The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space A Collection of Stories

 

In stories by turns witty, accessible, fascinating, and deeply moving, Pippa Goldschmidt demonstrates her mastery of the short form as well as her ability to draw out scientific themes with humane and compelling insight. This collection allows readers to spy on Bertolt Brecht as he rewrites his play Life of Galileo with Charles Laughton after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It introduces Albert Einstein as he deals with the loss of his first child, Liesel. We meet Robert Oppenheimer scheming against his tutor, Professor Patrick Blackett, at Cambridge University, having fallen in love with Blackett’s wife. We also hear the story of a female university student starting a love affair with her lecturer paralleled alongside the "relationship" between Alice and Bob, two imaginary figures that symbolize the theory of relativity. These stories' scopes can be epic, at other times intimate, providing a forensic examination of relationships and the forces that influence them.

Pippa Goldschmidt has a PhD in astronomy and worked as an astronomer for several years, followed by posts in the civil service including working in outer space policy. She has written on astronomy for the New York Times. In 2012 she was awarded a prestigious Scottish Book Trust/Creative Scotland New Writers Award. Her novel The Falling Sky was runner-up in the Dundee International Book Prize.