FRANK SWAIN is a freelance journalist and science writer living in London. Born in 1982, he graduated from the University of Wales, Bangor in 2003 with a BSc in biology before studying for an MSc at Cranfield University. In 2006, he created SciencePunk.com, a website devoted to the weird and wonderful fringes of science ('Spiky and amusing sceptical blog, with a focus on the politics of science and popular culture', The Times). It attracted 2.5 million hits in its first year and more than 10 million in the next. In 2008, he was recruited by Sense About Science, a London-based charity set up to promote evidence-based science in public discussion. He has contributed to a wide range of publications, including the Guardian’s science blog, and now writes for the NYC-based Seed Media Group on their ScienceBlogs website. He has also discussed science on national television and radio, and at the BA Festival of Science, the University of Cambridge, and the Secret Garden Party festival -- and put on music nights, made zines, hosted a radio show, stage-managed burlesque performances, worked the door of a club, and generally tried to be a force for good. ZOMBOLOGY is his first book.

 

Links

Frank Swain's website

ZOMBOLOGY
The New Science of Zombies, Reanimation and Mind Control

From commonplace zombie animals in your back garden to military mind manipulation of humans, ZOMBOLOGY explores our hundred-year scientific quest to control the bodies and minds of fellow humans. It is packed full of previously untold stories from the most incredible annals of scientific literature: animals brought back to life; unsuspecting citizens dosed with zombifying drugs by secret agents; Soviet experiments in which organs are kept alive when separated from the body; microbes that can cause insanity; parasites that can manipulate their hosts in startling ways, forcing unnatural behaviours, sex changes and suicide; the burgeoning black market in cadavers; how to design the perfect plague; and how, despite our supposed intelligence, we all remain extraordinarily susceptible to manipulation.

But unlike any other book on attempts by humans to influence each other, ZOMBOLOGY plots a course into the highly unsettling territory where human mind control is orchestrated from within by tiny pathogens, and worse still, by nothing at all -- where the architecture of the brain itself and the world around it interfere with rational thought. In this way it ties together disparate subjects from the trypanosome parasites of South America to interrogation techniques in Iraq, from psychologists reducing crime through urban design in Manchester to doctors treating schizophrenia with antibiotics in Ethiopia. It reveals the advances in medicine and technology that are making Hollywood fiction a reality. And it deals with the questions raised by these advances: When is someone truly dead? What is the legal status of someone who has died but lives on? And if parasites can bend minds, encouraging impulsive or even violent behaviours, could those infected be acquitted in a court of law?

Entertaining, eye-opening and mind-bending in its own right, ZOMBOLOGY concludes by reminding us not only that we can be taken over by other organisms, but also that such a thing might have already happened without our knowledge. Perhaps what we consider our own identity might be a chorus of voices, only one of which is human. Quite apart from being surrounded by zombies, are we zombies ourselves?

Publisher: Oneworld
Delivery: December 2010
Publication: Autumn 2011
Status: Proposal and sample chapter
Length: 70,000 words

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