The title is more wishful thinking on my part, but a girl can dream.

November is always a busy time for the various LabLit volunteers, but I am pleased to report that our LabLit List curator, Åsa, has finished scrutinizing and processing the massive pile of nominations that have accumulated over the past year. It was a big job, and we’re really grateful! It’s just down now to the team here at the LabLit nerve center to get it published. I can’t wait to see it all live on screen – it’s going to be amazing.

Today we’ve published another of our “Imaginary Cats” instalments by our very talented regular contributor Becky Nesbit: The golden ticket, a short story about GMO issues tearing a family apart. Do take a look!

This past week in London, the Fiction Lab book club at the Royal Institution in London had a very special guest, author Stephanie Bretherton, who came along to discuss her debut novel Bone Lines. This intriguing story is divided between two characters: an ancient female from the Paleolithic era, and the modern-day scientist who is studying her fossil remains. It’s always so wonderful when an author comes along to give us the inside scoop on writing their novel, and a truly engaging and insightful discussion resulted. We talked about whether scientist characters could be made more palatable by giving them a mystical side – I think the consensus was that (especially) for a non-scientist reader, this could indeed be a good strategy. We also discussed our favorite topic, the best ways to present scientific information in a work of fiction without treating the readers to a prose infodump. Bretherton had several interesting strategies we haven’t encountered before, including having her scientist protagonist take part in a TV documentary, and also writing letters to her hero, Charles Darwin.

Next month we’re going to get to grips with some early lab lit: Ann Veronica by H.G. Welles, which is about a feminist scientist in a man’s world*. If only the author were still alive to pop by Fiction Lab to tell us more!

*Sounds a bit familiar…ahem.