw themselves not only as helping their countries, but also humanity as a whole, and believed, as did Alfred Nobel of his invention of dynamite, that their efforts would save mankind from war. Smith also illuminates, in his valuable account, the interaction between science and literature, with scientists and authors constantly inspiring one another throughout the century. For instance, The World Set Free by H.G. Wells (1914), the first novel about nuclear war, was a source of inspiration for many scientific pioneers, including Szilard."

"It is a funny and despairing vision of the last judgment done in comic-book style, and Vonnegut's modesty as an artist combines with his dismay as a man to prevent him from lavishing too much careful portraiture on people not long for a world that's about to crack up anyway. It arrives like the punch line to one of Vonnegut's jokes when you realise that the most realistic feature of Cat's Cradle is the idea of a technology capable of destroying civilisation in a day."

Also in the Guardian this weekend are two of my reviews of new non-fiction paperbacks that are well worth reading too: When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, by Michael J Benton; and Mind, Life and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of our Time, edited by Lynn Margulis and Eduardo Punset. The latter offers a wonderful antidote to nightmares of mad scientists creating ice-nine type superweapons... You can read them here.

A couple of other links that have caught my eye. An intriguing piece in The American Scholar by Brian Boyd - biographer of Nabokov - on "The Art of Literature and the Science of Literature".

And an amusing piece on how writers write:

"Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and Roald Dahl did it in sheds at the bottom of the garden. Shaw's desk was famously on castors, so he could turn it throughout the day to get maximum light. Dahl even had one of his own hip bones sitting on the desk. Every writer will have their own ritual."

So what are your "Writuals"?

Apparently the rules are:

a. Link to the person who tagged you.
b. Post the rules on your blog.
c. Write six random things about yourself.
d. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
e. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment at their blog.
f. Let your tagger know when your entry is up

So 6 random things about myself:

1. I love exploring cities but sometimes I also need the silence of the countryside;
2. the best book I've ever read about science is Primo Levi's The Periodic Table;
3. I hate cars, or the infernal combustion engine to be precise;
4. I'm currently listening to Seasick Steve's Dog House Music;
5. I've just started reading Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49;
6. I love plants and gardens, and as I write this I can see the top of the bamboo I planted last year swaying in the breeze.

The six people I'm tagging are:

Steven Hall
Lewis Crofts
Claire Cameron
Angela Meyer (aka LiteraryMinded)
Mary McMyne
Virginia Rounding

Angier writes with particular enthusiasm about the “outrageous magic” of astronomy. Although physicists, biologists and chemists might have an image problem in the public domain (think nukes, Frankenfoods, and pesticides), astronomers are the “responsible eco-tourists” of science. They probe the infinite depths of the cosmos from a distance with their telescopes and ask the really big questions: Where do we come from? How did it all begin?

“We are star stuff, a part of the cosmos,” one scientist tells her. “The specific atoms in every cell of your body, my body, my son’s body, the body of your pet cat, were cooked up inside massive stars. To me, that is one of the most amazing conclusions in the history of science, and I want everybody to know about it.”

At the weekend, the Guardian ran my review of Dan O'Neill's excellent The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement, as well as The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, by Rob Hopkins. Read those here.

Apparently, hundreds of UK veterans who witnessed nuclear tests in the 1950s have joined one of the largest compensation claims against the Ministry of Defence. There's a fascinating piece on this by Helena Merriman at the BBC. She interviewed one witness, Bob Malcolmson, who was an 18-year-old radio operator on HMS Diana at the time. He saw a 98-kiloton explosion: "The explosion was tremendous. They actually heard it in Australia 200 miles away from the islands. We turned our backs, covered our eyes with our hands. I had my eyes open and I could see the bones in my hands, even with my back to this thing." Malcolmson was later diagnosed with blood cancer. I hope they are successful in the courts. Read the rest of the piece here.

Last week there was a wonderful article in the Guardian called 'Read poetry: it's quite hard', by Sean O'Brien. He argues convincingly for a poetic canon, in part because it "presents a challenge to the reader, of a kind which in our impatient times often produces anxiety and resentment". I agree: canons can be helpful when you're a student, if only to give you something to rebel against.

One of his concerns is that a new generation of readers may be missing out on challenging texts, as teachers discard "classics" in favour of more "relevant" pieces. He's critical of the contemporary attitude to reading: "The difficulty that readers face owes much to the fundamentally prosaic and utilitarian view of language which dominates our period: speed, impact and 'the facts' are pre-eminent."

I was interested in this point as I have just been reading Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid, which is a fascinating exploration of the neuroscience of reading. She is troubled by the impact of the Internet revolution on the way we read, believing it leads to a more superficial way of reading. Perhaps we need a slow reading movement, as well as one for slow food?

And finally, a very funny piece on academia by Ben McGrath in the New Yorker: "Powder Room 101". Enjoy.