Me, me, me

Well, what do you expect in a blog, after all? Here, then, is some blatant advertising of forthcoming events at which I’m speaking or participating. I’ve been trying to rein back on this kind of thing, but seem to have acquired a cluster of bookings in the near future.

You’ve already missed the seminar on new materials at King’s College, London, on 12 May – a very interesting collection of people assembled by Mark Miodownik, whose Materials Library is a very fabulous thing to behold. I hope to post my talk on my website soon.

On 27 May I am talking about my book Universe of Stone at the Hay Festival. And it seems that I’ll be participating in a discussion about science books for Radio 4’s Material World, which will be recorded at Hay the previous day. The other panellists are Sir David King and Steve Jones.

On 28 May I will be chairing a public discussion on synthetic biology at the Science Museum’s Dana Centre, called ‘Making Life’.

In June I have what is looking ominously like a residency at the Royal Institution, starting with a discussion of my novel The Sun and Moon Corrupted at the newly launched RI book club on 9 June. I will be coming along to face the critics after the discussion – do come and be gentle with me.

The following Monday, 16 June, I will be attempting to persuade the RI audience why human spaceflight is seldom of any scientific worth and is best left to private entrepreneurs (see here). The counter-argument will be ably put by Kevin Fong of UCL.

Then on 10 July I’ll be talking at the RI about my book Elegant Solutions, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, which looked at the issue of beauty in chemistry experiments (details here). This is an event organized to mark the book’s receipt of the 2007 Dingle Prize for communicating the history of science and technology from the British Society for the History of Science.

Then I’m having a holiday.