麻豆传媒

Quite a few of the golden boys of the Science Book Prize have been biologists
named Steve. There will be no triumphant Stevens/Stephens this year鈥攁 big
surprise, because Steve Jones鈥檚 brilliant Almost Like A Whale (
Darwin鈥檚 Ghost in the US) looked like a shoo-in for the shortlist, and a
good bet for the prize. Biology does dominate the shortlist for the 1999 Aventis
award: three out of six on the list deal with evolution and genetics, and a
fourth is on medical history. John Naughton鈥檚 A Brief History of the
Future and Brian Greene鈥檚 untangling of string theory, The Elegant
Universe, are the exceptions.

And there is another factor that links all the books: an evident fascination
with history. Jonathan Weiner鈥檚 Time, Love, Memory is the story of how
unravelling the genetics of the fruit fly established the discipline of
molecular biology. Christopher Wills鈥檚 The Children of Prometheus
excavates past theories of human evolution with a glance at the future, Matt
Ridley鈥檚 Genome dissects discoveries about chromosomes and Thomas
Dormandy tracks the destructive path of tuberculosis in The White Death.
How they deal with history is what divides them.

Dormandy鈥檚 method is scholarly, that acceptable euphemism meaning hard work
ahead for the reader. Persist, and you鈥檒l be rewarded with an immense, sprawling
vision of how TB shapes human life. Charlatans, artists, surgeons, Swiss
hoteliers, 鈥渓ungers鈥� and public health officials jostle for your attention.
Dormandy鈥檚 waspish asides鈥斺�漚utoimmunity (whatever that is)鈥濃�攑rick
the bubbles of arrogance that surrounded most doctors and surgeons as they
persisted with their killing cures and butchering surgery. Even when the
bacillus was identified and an effective vaccine made, national pride prevented
its immediate use in many countries. Dormandy鈥檚 description of how the US
stopped the spread of bovine TB by swiftly slaughtering millions of cows and
compensating farmers鈥攊n stark contrast to the dithering delays of the
British鈥攊s devastating. It is unsettling to see that the BSE scandal has
such a direct ancestor.

Greene is hard work, too. His argument that string theory unites the
classical and quantum theories that explain the structure of the Universe
demands your full attention. He rewards his readers with clear, unpatronising
explanations every step of the way. Yet again, Dormandy and Greene throw into
question what we mean by 鈥減opular science鈥�. For the past three years, the Dava
Sobel approach in Longitude鈥攕ingle story, driving narrative,
short book鈥攈as been much copied. Dormandy and Greene are both more like
elder statesmen: stately, thorough and demanding. You really need Dormandy鈥檚
footnotes and Greene鈥檚 diagrams to understand the arguments.

All the narrative drive that鈥檚 subdued in these two is very much there in
Naughton鈥檚 back-to-the-roots take on the Internet. I was surprised at how
interesting he made a topic that at first glance was apparently fit only for
anoraks. Beginning with radio hams, he sets the science鈥擟laude Shannon on
the physics of noise and Norbert Wiener, who invented cybernetics鈥攁nd the
technology in order.

Regarding the Net鈥檚 origins in Arpanet, Naughton reveals that it was created
to save money鈥攏ot, as legend has it, to withstand nuclear attack. The
defence interest was a beat behind the budget. Naughton is full of praise for
the Net鈥檚 pioneers, the students who sorted out early code for applications:
they worked in an open, 鈥渞eady-for-comments鈥� way. As he says, this has shaped
all our futures. That something many of us use every day is rooted in
meritocracy has to influence the way we work and think. Authority on the Net is
earned rather than awarded.

Struggles for authority pepper Wills鈥檚 book. In Wills鈥檚 view, changing
environments allow the diversity of the human genome full play. He begins by
tracing the evolution of humans鈥攁nd that鈥檚 where the battle begins. What
is a human? Why do chimpanzees show so little variation over 5 million years and
humans so much? Wills says there is something special about us, that we are not
as other animals when it comes to evolution. I found his answers provocative,
and fascinating to explore.

Ridley also focuses on the human side of evolution, but his approach is
unique. He picks 23 chromosomes and one by one explains what is known about
each. It鈥檚 an elegant framework for surveying modern genetics, even if it reads
like a collection of columns or short essays. It is also an excellent riposte to
the popular notion that there鈥檚 a single gene for everything from risky
behaviour to homosexuality. In his chapter on personality, for example, Ridley
uses the limits of Dean Hamer鈥檚 work to show up the limits of this idea as he
argues in simple steps from that mythical single gene to a clan of 500 or more
than might affect personality. 鈥淲e are all of us mutants,鈥� he says firmly. 鈥淭he
best defence against designer babies is to find more genes and swamp people in
too much knowledge.鈥�

A lot of what we do know about genetics鈥斺�漷he solid links鈥濃�攚as
discovered using that living test tube, the fruit fly Drosophila.
Weiner鈥檚 brilliant Time, Love, Memory shows how geneticists began to
dissect behaviour from the inside by manipulating the genes of the fruit fly. In
1991 Weiner read a paper that stunned him: cutting out a tiny piece of the fruit
fly鈥檚 genome could alter the sense of time. He spoke to one of the authors, who
turned out to have learned his trade from Seymour Benzer, a physicist turned
geneticist who had been working on genes in fruit flies since the 1960s. Weiner
planned a book about Benzer alone, but instead found himself writing up the 20th
century according to the fruit fly.

He鈥檚 a persuasive writer: just one more chapter, I kept thinking, and ended
up finishing the book at 2 am. Part of the book鈥檚 attraction is that Weiner has
a storyteller鈥檚 ear for anecdote. He tells of a fly room called Paradise because
it鈥檚 as balmy as the Bahamas, and of Benzer dissecting brains from a butcher鈥檚
shop鈥攖hen eating them. The title of the book turns out to be a reference
to the names of mutant Drosophila genes鈥攖ime,
love and memory. The first discovered was white. Now you
can order up flies that have fruitless, transformer, drop-dead,
sex-lethal or period genes. Ideas shuttle backwards and forwards
in these pages鈥攖he phage work that led to fruit fly genetics falls out of
fashion within the lifetime of one scientist, others discover early work that
was abandoned but is the key to research 60 years later.

Weiner鈥檚 book would win my vote for the prize, closely followed by Naughton鈥檚
Net narrative. But I was surprised by the shortlist itself. None of those short,
snappy popular science books made it onto the list. And who will win? Greene, I
expect鈥攑roper science, properly told. And nothing to do with biology.