the story behind The New Optimists
The revolution with print-on-demand and web-based technologies has changed the game. In the cold damp light of a winter day in early 2009, I speculated that much could now be done with insouciance, a laptop on the kitchen table and a lifetime’s fascination with how scientists work, how seemingly ordinary men and women as part of their daily routine, engage with extraordinary matters and, to paraphrase the mathematician Ian Stewart, defend us from believing what we want to.
That initial notion to provide written witness of the value created by scientists has, through the efforts of many people, morphed into a fledgling not-for-profit multimedia publishing venture, Linus Publishing. The book The New Optimists is its first offering.
The scientists who feature here, over half of whom are professors, over two-thirds working in medical and life sciences, have written “this most exhilarating of books”, as Jenny Uglow describes it in her Foreword. I thank every one of these remarkable men and women.
It was a simply splendid idea to ask Jenny to write the Foreword, and I thank her for creating such a lyrically pertinent context for scientists’ work.
Thanks are also due to Keith Richards whose light-touch editing of the essays themselves, and his imaginative structure for the book as a whole adds to the impact of the essays both individually and collectively.
There has been much work behind the scenes. Fiona Alexander, Steve Bedser, Nick Booth, Chris Buckham, David Edmonds, Kevin Johnson, Alison Murray and Mike Smith have, in their free time, responded to my calls, my texts, my emails and from time to time have met, often over my kitchen table, sometimes a bar in town, to make things happen.
The book you’re now reading simply wouldn’t exist without an experienced publisher on board. It was a good day when I drove down to Malvern to meet Etica’s Julian Roskams for the first time. Right at the outset, he saw something catching in providing a means for these scientists to tell their tale. It’s his efforts that have translated all the ideas of all of us, scientist and non-scientist, into paper and print. His cheerfully calm professionalism has never wavered even when, especially when I have been unreasonably demanding.
“What is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures and conversations?” As Jenny Uglow says in her Foreword, this collection of essays “is itself a kind of conversation”. Pictures in a book, alas, present a costly option. But we have these intriguing, inspiring images on the bookcover from many-times Wellcome Image Award winner, local photomicrographer Spike Walker. He readily agreed to designer Jonathan Doyle using them, as did the Wellcome Trust. On the back cover, we have a derived image of dopamine, one of the birth of a daphnia; the spine has an image of human brain cells; on the front cover are the images of urea, the moment before a (failed) human IVF, a spider’s mandibles and liver blood vessels — all of these are visually delicious examples of how science enables us literally to see the world quite differently.
As you’ve read here, many people have given of their time and energies. But there are some bills that can’t be avoided, some favours that that go too far beyond the reasonable. Aston University and the University of Birmingham (College of Medical and Dental Sciences) have sponsored this early stage of the project, and I thank them very much indeed for their generous support.
As well as the book you’re reading now, we’re creating web and e-book versions and, funding permitting, multimedia spin-offs about aspects of the scientists’ work. Plus, there are plans afoot for the next publication about science, about its value and impact on us all, as well as its beauty and excitement.
Much can indeed be done with insouciance, a laptop on the kitchen table . . . and a wonderful coterie of over 100 people. I salute them all.
Kate Cooper
Linus Publishing
May 2010
note: This appears as the 'Afterword' in The New Optimists: Scientists View Tomorrow's World & What It Means To Us.