Click to buy the books!The pairing is perfectly suitable, though. Both of these books are woven through with M-theory.
If you want to know about M-theory, go do some reading up. Undoubtedly some bloggers more scientifically-educated than I am have discoursed on it at great length. (It's some pretty cool stuff. Such as: All possible universes could exist, and we just happen to be in the one where we exist. It makes our very existence at once inevitable and awe-inspiring.) And, you know, Hawking's book is eminently readable, even for the not-at-all scientifically inclined. He sticks true to the formula stated in his A Brief History of Time: for every mathematical equation included in the book, his sales would halve. So he keeps it in the vernacular, with lots of pretty pictures.
Actually, for a novel, Skippy Dies handles the potentially-sticky subject quite deftly, too. If you believe that stories should be about the more tangible and more emotional aspects of life, then you haven't read about how M-theory (and astrophysics in general) can affect the life of socially-excluded teenage boys.
The point of this rambling is that, whatever the definition of art, if it contains beauty, then it can (and should, and does) encompass the creation of the universe and the meaning of life and other such important things in mathematical terms as well as the philosophical, religious, and emotional ones we're so familiar with. Theoretical science can be as poignant as a master painting, a deer grazing grass, or the heart broken by first love. When Murray and Hawking get their hands on M-theory, they evoke it with the same passion they clearly feel for the subject and thus bring forth its inherent stellar beauty.
I will always list Paul Murray as one of the all-time brilliant YA writers! His choice to parallel the complexities of M-theory with life and love in the teenage world was a sincere nod to the complexities inherent in growing up in a cyclone of stimuli and what-shall-I-be possibilities -- a lot like the possibilities inherent in string theories. Are we open strings, (incomplete, searching, lonely, and completely able to disrupt the worlds), or are we closed circuit strings, complete and without means to disrupt the universe?
ReplyDeleteThat kind of respect for growing up is rarely seen in YA books and I think contributes to Murray's unexpected success among YA audiences!