Ian Sample's MASSIVE has made it through to the final six for the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, described as an 'intensely rewarding and eye-opening' shortlist by the judges.

The other shortlisted titles are Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass, Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Wavewatcher’s Companion, Sam Kean's The Disappearing Spoon, Alex Bellos’s Alex’s Adventures in Numberland and Jon Turney's The Rough Guide to The Future (Rough Guides).

The acclaimed biographer Richard Holmes, chair of the judges, said: 'We judges, both scientists and non-scientists alike, found that we were frequently exploring unfamiliar territory with these books, and we loved every moment of it... We quickly lost our nervousness of subjects that were so eloquently and clearly explained, finding the experience intensely rewarding and eye-opening. We urge all readers to take that one step away from the shore, and dive into the thrilling and extraordinary world of science'.

The winner will be announced on 17 November, with each of the shortlisted authors receiving £1,000. This marks the start of a five-year sponsorship deal signed by the global investment company Winton Capital Management. The prize faced closure last year after attempts foundered to find a new sponsor after the French pharmaceutical company Aventis pulled out in 2007.

Creaking glaciers, whispering galleries, stalactite organs, musical roads, squeaking beaches, groaning waterwheels, frogs that croak in Mexican waves, Mayan pyramids that produce echoes that chirp like a bird – these are just a sample of the fascinating, strange and unusual sounds that the acoustic engineer Trevor Cox has tracked down in his search for the 'sonic wonders of the world'. His unique quest is the subject of LABORATORY OF SOUND, the UK & Commonwealth rights in which have now been bought at auction by Kay Peddle with Will Sulkin on behalf of Bodley Head (Random House).

The book explores how sound is made and altered by the environment, how our body hears, perceives and reacts to peculiar sounds, and how sounds and acoustics have inspired musicians, artists and writers. Ranging across a dizzying array of realms including literature, classical music, history, archaeology, psychology, neuroscience, geology, physics, biology and ecology, it is is an original and compelling tour of the worldʼs most amazing acoustic phenomena and the sometimes even stranger people behind them – and a passionate plea for a deeper appreciation of and respect for our shared sonic landscapes.

The book will be delivered at the end of 2012, with publication planned for Autumn 2013. Meanwhile, you can contribute to Trevor's continuing quest at Sonic Wonders. 

It has been a busy summer at the Science Factory, with three new book deals and one film option to report.

In the UK, Jim Baggott's new book FAREWELL TO REALITY: How Fairy-Tale Physics has Betrayed the Scientific Search for Truth has been signed up on proposal by Constable. In what promises to be a controversial work of popular science, Jim sets out to explains exactly what we do and don't know about the basic elements of physical reality – light, matter, force, space and time – before going on to argue that more extravagantly speculative ideas such as super-symmetric particles, superstrings, the multiverse, the holographic principle and the anthropic cosmological principle are at best thinly disguised philosophy and at worst pseudoscience or borderline confidence trickery. The book will include engaging portraits of many key figures of modern physics, including Paul Davies, John Barrow, Brian Greene, Stephen Hawking, Leonard Susskind and other 'high priests of fairy-tale physics', as Jim calls them. UK & Commonwealth rights were bought by Leo Hollis, with publication scheduled for Spring 2013.

There is more controversy in the works too with AFTERLIFE, in which Jo Marchant tells the previously untold story of the extraordinary search for Tutankhamun's mummy. She traces the mummy’s story from its first brutal autopsy in 1925 to the most recent arguments over its DNA and X-ray scans. By following events each time researchers open the coffin, she aims to get behind the stories constructed for TV documentaries and explain what science can and can’t tell us. She investigates the politics and arguments surrounding the studies of the battered remains and reveals the origins of today’s myths and stories about the ancient king – while providing a completely new perspective on archaeology and Egyptomania. Bob Pigeon secured World English rights for Da Capo Press in the US, which also published Jo's first book on the Antikythera mechanism.

Meanwhile, we are delighted to welcome to our ranks the acclaimed US science writer Lee Billings, whose FIVE BILLION YEARS OF SOLITUDE has been bought in a fiercely contested US auction by Current/Penguin. The book describes Lee's journey in search of other living worlds, not only covering the latest astronomical developments but also looking at what we know about the origins of our own planet and how life on it arose. In essence, it aims to do for living worlds – alien and terrestrial – and the scientists who study them what John McPhee did for the geology and geologists of North America. World English rights were acquired by Courtney Young, with publication again planned for 2013.

And it's destination stars for Piers Bizony and Jamie Doran's biography of Yuri Gagarin too, with film rights in their STARMAN optioned to Blue Ice Pictures on behalf of the writer and director Steven Silver (The Bang Bang Club).

We are delighted to announce that Ian Sample's first book, MASSIVE, has been longlisted for the Royal Society's Winton Prize for Science Books, an annual book prize that celebrates the best in popular science writing.

Over the centuries scientists have refined their understanding of exactly what makes up the universe. Since the 1960s the existence of different particles, each now thought to be fundamental, has been postulated and observed. So far physicists have seen 16 of them. The problem is that none of these particles confers mass on the others – yet we know from nature that something must do this.

The likeliest explanation is that there is a 17th fundamental particle that has not yet been seen. According to this theory, an invisible field fills the whole of space. When different particles interact with this field, they gain mass, much as anything moving through treacle gets slowed down by it. The larger the interaction, the more mass the particle would have. The proposal was first made in the 1960s by Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh. The Higgs field cannot be observed directly, yet, as with other fields, there should be a particle associated with it that can be detected. In this case, it is a particle called the 'Higgs boson' –commonly called the 'God particle'. Unfortunately no one has ever seen one.

That may soon change. In MASSIVE (Virgin/BasicBooks), Ian tells the story of the epic quest for the origins of mass that is about to reach its climax inside a particle accelerator deep  underground at CERN, the European Laboratory for Nuclear Research near Geneva. The most complex scientific instrument ever built, the Large Hadron Collider was switched on in September 2008 amidst a media storm. Shortly after, it was switched off again, owing to damage caused by a short circuit. The setback is painful and embarrassing for those involved, but scientists believe they will find the God particle now the machine has started working again – a hope boosted when in March 2010 it smashed the record for the highest energy particle collisions achieved in a laboratory.

Although this is the biggest scientific adventure of modern times, until now there has been no single sweeping historical narrative that brings together the science, culture and politics for the general reader. Drawing on his interviews with Peter Higgs and other scientists involved in the hunt for the God particle, Ian tells a dramatic and surprising story of radical new theories, ingenious technologies and chance events; of the clash of personalities and motivations; of close collaboration and intense rivalry; of big business, international competition and public fears. What's more, he also looks to the future, explaining the profound scientific, technological and philosophical implications of the discovery – be it one God particle, many different types, or none at all.

The Winton Prize judges praised the book as 'An exciting adventure through the world of the biggest subject in physics: the Higgs boson.' The Royal Society's science book prizes were originally established in 1988 with the aim of encouraging the writing, publishing and reading of good and accessible popular science books. The prize is open to authors of science books written for a nonspecialist audience. Books submitted for the prize must have been published for the first time in English during 2010 and be available to buy in the UK. The winner is selected by a judging panel which is appointed annually. They release a longlist of 12 books and a shortlist of 6 books on 27 September, before the winner is announced in October. The authors of the shortlisted books each receive £1,000 and the winner receives £10,000.