Are Angels OK?
The Parallel Universes of New Zealand Writers and Scientists
Edited by Paul Callaghan and Bill Manhire
To be launched 31 May and in bookshops 2 June 2006
NZ rrp $29.95
Are angels OK?’ asked Bill the poet.
‘Angels are just fine,’ said Paul the physicist.
And thus began an extraordinary blind date
between New Zealand writers and physicists.
In this remarkable book, ten leading New Zealand writers (with some help from leading New Zealand scientists) wing their
way through:
the sandpile phenomenon . the curvature of space time . wave particle duality . the untimely death of Schrödinger’s cat
. Elsewhen . Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle . dark energy . entropy . the arrow of time . quarks . anti-matter . The
Death of the Sun and The End of the Universe . . .
The resulting poems, cartoons and short fictions by
Catherine Chidgey * Glenn Colquhoun * Dylan Horrocks * Witi Ihimaera * Lloyd Jones * Elizabeth Knox * Margaret Mahy *
Vincent O’Sullivan * Chris Price * Jo Randerson
form a provocative and fascinating reader for science and non-science buffs alike. Since Einstein’s time the world of
physics has become a strange, fantastic and sometimes disturbing place – potentially a rich domain for philosophers and
artists, the results of these science/literary and artistic collaboration prove this point.
New Zealand launch
The writers – as well as project directors Bill Manhire and Paul Callaghan – appear at a special one-off event chaired
by broadcaster Kim Hill where we’ll find out, over a glass of wine, why our writers and scientists do indeed live in
parallel universes.
7.30pm, 31 May 2006, Paramount Theatre, Wellington
$12 tickets from http://www.paramount.co.nz or 04 3844080
Please contact Heather McKenzie at VUP for media comps.
UK tour
Witi Ihimaera, the author of “Whale Rider”, comedian Jo Randerson, physicist Paul Callaghan FRS, and New Zealand’s top
radio broadcaster, Kim Hill, present this unique Are Angels OK? sci-art project to the Cheltenham Science Festival as
well as audiences in Cambridge and London in June. For more information about the UK tour please contact the Royal
Society’s Glenda Lewis glenda.lewis@rsnz.org
Ends