Science Writing

Partly for professional reasons—the need to inform myself about West Nile Virus and the possibility that Avian Flu will emerge in lethal and pandemic form any minute now, and will possibly enter the United States via California, possibly in wild birds—I’ve been reading about epidemics.

John Barry’s The Great Influenza is an excellent read not just about the horrifying events of 1918 but about the emerging field of medicine in the U.S. My grandfather got this flu when he was a quartermaster in the Canadian Air Force, but his letters mention it only obliquely (“I had a mild case, unlike some of the others”—for “some of the others,” read “poor bastards writhing in cyanotic agony, blood streaming from their eyes and ears,” but you don’t write this in letters home to mother, especially when said letters are censored. It’s extraordinary how little has actually been written, fictionally or otherwise, about this pandemic given how many millions of people it affected.). Then, while I was in L.A. a couple of weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Mike Davis’ new Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu.

Both these writers are journalists and have written a lot about non-scientific subjects. Yet the way they both approach science is inspiring to me: it’s hard to make a virus with codenames such as HPAI H5N1 interesting, but Davis has written a searingly compelling book. So has Barry.

I want to write like this. I want to take a subject about which I know ostensibly little, research it, and write like this. I wish I knew how to start. (Of course the way to start is to start, and there are lots of reasons for not starting such as I’m working 50-60 hours this week and so on, but still.) Anyone have any suggestions?