THU 14 OCTOBER
Eureka Commissions
With Frank Cottrell Boyce, Adam Marek and Adam Roberts.
Contrary to popular belief, science can be considered as one long series of narratives - a patchwork of myth and anecdote, hypothesis and that all important 'eureka moment' upon which every breakthrough story turns. Comma Press, with support from the Institute of Physics, has commissioned a number of writers to re-visit some of these key 'eureka moments', to re-imagine and semi-fictionalise their point of discovery and challenge popular perceptions of how science works. The resulting anthology, Bio-Fiction, will be a sequel to Comma's highly acclaimed When It Changed project, and this event offers a sneak preview, with readings by Frank Cotrell Boyce, talking about the great Liverpudlian astonomer Jeremiah Horrocks ('the Keats of Astronomy'), Adam Roberts on Dark Energy and Adam Marek on echoes of the Big Bang.
Frank Cottrell Boyce's film credits include Welcome to Sarajevo, Hilary and Jackie, Code 46, 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story. In 2004, his debut novel Millions won the Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for The Guardian Children’s Fiction Award. His second novel, Framed, was published by Macmillan in 2005.
Adam Marek's debut collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma, 2007) was described by The Independent as 'Early McEwan meets David Cronenberg'. Earlier this year he was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Prize.
Adam Roberts is a novelist, critic and historian of science fiction. He has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
Feel free to cut down on the biogs or When It Changed ref.

SAT 23 OCT
Eureka Commissions
Featuring writers Stella Duffy, Simon Ings and Zoe Lambert, and scientists Tim O'Brien and James Sumner.
The history of science is often told through the shorthand of eureka moments, breakthroughs and bolts-from-the-blue that change the game, shift the paradigm. But like the theories they expound, they are themselves a kind of fiction, a useful apocrypha for symplifying a complex blend of calculated experiment and pure accident. Manchester's Comma Press has commissioned a series of short stories that semi-fictionalise such turning-points, and tonight presents a unique re-telling of three of them.
Simon Ings is a novelist and science writer whose six novels include Hotwire, Headlong, Painkillers and The Weight of Numbers. Stella Duffy is a prolific writer of crime, literary fiction and radio drama. Her novels include Singling Out the Couples, Eating Cake, Immaculate Conceit, State of Happiness, Parallel Lies, and The Room of Lost Things. In 2002 her story ‘Martha Grace’ won the CWA Short Story Dagger. Zoe Lambert's first collection, The War Tour is published this month.
Supported by the Institute of Physics.
Godlee Observatory, Sackville Building (former UMIST Building), entrance on Grandby Row (by the red rope sculpture).
7.30pm.

View Comma's previous events, 2002 to present: EVENTS ARCHIVE