A Sample Chapter From 'A Field Guide For Science Writers'
by Keay Davidson
Immediately after my first (and, so far, only) collaboration with a scientist on a popular science book, I vowed: "Never again. Next time, I go solo." Yet what have I to complain about? My co-author and I are still on speaking terms; our book was favorably reviewed and reprinted in numerous languages; we both made money.
Others have been far, far less fortunate. After lengthy reflection and discussion with other collaborators--some with Kafkaesque tales of woe, others with rosy memories of the happiest collaborations since the Lunts--I have amended my vow: "Next time, I go solo ... unless the money is right."
In co-writing, the frictionless collaboration is the exception, rather than the rule. A few years ago, the science writer Dava Sobel co-authored a book with astronomer Frank Drake, whom she found to be "absolutely wonderful to work with--a wonderful father figure." Even so, after publication she and Drake were "at a symposium and [science writer] Fred Golden walked up, put an arm around both of us, and joked: 'Co-authors still speaking to each other?' "
"I know some people who make their living doing collaborations," says Joel Shurkin, another science writer and author of numerous books, including two collaborations. "They either 'ghost' books for other people or they [share authorship] with a scientist. And in most cases that I know of, it's a very unpleasant experience because you've got two egos: All writers have egos and God knows, scientists have egos.
Still, many science writers are intrigued by the prospect of a book collaboration with a scientist. In theory, the ideal collaboration unfolds as follows: The writer buys a tape recorder and interviews the scientist who, with nothing better to do, spends weeks and months recounting wonderful stories about her or his career, discoveries, mistakes, encounters with the great and near-great, insights into the underlying unity of humanity and nature, etc. The writer gains vast knowledge of a scientific field. They become the best of friends; the writer is invited to all the right parties, where Nobel laureates trade gossip with NSF officials. Finally the writer rents a house in the Santa Cruz Mountains or the Adirondacks, brews a cup of espresso, sits down at the word processor and translates the scientist's tale into the vernacular--into the humble prose of the taxpayers who probably funded the research in the first place. The writer mails the manuscript to the scientist, who makes a few minor corrections and mails it back to the writer. Next stage: publication of the book, followed by a national publicity tour and a friendly review in the Sunday Times.
That's the dream, anyway.
Science writer Dick Teresi has had many happy collaborations, but he considers himself a lucky exception. "I've heard so many sob stories from other writers. [For most collaborators], you have to accept the fact that the best day of the relationship is the day you sign the contract. And it's going to go downhill from there."
By 1992, I had spent much of 20 years dreaming about writing a book. Thousands of pages had passed through my typewriter (and later, word processor), none of which ended up sandwiched between the covers of a book. Age 40 loomed, and I thought: Oh my God, I'm almost 40 and I still haven't written that book!
My break came that April, when I wrote a newspaper story about a historic discovery in cosmology, the science of the birth and evolution of the universe. Scientists detected "ripples" in the cosmic background radiation (CBR), the faint afterglow of the big bang that spawned our universe more than 10 billion years ago. Those ripples were the "seeds" of galaxies such as the Milky Way, a disk-shaped swarm of billions of stars, including our sun. I proposed a book on the discovery to an agent. He got excited and envisioned a potential international bestseller. But he didn't want me to write the book alone; he thought (correctly) that it would attract a much higher price if co-authored with the scientist who led the discovery team.
I agreed and contacted the scientist, George Smoot, a noted astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory near San Francisco who had overseen development of the key instrument--the Differential Microwave Radiometer--on NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite. George was amiable and agreed to a literary collaboration. We signed a contract with an American publisher, William Morrow, and eventually landed numerous foreign contracts. The Morrow contract required that we complete the book in six months--unusually fast--in order to cash in on the incredible publicity that George's discovery had spawned, as well as to beat any competing books into print.
I had already broken the first rule of a collaboration: Know your collaborator. I hardly knew George, and he hardly knew me. Worse, I had a good grasp of popular astronomy but knew little about CBR research.
I sensed trouble early on, right after we launched our collaboration, and George was still jet-setting around the country, starring at scientific conferences and giving television interviews to Ted Koppel and other talking heads. People magazine had named him one of the 25 most interesting people of the year. Interesting, yes--but comprehensible?
People's photographer only had to persuade George to don a pair
of Rollerblades and roll around Berkeley. I, in contrast, had to get George
to explain how he and his team had mapped the cosmic radiation, and in enough
detail--complete with anecdotes, jokes, words of wisdom, etc.--to fill a
commercially viable hardback book. This would take time, and time was scarce
for George. Everyone wanted to meet him--George Bush invited him to the
White House, Bryant Gumbel asked him about science and God on national television,
Jamie Lee Curtis introduced herself to him backstage at a talk show
In all the excitement, George tended to forget the mundane things, such
as spending time with his co-author on a book whose deadline was steadily
approaching. He neglected to read my chapter drafts, so months would pass
before I knew whether my writings were scientific gibberish. I cajoled and
pleaded with him to get down to business, to little effect.
Worse, George's scientific specialty is extremely complex, and he has trouble explaining it to laypeople. Early in our collaboration, I watched George's appearance on Dennis Miller's late-night talk show. Miller asked George an elementary question, and George cheerfully responded with a short lecture worthy of an advanced astrophysics colloquium. Miller gulped and said: "Dr. Smoot, I haven't any idea what you're talking about." The audience applauded. Fortunately this interview ran at 1 A.M., when most of the book-buying public is asleep.
Even so, knowing one's collaborator doesn't guarantee a smooth collaboration. Not by a long shot. One science writer, who requested anonymity, met a famous scientist and they became "instant friends." The writer profiled the scientist for a magazine. Years passed; they developed a warm relationship.
Finally the writer popped the question: Would the scientist like to collaborate on a book? The scientist made vague but agreeable-sounding noises. The writer commenced his research: "I flew up to [the university] and spent a few weeks up there with him, going through his material, of which there is a lot." They contacted an agent, who asked them to submit a book proposal, which is typically 10 to 25 pages.
All of a sudden the writer's dear friend, the famous scientist, was unavailable for help. "He hadn't a clue of what to do," the writer says. "I literally created an outline all by myself--I gave the chapters titles, invented the book's name .... What concerned me even at the outset was how uninvolved and uninterested [the scientist] seemed." The scientist glanced over the finished proposal and said it looked fine; he made no changes, offered no suggestions. Result: a six-figure deal with a major publisher.
For a year the writer struggled, almost alone, to write the book. The scientist virtually ignored the project--he offered few ideas, read few chapters. Eventually the writer generated "thousands of pages of raw material that was like wet clay unsculpted. I'm not exaggerating--thousands of pages, thousands! ... The book was a disaster."
After a year the publisher called: Where in the hell was the manuscript? By that time the writer was exhausted and disillusioned; he wanted out. He, the scientist, and the agent renegotiated the deal: The writer would continue helping with the book, but his name would be removed from the cover. In addition, the writer would receive a flat payment for services rendered--a few tens of thousands of dollars--and would receive no royalties.
Suddenly their relationship regained its former glow. "The minute I got my name off the book, [the scientist] changed. He started being much more agreeable to work with."
By this time you probably think I'm saying, "All collaborations are awful." Not at all. Teresi loved his co-authorship with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, a modest, bubbly quipster who has been called "a cross between Einstein and Mel Brooks." And Patrick Huyghe's collaboration with controversial space scientist Lou Frank on their book The Big Splash sounds a little like the imaginary ideal collaboration that I lampooned early in this chapter. First Huyghe read Frank's papers. Then Huyghe flew to the University of Iowa to interview Frank. Huyghe flew home, wrote draft chapters, Frank critiqued them, Huyghe made the necessary changes, Frank approved the final version, and Huyghe sent it to the publisher. And that was that. Total time spent writing the book: 10 months. Total shouting matches, nervous breakdowns, and contemplations of suicide: zero.
But for every Lou Frank, there's a scientist like the Nobel Prize-winner with whom Yvonne Baskin wrestled for a year. She's a distinguished science writer and the author of several popular science books, and her story serves as the ultimate cautionary tale for those who enter the uncharted waters of co-authordom. The scientist is now dead but, out of respect for his family, she asked that his name be omitted.
"This was a person who had shunned press interviews for 25 years," Baskin recalled. When she first tried to meet him, in order to interview him for a magazine, "he wouldn't speak to me at first; instead, I had to submit lists of questions and to agree that he would have final approval of the transcript .... Then, when I finally met with him, he wouldn't answer the questions on the list; instead he listed 'the questions that I should be asking him.'
"We ended up with this long, hellacious transcript, and I edited it into what I thought was an acceptable 'Q & A' for the magazine, then sent it to him for approval ... and he completely rewrote all the questions and answers and made a new transcript! It was like there had been no interview!"
That experience should have warned Baskin (by her own admission) that the Nobelist was bad news--definitely unfit for a collaboration. But a year later, she was surprised when this reclusive genius phoned and asked her to help him write his autobiography. Flattered, she agreed. The result was a six-figure contract and what, from any writer's point of view, was a year in hell.
She began in-depth interviews with him and quickly learned that this pivotal figure--a man who had risen to the top of his field, who in fact had revolutionized it, "could not remember any anecdotes. There was no day in his life that stood out clearly, no day about which he could say, 'That was one of the great days, and here's how that experiment went ...' All he could say was: 'I don't remember.'
"The hardest thing for me to admit was: It wasn't me. It was him. That's a frightening thing to realize partly because it means you have to admit it's over." She told the publisher the project was doomed. The contract was dissolved. It took her three years to repay her share of the advance.
Fortunate (Baskin observes) are the science writers allowed to go solo, writers such as Horace Freeland Judson (The Eighth Day of Creation) and Richard Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb). Unhampered by a co-author's personal agenda, they felt free to talk to anyone and to portray historic scientific events as they saw them. The result was two classic books.
"It's true that those books are standouts, and most of the time books without a celebrity co-author don't sell as well," Baskin adds. "But if you just want to make a lot of money, why write with a scientist at all? Why not write a book with the guy who got his penis cut off? Why not write with Kato Kaelin?"
But what if it's too late and you're already mired in a nasty collaboration? You may think the nightmare and the craziness will never end; you may contemplate changing your name, fleeing the country, or even suicide to escape the publishing Hades into which you have descended.
My advice is: Relax.
I shall never forget this moment: It was the last days of my collaboration with George, and I lay on the floor of my apartment, depressed beyond measure, staring out my picture window at a gray, wet January sky. I thought: I'm finished. The collaboration is over. The book stinks, and will probably be canceled. And if it isn't canceled, it will get terrible reviews.
If you are collaborating on a book, then in all likelihood you, too, will experience a similar melodramatic, self-pitying moment. (It's rather relaxing, actually. "The thought of suicide," said Nietzsche, "has gotten one through many a bad night.") When that moment comes, just remember that countless co-authors have traveled the same dark road--and survived it. In all likelihood, your career will not end, the gloom will soon lift, and your book will be published.
True, it may get terrible reviews. But you can't have everything.
Reprinted with permission from A Field Guide for Science Writers, edited by Deborah Blum and Mary Knudson, and published by Oxford University Press. Copyright Oxford University Press 1997.
Keay Davidson has been a science writer for the San Francisco Examiner since 1986. He has won the American Association for the Advancement of Science-Westinghouse science writing prize and the NASW Science-In-Society Award. He is co-author, with astrophysicist George Smoot, of Wrinkles in Time and author of Twister, companion book to the 1996 movie.