http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/tsfrss.xml THE SCIENCE FACTORY NEWS Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:17:32 -0500 en-gb http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=193 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=193 Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:00:00 -0500 No sign of the publishing world shutting up shop for the holidays at the Science Factory, which has recently concluded deals for Dan Clery's A PIECE OF THE SUN (the first popular account of fusion research and its hopes for the future – Overlook/Duckworth), Vaughan Bell's THE ENCHANTED WINDOW (on how hallucinations reveal the hidden workings of the mind and brain – Penguin), Simon Ings's eagerly awaited new novel DEAD WATER (set among the tramp lines and pirate syndicates operating on the In ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=192 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=192 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:00:00 -0500 Anil Ananthaswamy recently visited Google's San Francisco office to present his book THE EDGE OF PHYSICS. The event took place on 12 March 2010 as part of the Authors@Google series, and is now available online in this YouTube clip. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=191 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=191 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:00:00 -0600 Neville Moir at Polygon has acquired world rights in a trilogy of novels dramatizing the three wholescale revolutions in astronomical thought that have punctuated human history. The author is the acclaimed astronomy writer Stuart Clark, senior editor for space science at the European Space Agency and former editor of the UK's best-selling popular astronomy magazine Astronomy Now. The trilogy has already been sold to publishers in Greece, Korea and Japan, in deals totalling more than $100,000. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=190 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=190 Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:00 -0600 Nicholas Dunbar appeared on BBC Radio 4’s 'Today' programme on Monday, talking about Greece concealing its debt using derivatives. This was a story that Nick broke about six years ago on the same programme, and features in his forthcoming book, THE DEVIL'S DERIVATIVES – and has now become very topical. If you missed the Radio 4 interview, you can listen again below. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=189 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=189 Wed, 13 Jan 2010 04:00:00 -0600 Three new authors join the Science Factory at the start of 2010, with new deals for Michael Nielsen (REINVENTING DISCOVERY: How Open Science is Making Us Smarter, Princeton University Press), Georgina Ferry (ROUGH MAGIC: Shakespeare's World of Science; Bloomsbury) and Angela Saini (GEEK NATION: How Indian Citizens are Creating the World’s Next Science Superpower; Hodder). ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=188 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=188 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:00:00 -0500 The Science Factory is delighted to welcome two new science writers whose books have just secured deals with publishers in the US: Daniel Bor (consciousness) and Brian Switek ('missing links'). ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=187 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=187 Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:00:00 -0500 SciencePunk.com blogger and science writer Frank Swain's ZOMBOLOGY: The New Science of Zombies, Reanimation and Mind Control has just been sold to Oneworld. The book explores the 100-year scientific quest to control the bodies and minds of fellow humans, tying together seemingly disparate subjects from the most incredible annals of scientific literature – unsuspecting citizens dosed with zombifying drugs by secret agents; Soviet experiments in which organs are kept alive when separated from th ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=186 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=186 Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:00:00 -0500 Jo Marchant's Decoding the Heavens has been shortlisted for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Society on 15 September 2009 and awarded £10,000. For more details see Royal Society Science Books. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=185 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=185 Fri, 22 May 2009 18:00:00 -0500 Jo Marchant's Decoding the Heavens and Manjit Kumar's Quantum have both been longlisted for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books. The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 25 June 2009, and the winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Society on 15 September 2009 and awarded £10,000. For more details see Royal Society Science Books. Quantum has also been shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=184 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=184 Thu, 21 May 2009 18:00:00 -0500 Manjit Kumar's QUANTUM has been shortlisted for the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. The shortlist of six shows strong bias towards 'scientific discovery and scientific malpractice', according to the Guardian. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=183 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=183 Thu, 14 May 2009 09:00:00 -0500 Manjit Kumar's QUANTUM has been longlisted for the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. A strong scientific flavour dominates this year's candidates for the UK's most prestigious non-fiction award, with Richard Holmes, Ben Goldacre, Steve Jones, Patricia Fara and Elizabeth Pisani all in contention (among 19 authors in total). See here for more details. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=182 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=182 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:00:00 -0500 The Science Factory London Book Fair 2009 catalogue is now available as a PDF download here. The fair runs from 20 to 22 April, and the Science Factory will be representing its authors and titles at table 9R in the International Rights Centre. Full details of the co-agents who handle translation rights on behalf of the Science Factory can be found at the back of the catalogue. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=181 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=181 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:00:00 -0500 Profile Books have acquired a ground-breaking book by University of Kent social psychology professor Mark van Vugt and London Times science writer and journalist Anjana Ahuja that crosses business, psychology and current affairs in exploring the science of leadership. In HOMO ELECTUS: The New Science of Leadership, they reveal how and why leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years, and present a new ‘mismatch hypothesis’: that the slowness of evolution means that there is a disju ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=180 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=180 Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:00:00 -0500 A controversial new book arguing that the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder should be abandoned has been acquired by Anne Lawrance at Little, Brown in the UK and Lara Heimert at Basic Books in the US. For the past 20 years, the author, Stephen Joseph, has worked with survivors of trauma, most notably those of the 1987 Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster. During this time he and his colleagues have made a startling discovery. Hundreds of studies show that a wide range of events – f ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=179 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=179 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:00:00 -0600 Matthew Cobb's THE RESISTANCE: The French Fight Against the Nazis, to be published by Simon & Schuster in June 2009, has been condensed into a word cloud – all 145,000 words of it. Click here to see the result. Could this be the future of publishing? ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=178 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=178 Thu, 29 Jan 2009 04:00:00 -0600 Virgin Books have bought world English rights for a book on the epic quest to discover the origins of mass in the universe – a quest about to reach its climax in the LHC particle accelerator deep underground at CERN near Geneva. Ed Faulkner, editorial director, will publish MASSIVE: The Hunt for the God Particle as a major lead title in early 2010. Written by Ian Sample, an award-winning science correspondent at the Guardian newspaper in London, the book aims to do for particle physics what Mo ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=177 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=177 Wed, 21 Jan 2009 03:00:00 -0600 Jesse Bering has started a new column in Scientific American. So far he's looked at darwinian theories of religion, researchers who place their lives at risk in the name of science, why homosexual males navigate like women, and how dog owners can pick their pooch out of a lineup by smell alone. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=176 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=176 Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:00:00 -0600 Last year Jo Marchant made this video for New Scientist of a reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek computer that is the subject of her book Decoding the Heavens. It's also been posted on YouTube, where it has so far attracted nearly three-quarters of a million viewers. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=175 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=175 Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:00:00 -0600 In an auction just days before Christmas, Dean Buonomano's BRAIN BUGS: How Our Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives was sold to Angela von der Lippe at Norton. The author, a professor in the departments of neurobiology and psychology at the University of California Los Angeles, aims to provide a comprehensive tour of our mental glitches, examining their causes and consequences as well as providing insights into how our brains can be debugged. Addressing topics ranging from molecular receptors and nerve ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=174 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=174 Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:00:00 -0600 The Science Factory has just sold a landmark new book on intelligence to Yale University Press. In THE REASON MACHINE: How Intelligence Happens, John Duncan, a Cambridge cognitive neuroscientist and fellow of the Royal Society, provides a first-hand account of the search for the biological basis of 'general intelligence' that reveals what we actually mean by intelligence, how and why it happens and what this can tell us about ourselves. The book is based on the author's widely publicized finding ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=173 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=173 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:00 -0500 On the eve of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Science Factory has done a deal for a long-awaited popular science book by one of the world's most distinguished evolutionary biologists. Blind since early childhood, Geerat Vermeij is a MacArthur Fellow and recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal for 'extracting major generalizations about biological evolution from the fossil record, by feeling details that other scientists only see'. In THE EVOLUTIONARY WORLD, he shows ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=172 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=172 Fri, 26 Sep 2008 05:00:00 -0500 The Frankfurt Book Fair 2008 catalogue is now available as a PDF download here. The fair runs from 15 to 19 October, and the Science Factory will be there representing its authors and projects at table C5 in the Literary Agents & Scouts Centre (LitAg), Hall 6.2. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=171 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=171 Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:00:00 -0500 Barnes & Noble have chosen Michael Brooks's 13 Things That Don't Make Sense for an online Spotlight Review this week. Paul Di Filippo describes the book as "a fascinating and humbling perspective on humanity's vaunted scientific wisdom", adding that the chapters are "arranged with beautiful logic". "Concise historical backstory and vivid portraits of researchers offer a true sense of the Great Work of science and the still-murky dark corners of its realm", he says. The book was published las ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=170 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=170 Fri, 25 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0500 Bella Shand at Granta has acquired world English rights in a book that provides a radically new view of meteorites and their role in the evolution of life on Earth. In Incoming: Or Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Meteorite, the science writer Ted Nield shows that far from leading to pestilence, global holocaust and mass extinction, meteorites are coming to be seen as immensely useful messengers from the cosmos. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, scientists haven't identifie ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=169 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=169 Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:00:00 -0500 Deals for Jesse Bering's Under God's Skin have just been concluded with Nicholas Brealey Publishing for UK & Commonwealth rights and with Ediciones Paidos for Spanish rights. Nicholas Brealey is a London/Boston-based independent publisher of 'innovative books in business and economics, self-help and psychology, travel writing and crossing cultures', and Jesse's book will join their growing popular psychology list which includes such titles as Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness. Paidos is ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=168 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=168 Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:00:00 -0500 Agent Research and Evaluation has given the Science Factory 'full marks' in its July email newsletter, Talking Agents. Headed by husband-and-wife team Bill and Beverly Swerling Martin, this US-based consultancy assesses the strengths and weaknesses of agents on both sides of the Atlantic and helps writers to find effective literary representation. Peter Tallack recently talked to Bill Martin about the Science Factory, and Bill reports that he was 'very impressed'. He goes on to say, 'One group T ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=167 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=167 Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:00:00 -0500 Angela von der Lippe at Norton has acquired at auction North American rights in Jesse Bering's UNDER GOD'S SKIN: The Hidden Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life. In the book, Jesse examines how people's everyday thoughts, behaviours and emotions betray a default tendency to reason as though supernatural beings are deeply invested in their public lives and secret affairs. A lead researcher in the €2-million European Commission 'Explaining Religion' project, he also provides some ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=166 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=166 Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:00:00 -0500 Nicholas Dunbar's The Devil's Derivatives has been acquired at auction by Jacqueline Murphy at Harvard Business Press in the US and by Phoebe Clapham at Yale University Press in the UK. In the book, Nicholas tells the story of how innovation in the selling of financial risk spawned a culture of complexity and an illusion of consumer wealth. As well as showing how this triggered the credit crunch, he also explores what kind of financial system we should desire for the future. It's a story that Ni ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=165 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=165 Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0500 Bungeishunjue has acquired at auction the Japanese rights in Jo Marchant's forthcoming Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s Oldest Computer. The English Agency Japan represented the Science Factory in the negotiations. The book will be published early next year by Heinemann in the UK and Da Capo in the US. ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=164 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=164 Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:00:00 -0500 Congratulations to the journalist Mark Lynas, winner of the 2007 Royal Society Science Book Award for his book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Published by Fourth Estate in the UK and by National Geographic in the US, the book tracks what our planet may look like as it warms in the future, with each chapter upping the temperature by one degree. The £10,000 prize was awarded last night at the Royal Society in London. Lynas beat the Science Factory's own shortlisted writers – Stuart ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=163 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=163 Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:00:00 -0500 The End of Sex: The Quest for Reproduction without Men by the biology writer Aarathi Prasad has been bought by Marsha Filion at Oneworld in a World English deal for publication in Spring 2009. In this wide-ranging tour of the past, present and future of sex, Aarathi investigates how reproduction without sex is achieved in animals and explores why evolution hasn't made it an option for humans – yet. For as she puts it in, now that we have the competent hand of science in our lives, will girls s ... http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=162 http://www.sciencefactory.co.uk/content/news.php?nid=162 Fri, 16 May 2008 03:00:00 -0500 Stuart Clark's The Sun Kings and Ian Stewart's Why Beauty is Truth have both been shortlisted for this year's Royal Society Prize for Science Books. Also shortlisted are A Life Decoded by J. Craig Venter, Coral by Steve Jones, Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer and Six Degrees by Mark Lynas. The judges praised The Sun Kings as 'A real page turner which will open your eyes to the number of scientific discoveries throughout history that might have been lost. The real majesty and power of the su ...