Asimov's New Guide to Science

"Yes. This was a tip-off from an interview for this site with Alec Nevala-Lee . He pitched it so well that I was immediately sold: “It essentially covers all of science.” He wasn’t kidding. The contents page is amazing: a series of headings like “The Particles,” “The Waves,” “The Atmosphere,” “The Microorganisms,” “The Machine”… Now, it was written in 1984, so it is of course not up to date. But it begins from the beginning, so that’s still a lot of human curiosity and ingenuity to cover. This is my favourite thing about it – he walks you through each topic in order of discovery, explaining what the question or problem or prevailing belief was, and how the breakthroughs came about. I was struck immediately by the opening of his first chapter, “The Universe,” in which he points out that the sky doesn’t look all that far away, and walks you through early theories about the firmament in a way that makes you realise how utterly reasonable they were. It’s a great book for awakening your scientific curiosity, and your appreciation for what an incredible edifice of knowledge we’ve built, from a world that reveals so few of its secrets intuitively or to the naked eye. Oh, absolutely. It’s up there with his novel writing. And you can see why. I’m not saying you’ll be able to charge through all 800-odd pages in one sitting, but it is clear and fascinating, and picking out a chapter for a train ride or a leisurely morning is well worth your time. And if you want to then go and read about the developments since 1984, you’ll have a really solid foundation – not just what we already knew where Asimov leaves off, but how we knew it, and what questions we were still grappling with. You become part of the quest."

"Asimov was one of the first real prolific science popularisers, in my opinion—though there were others, like Carl Sagan . Asimov is probably most well-known for his science fiction stories and I’ve got many of them. I used to browse quite a lot of bookstores in those days, because you didn’t have the internet. When I was studying for my degree in chemistry at the University of Manchester, I came across Asimov’s Guide to Science . There was something about becoming a student, a science student, you get to that stage in your development—you’ve done A Levels, you cover a wide range of subjects (I’d done Maths, Physics, and Chemistry) but when you get to university you really are then starting to specialise. It’s almost like putting your head above the parapet. You start to get very deep into a particular subject. There was part of me that, in an odd way, didn’t want to lose a connection with physics and biology. There was never going to be time to drill deep into these subjects in a research sense, or even in a degree sense, but I wanted to stay in contact with them. I wanted to stay in touch with them and I wanted to be familiar with them. Asimov’s Guide to Science was a great way of doing that. He was a great writer. No. His book is more of a compendium. The first volume is the physical sciences. He’s got sections on what is science, the universe, the earth, the atmosphere, the elements, particles, waves, machines, the reactor and nuclear physics. He’s got different topics but effectively it’s an exploration of all of the different aspects of science that touch on that. The second volume is the life sciences—biology, evolution, microbiology and so on. Yes, it is. It’s very much written for the layman. You have to bear in mind that it’s outdated. It was first published back in 1972. I know, however, that it’s been republished. I’ve seen it recently on bookshelves in bookstores. For me, it’s still well worth having a look at. If you just want a broad introduction—on the understanding that the world of science has moved on quite a bit since those days—then it’s a really good place to start. I would agree with that."

"So I did have to just pick one out of hundreds, and this is one that is on my shelf. This was originally published under the title The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science , which was not Asimov’s title. He didn’t really like it, and then, as he revised it later on, he called it Asimov’s Guide to Science . And finally, Asimov’s New Guide to Science . It essentially covers all of science. It is 900 pages long, and it was as complete a guide to the sciences as one could buy in 1984, which is when it came out. The first reason I wanted to talk about it is that if you’re curious about science, there’s a massive amount of material here that you’ll find interesting. But to me, it also testifies to his talents. I recently finished a book that is a biography of Luis W Alvarez, who was a Manhattan Project physicist, another fascinating figure, and it required me to learn a lot of physics. That’s not really my background, and this was my first full-on science biography. So I would often encounter a concept I didn’t know well, or where I needed a refresher. And honestly, the first thing I did was look at what Asimov wrote – because I know it’s going to be accurate, I know it’s going to be clear and easy to understand, and I know it’s going to be fun to read. So even though I have access to forty ensuing years of science popularisations, I come back to this book a lot, because he really was something special when it came to explaining things to people. I was struck by this fact – that despite the fact that I have access to all kinds of resources to write a book about science, Asimov was still the best explainer when it came to this material. And there’s Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare , Asimov’s Guide to the Bible … I mean, there are very few topics where there’s not a book he wrote, that you could read and learn a lot from and have a good time doing it."