Curved words: stories of space, time and light

The aim of this project is to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Einstein's theory of general relativity with an innovative interdisciplinary project which brings together fiction writers and astrophysicists. The outcome will be a published anthology of short stories inspired by general relativity which will be used as the basis for events and discussions at both literary and scientific festivals around the UK. The overall impact will to inspire a wide group of people about general relativity; by using the medium of fiction rather than popular science we will be engaging with a different audience than that which is traditionally engaged through science communication.

This anthology will include a wide range of responses and styles of writing, from classic science fiction to literary fiction. Fiction inspired by real science is a recently recognised genre, often referred to as 'Lablit' (see the website www.lablit.com for examples of this genre) and it offers a unique way of communicating about science, with the ability to reach new audiences and interest people who may not otherwise engage with science. Whilst fiction's main aim is not intended to be educational, it is clear that readers do learn from real material included in fictional settings. As well as exploring the end results, Lablit also offers a way of opening up the often hidden process of doing science to wider audiences (similar in the way that the STFC-funded 'Collider' exhibition at the Science Museum opened up the process of working at CERN).

Our proposed anthology is in some ways similar to the critically and commercially successful poetry anthology 'Dark Matter' (edited by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Maurice Riordan and published by Gulbenkian press in 2008), for which several poets were specially commissioned to work with astrophysicists and produce poems inspired by astronomy. The 'Dark matter' anthology was the subject of a very popular event held at Royal Observatory Greenwich in 2009 with Jocelyn Bell Burnell and chaired by one of us (Pippa Goldschmidt) which triggered in-depth discussions between participants and the audience about both the literary aspects of the poems as well as their astronomical content.

The anthology will contain stories from commissioned writers (some of whom themselves have science backgrounds and at least two have worked as physicists) and will be edited by established award-winning fiction writers Pippa Goldschmidt and Tania Hershman who will also contribute stories. It will be published by Freight Books who are experienced in publishing themed anthologies such as 'A Bird is not a Stone' and '21 Revolutions'.
As well as commissioning stories, we plan to issue an open call to other writers to submit stories inspired by GR and we will include the best three in the anthology. This process will have the added advantage of encouraging a wide community of writers to respond in their work to a scientific inspiration, as well as helping publicise the project and the associated science.

Because of the close connection between general relativity and electromagnetism, as well as the the fact that general relativity was the first full theory to describe the connections between light, space-time and mass, the outcome of this project will also celebrate the International Year of Light, proclaimed by the UN to take place in 2015. We plan to make use of this connection when promoting and discussing the anthology at science festivals.

The main resource that will be produced is the published version of the anthology; both in print form and as an e-book. One thousand print copies of the anthology will be distributed and sold at bookshops and also available for sale at literary and science festivals. The e-book version will be available for download from Amazon and other websites.
Freight will raise awareness of the product in the media through sending review copies of the book to both literary and scientific print and web-based newspapers, magazines and online reviewers. Freight have extensive experience of such marketing and awareness raising.

Our plans to promote the anthology at literary and science festivals will include discussions about the process of its development and the partnerships between the participating writers and scientists. This will open up the process of doing such art-science collaborations and help inform other interested practioners.

We will attend the following specific festivals which are known to attract people interested in public engagement to discuss the process of creating this anthology:
British Science Festival, 2015
National Astronomy Meeting (public outreach session), 2015

We also plan to provide information to public engagement organisations such as the Edinburgh Beltane. Pippa Goldschmidt has experience at disseminating information on using fiction to promote science and has spoken about this at many conferences including the British Science Festival, the 'Science and the Public' academic conference on public engagement and the National Astronomy Meeting. During her role as writer-in-residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at the University of Edinburgh in 2008-2010, Pippa also published a paper designed to help other practitioners consider the use of fiction to promote discussions about science (access the paper here; http://tinyurl.com/prqv627).