Pretty well all authors have a boasting shelf (though, of course, we don't call it that) - the shelf at home with a copy of our book(s) on. Preferably on display to the world. I'm rather chuffed as mine has just filled shelf four. Of course the purist might moan that surely lots of these are the same book. But I think it's legitimate to include translations, different formats (e.g. hardback and paperback), new editions with totally different covers and ARCs. It might seem like self-indulgence, and it probably is. But I think it's something more, which is why I'm respectfully asking you not to disrespect it. Often, writing a book is a bit of a damp squib of an experience. A new author might think that once the book is published they will see it in all the bookshops, and reviewed in all the important newspapers and such, while in reality it's pretty common that a book comes out and... nothing much happens. So the physical reality of the boasting shelf,...

Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder for drawing to my attention the little video below, asking people (in Germany) what light is. As a physicist, she was disappointed that most people don't realise that their idea of light was wrong. But as a science communicator, I find it neither disappointing nor surprising. Let's unpick that. Is it surprising? Well no, not really. Although there might be passing mentions of photons at school, on the whole light is still solidly presented as a wave, certainly in the UK national curriculum. So I wouldn't at all be surprise by people saying it was waves. Equally I wouldn't be at all surprised by people saying particles thanks to popular science, or, for that matter, saying that they hadn't got a clue. As for disappointed, I really don't think we can be, because of the way scientists use words, something I'll come back to in a moment. I ought to clarify that arguably the best answer is that light is light. It isn't an...

The trivial answer, is 'Yes, move on.' But there is a bit more to the question 'Is it really 20 years since Windows 95.' I was present at the UK launch of this radical update of the world's favourite (ahem) operating system, in its time as significant a step forward as the move to Windows 8/10. At the launch, as a very newbie tech journalist, I was sat next to the technology editor of the Sun and surprised to discover that he wasn't a cockney wideboy obsessed with topless women, but an urbane and interesting chap. However, the reason the Windows 95 launch was so significant, apart from being the origin of my now rather decrepit shoulder bag (above), is that it emphasizes how much the world has changed in those 20 years. Part of the Windows 95 launch was something called MSN - the Microsoft Network, now only really exists in the psyche in the form of MSNBC. This was a mechanism for Windows users to interact - a competitor to AOL, Compuserve and Apple World....

It'll do me A fair number of my friends are what you might call coffee snobs. But although I like drinking coffee, I must be the coffee equivalent of a lager drinker - hence I offer the term 'coffee yob'.  It starts when people tell me I shouldn't drink coffee from Starbucks*, or Costa, because the coffee is so much better at Café Extreme (or whatever) where the beans hand ground with a pencil sharpener in darkened cellars in winter (or something). First confession. It all pretty much tastes the same to me. I can tell the difference between a McDonalds style automated machine and a proper coffee made on a bar device, but that's about it. No point offering me your premium special roast single bean coffee as an optional extra - I can't tell the difference. But it gets worse. I can only cope with one cup of 'real' coffee a day. (I should say, one American style mug. I much prefer real coffee in French café crème size cups, of which I can manage se...

Fans of Gene Wolfe's fantasy writing will recognise distinct echoes of what I'd regard as his masterpiece,  There Are Doors,  in this recent novel, The Land Across . In There Are Doors,  the protagonist travels to an alternative universe, a place where his interactions with women dominate what happens to him, where something he carries in his pocket is both very strange and essential to the plot. In The Land Across , the protagonist, a travel writer, takes the train to an ex-Soviet bloc country which no one really knows about, existing separate from our world like an alternative universe, a place where his interactions with women dominate what happens to him, where something he carries in his pocket is both very strange and essential to the plot. That doesn't make it in any way a copy of the earlier work, but the similarities are striking. I don't think this is as good a novel as There Are Doors , but it certainly has plenty of interesting features. If you do...

Like every other writer I've ever spoken to, I suffer from the urge to procrastinate. I will do almost anything in the morning (like writing this blog post) to avoid getting down to working on one of my books. And, let's face it, we've never had more ways to put off writing and to distract ourselves. (Facebook, anyone?) So I was genuinely interested to see the results of a survey (the website it's published on calls it a study, but that's a bit strong) of 2,000 writers, listing the top tips for getting around procrastination. There are quite a lot of references in the article to 'writer's block'. I'm not sure this really exists - if you need to write, you will write; if you don't need to write, don't bother. But you can ignore that, because most of the tips apply just as well to everyday (and, boy, do I mean every day) procrastination. You may find a lot of the suggestions are fairly familiar or obvious - break it into chunks, force ...

I'm a big Neil Gaiman fan, so I bit the bullet and went for the hardback of his latest collection of short stories. The general opinion of the publishing industry is that short story collections don't sell, so they're hard to come by, which is weird, as so many people profess to like them - but presumably most don't buy them. Even so, big namers like Gaiman and Gene Wolfe can break through the accountants' iron grip and get them to print. And that's a good thing as such collections can be remarkable. As usual with Gaiman it is a positive smorgasbord of different styles, featuring a few poems (my least favourite of the content) jostling with a host of short to medium length stories that encompass science fiction, fantasy and horror. There's even a Doctor Who story, featuring the Matt Baker incarnation. My favourite was a longish story featuring the character Shadow from American Gods , but the range is excellent,  both because it means that even if you do...

When I relaunched www.popularscience.co.uk a while ago because I was having so much trouble with WordPress, I made the difficult decision of dropping children's science books from the site. Although we'd tried to cover them in the past, they always took second place, and I felt we couldn't do them justice. One side effect of this is that, while the site continues to cover the adult Royal Society Prize for Science Books, the prize for books aimed at young people is now ignored - so I thought I'd give it a mention here. The shortlist has just been announced with suitably impressive sounding contenders: 365 Science Activities,  Various Authors (Usborne) The judges said: “Children are hard-wired to do experiments, to handle things with their own hands, to get a feel for how things work and why they work. This book is a wonderful resource for children who want to create their own experiments and find out more about how everything around them works.” Frank Ei...

It looks like I'm not alone in this (admittedly unlikely to be unbiassed) poll from Metro One of the first front page stories about the new government was one that suggested that the BBC licence fee was under threat, as John Whittingdale, the new secretary of state for culture, is known to have concerns about it. Some of the headlines were along the lines of 'War on the BBC!' This is arguably overblown, but there is no doubt that in the decennial (there's a word you don't get a chance to wheel out too often) review of the BBC's charter, starting soon, there will be various aspects of its work and funding that are challenged. Whether or not this is because the Conservatives and the right-wing media traditionally consider the BBC to have a left-wing bias, it is going to happen. I ought to spend a moment on that bias claim. It's a classic example of something that is both true and isn't, as things can be in the real world. As this Guardian piece p...

A couple of times recently, for boring technical reasons, I haven't been able to use my Sat Nav and instead used my phone for GPS navigation. The software was fine, but the problem I faced was keeping the thing somewhere it could pick up GPS satellites and I could see it if necessary. Luckily, one of my daughters had left an old car phone mount lying around the house. The theory was good - a sprung clamp held the phone in place and the thing attached to the windscreen with a suction cup. But the practice wasn't so good. Because the arm was long, the phone wobbled up and down with every little bump we came across, and though all seemed well for about an hour, the mount would then, at random (and usually during a difficult manoeuvre like going around a roundabout) fall off the windscreen, sending my precious iPhone plunging towards the floor and my leaving me navigationally challenged. Dismissing the old device, I've now got hold of something significantly better. Apart...

I am getting the teensiest bit irritated with people moaning that the general election last Thursday wasn't fair. Actually I am furious. We have everything from people whingeing on Facebook to violent protests all with the same message - that the outcome of the election wasn't fair. But what do they mean by 'wasn't fair'? All too often what they mean is 'Whoever I voted for should have won the election.' This clearly isn't democracy, it's dictatorship. Like it or not, the election was fair given the election system we have - it reflected the public's opinion, given that system. 'So the system's wrong!' said moaners and protestors shout from the rooftops. 'Give us proportional representation, so we can oust those hated Tories.' But here's the thing. I voted for PR in the referendum. (OK, technically AV is only semi-PR, but probably the best compromise.) Did all the people who are complaining? If everyone who wanted t...

I have to admit straight away that I am a big fan of Jon Ronson's books. Combining the wide-eyed innocence of Louis Theroux with what seems significantly more of a conscience, Ronson wanders through a topic like America's psy-wars, terrorists or psychopaths in a way that manages to get some serious points across in a humorous and immensely readable way. Not to mention persuading a surprising range of people to be interviewed. This meant that I rushed out and bought his latest as soon as I could... and I 'm just a touch disappointed. Arguably this is simply due to the huge expectations from previous books. I think the problem is that the topic here - public shaming, primarily via social media - is less dramatic and more appealing to a relatively small audience. Because, like it or not, the Twittersphere may think it is the world, but in reality it's only a tiny part of it. So, for instance, I had only vaguely heard of what's probably the biggest topic in the bo...

I have a confession that will make most authors' lib people - you know, the ones who unfriend you on Facebook if you confess to buying anything from Amazon - quake in their sandals: I find independent bookshops intimidating. I don't like their often dark, claustrophobia inducing interiors, and I don't like being talked to by staff. (Please note, Mary Portas, who regularly advises that good customer services involves welcoming customers and trying to help them. I don't want to be chatted to by a stranger. I'd rather help myself. If I want assistance I will ask for it. If your staff approach me, I will leave without making a purchase.) So it was with some nervousness that I entered the Mad Hatter Bookshop in the pretty (or to put it another way, Cotswold tourist trappy) location of Burford, surprisingly close to my no-one-could-call-it-tourist-trappy home of Swindon. But I'm glad I did. I was even glad to be welcomed as I came in, though I admit if other sh...

The first association many of us may have with marine biologists ( stereotype alert ) is that they only do it to get paid beach holidays in exotic locations, but at April's Guardian Science Communication Masterclass* I met Tom Evans, who is using his blog in an innovative way to get across what's new and interesting in his field. He is hosting a regular hot marine biology news award. The traditional approach, used by both science bloggers and the likes of Physics World is to do a regular roundup of interesting science stories. This is fine, but hardly original. Tom is essentially doing the same in his Beneath the Waves offering, but as well as giving edited highlights of what's interesting from the past fortnight, he gives readers the opportunity to vote for the (entirely nominal) Beneath the Waves Award . It's not a big change, but somehow it makes the whole thing significantly more engaging. Of course all the research is valuable, and there is the argument tha...

A more representative House? In yesterday's paper there was a report of a poll saying that in the face of another no-overall-majority election, over 60% of respondents would prefer a proportional representation system. (Where were they when we voted on it?) Yet many European countries manage quite happily with coalition after coalition. Why do we find them so difficult to deal with? My suspicion is it's a matter of architecture. Specifically, the psychological impact of the layout of the House of Commons. Most parliaments are laid out in a curve, but by putting the two biggest parties directly facing each other, there is a requirement that we don't consider what would arguably be the only coalition that could genuinely argue that it had popular support - a Conservative/Labour coalition. I know at this point supporters of both parties are probably falling to the floor and frothing at the mouth, but in many respects the parties aren't hugely distant, and a compr...

As anyone in the final week before an election knows, statistics are easy to misuse, whether accidentally or intentionally. It really quite saddens me to see friends, who know enough science not to massage figures to present the case they want, cherry picking, mislabelling and generally giving statistics as much mangling as they like as long as it shows the opposition in a bad light (it's odd, but they much more often seem to use stats to show how another party is bad, rather than the positives of their favoured party). Occasionally I point out one of these errors, but this tends to get me labelled an enemy of the cause, so it probably isn't worth it. However, there's another example of statistics being manipulated where I shouldn't feel the wroth of political sensibilities, and that is on the matter of lotteries. For some reason those with a scientific bent love to produce a flurry of probabilities that show how entering lotteries is for suckers, because the odds...

Experimental carbon capture panel For the last few years we've put climate change on a back burner because of the financial crisis. But it is not going to go away. The Green Party wants us all to abandon the use of oil and gas to move to low carbon sources of energy generation like wind and solar (they conveniently forget that nuclear is low carbon). However, like most of the Green Party's manifesto, this is a desire based more on hope than an understanding of human beings. Frankly, a much better way of getting people to do the right thing than forcing the hair shirt option on them is to make it easy. So, for instance, I would leap at having an electric car as a runaround if you could buy a Leaf or a Zoe for the price of an Aygo. But charge three times as much and I'm not going to be in the queue. When it comes to power generation from oil and gas (and even, dare we mention it, coal), the Cinderella technology is carbon capture and storage (CCS). The developers of C...