Science and fiction

People often ask fiction writers where they get their ideas from. When I am writing I have absolutely no idea where the ideas come from, it's only afterwards - sometimes some considerable time afterwards - that I can make connections with events, or people, or conversations that have somehow become lodged in my brain. Usually these merge and emerge in a way that is so different from the original spark that only I would see any connection. So when I was asked to write a piece of fiction that made some connection with science I decided just to see what happened, rather than consciously writing a story based on a piece of Relu research. But because the programme is as much about people as research, I soon found that the story I was writing seemed to fulfil the brief quite effectively. In an era of climate change, what if......? You may read the story at http://celebrating-science.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-if-by-anne-liddon.html