I’m a writer, both of non-fiction and (as yet unpublished) fiction. I have a website & blog called Kafka's mouse.
The main focus of my writing is how people use science to make sense of the world around them. Unfortunately, most discussions of the subject assume that there are (as CP Snow put it) two opposing cultures. In reality the two cultures are much closer to each other than most people think
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Doomsday Men
Since 2003, I’ve been researching and writing a major study of science and culture in the twentieth century. Doomsday Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon was published in the UK by Allen Lane in June 2007, and by St Martin's Press in the US in December. Doomsday Men is a cultural history of weapons of mass destruction, a subject that – despite the end of the cold war – remains very relevant in the post-9/11 era.
Superweapons were born in the minds of writers inspired by the possibilities of science. Scientists responsible for the twentieth century’s most terrible weapons grew up in a culture that dreamed of superweapons and Wellsian utopias.
In 1950, the Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on American radio: science was on the verge of creating a doomsday bomb. Humankind now had the power to end life on earth. The shockwave from his statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond. Szilard’s doomsday device – a huge cobalt-clad H-bomb – features in countless stories, films and articles, including atomic-war bestseller On the Beach by Nevil Shute and Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Although scientists said it was indeed possible to build the cobalt bomb, no superpower would admit to having created one. But the ultimate weapon, the dream of writers and scientists since the beginning of the century, remained a terrible possibility, striking fear into the hearts of people around the world. The story of the cobalt bomb is an unwritten chapter of the cold war, and it is now told for the first time in Doomsday Men.
Reviews
“an impassioned account of everything from the discovery of radioactivity to plans for a Doomsday Device (yes, there really were such plans) from an author who feels that to the generations growing up who see the Cold War only as something in history books, the true horror of nuclear weapons has been forgotten... Doomsday Men is ... important, and, depressingly, there is a need for it - people, especially younger people than me, ought to read it”. - John Gribbin, Literary Review, July 2007
"Weaving together biography, science and art, Smith has created a compelling history of physics in the 20th century... Smith's dynamic, riveting narrative reveals details of people, places and events that are rarely covered in textbooks, bringing to life not just scientists like Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Szilard, but the horrors of chemical and atomic warfare...Captivating and thoroughly referenced, this chronicle should interest a wide audience, from science and history buffs to armchair politicos." - Publishers Weekly, January 7, 2008
"chillingly compelling" - New Scientist, June 2, 2007
“British historian of science PD Smith masterfully chronicles the literary antecedents and cultural repercussions of the development of nuclear armaments… Doomsday Men offers a marvelous resource for understanding the issues and personalities underlying Kubrick’s masterpiece and other creative interpretations of the Cold War. From pulp science-fiction stories to Godzilla’s theatrical invasions, it is a veritable lexicon of atomic-age culture… It provides an outstanding guide to a pivotal era when humanity first faced the terrifying prospect of annihilation by its own hand.”
- Philadelphia Inquirer, January 28, 2008
“Doomsday Men is prodigiously researched, the author seeming to have read everything on nuclear strategy, both fiction and non-fiction” - Gregg Herken, Nature, 23 August 2007
"superb… The research is impressive, but it’s his eye for revealing anecdotes and his ability to distil it all into lively prose that makes this a real pleasure to read." - Sunday Business Post, June 17, 2007
“Doomsday Men doesn’t just deal with thermonuclear destruction. It’s a meticulous account of weapons of mass destruction and the science and scientists behind them. Indeed, it is two books for the price of one, because it is also a cultural disquisition. Smith scours fiction for visions of death rays and lurid imaginings of Armageddon to show how writers often preceded or influenced scientists. … always readable and entertaining … PD Smith deserves some sort of award for value for money”. - Tibor Fischer, Daily Telegraph, June 30, 2007
“Smith…puts science’s Faustian bargain through its literary paces”.
- Booklist, December 15, 2007
“The science is told with a Bill Brysonish kind of panache. But, at times, it becomes a cross between Bryson and Umberto Eco. There is a sub-narrative of esoteric knowledge and mysterious, astonishingly accurate predictions from HG Wells. Learned, accessible, and drawing occasionally on the stylistic skills of the novelist, this makes for a very good read.”
- The Church Times, November 23, 2007
“captivating…”
- Buffalo News (New York), January 13, 2008
“engaging, unsettling… Scientifically and culturally adept, Doomsday Men tracks the pursuit of devastating weaponry in both laboratories and pulp magazines. Smith’s wide-ranging book also serves as a biography of sorts of the scientist, writer and thinker Leo Szilard, who emblematizes science’s growing awareness of the consequences of its own thirst for knowledge. … Smith’s startling story chronicles the ways in which science divorced itself from humanity”.
- The Moscow Times, February 15, 2008
"... massive, but lively ... Smith's impressive research turns up innumberable end of the world thrillers... A competent history of WMDs combined with a captivating account of books and films that predicted their discovery..." - Kirkus Reviews
"...he puts the nuclear age into a new context, engagingly and even excitingly". - Financial Times, July 21, 2007
"This is the story of the men behind attempts to develop a superweapon - a weapon so utterly devastating that no force on Earth could overcome it... Doomsday Men is easy to read and gives a good insight into the personalities of some of the scientists involved in WMD."
- Frank Barnaby, BBC FOCUS Magazine, August 2007
"Smith entertainingly takes on Dr Doom and his colleagues, setting them in popular culture as scientific messiahs and madmen." - Times, June 23, 2007
"a chillingly compelling history of chemical, biological and atomic superweapons...Doomsday Men analyzes dozens of examples of how culture influenced science in the devising of superweapons...it successfully shows how and why superweapons have been simultaneously admired and reviled by both scientists and the public". - Andrew Robinson, Physics World, July 2007
“Less than a decade after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, total annihilation of the human race haunted the imagination of scientists and writers alike, a convergence that PD Smith chronicles doggedly in Doomsday Men“.
- New York Times, December 28, 2007
“Told largely from the viewpoint of the scientists devoted to turning the military’s demands into reality, PD Smith’s account is packed with striking anecdotes… this is a readable, informative work exploring why intelligent men worked on such insane projects”. -
Metro, June 13, 2007
"academic, entertaining, informing, thought-provoking" - InTheNews.co.uk, June 13, 2007
"Smith’s study is the gripping, untold story of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, which first came to public attention in 1950 when the Hungarian-born scientist Leo Szilard made a dramatic announcement on radio: science was on the verge of creating a Doomsday Bomb. For the first time in history, mankind would soon have the ability to destroy all life on the planet. The shockwave from this statement reverberated across the following decade and beyond."
- Christopher Coker, Times Literary Supplement, 8 August 2007
"[P.D. Smith] charts the ways in which science and science fiction interacted in a quest for Doomsday ‘superweapons’ in the 20th century. From HG Wells to Dr Strangelove and after, fiction has evoked weapons of mass destruction and their consequences, and created new horizons of possibility. Many scientists and policy-makers reacted to the possibilities, and from the First World War onwards, scientists worked with the military to produce the weapons and strategies that shaped the world in which we now live."
- BBC History Magazine, September 2007
"an illuminating, exciting and memorable read" - Flipside
Buy @ Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
Einstein
In 2003, I wrote an illustrated biography of Einstein. If you’re interested in the impact of science on culture, then you can’t ignore Einstein – a popular icon as famous as Marilyn Monroe or Mahatma Gandhi. As well as his revolutionary scientific ideas, he’s also such an intriguing character – an outsider in the scientific community, unconventional in his personal life, and unafraid to speak his mind on politics.
According to one review:
"Peter Smith writes with admirable simplicity about the space-time curve, the photoelectric effect and the equivalence principle. At the same time, he paints a picture of the great boffin as all too human. ..Relatively speaking, this is a marvellous book." – Christopher Bray, Daily Telegraph, April 30, 2005
Buy @ Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.
Other Writing
I write regular reviews for national newspapers and journals in the UK. Every couple of weeks I review two paperbacks, usually on science or cultural history, for the Guardian Review – so look out for them! I have written for the Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, History Today, The Independent, The Financial Times and The Times Higher Education Supplement. (Links below.) If you're an editor and you'd like me to write for you then please get in touch either through MySpace or my website, Kafka's mouse. If you're a publisher, I'm represented by Peter Tallack at the Science Factory (email: info[at]sciencefactory.co.uk).
Reviews & articles
Just Published
"A plague on all our houses", Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History, by Dorothy Crawford,
Guardian, December 8, 2007
The Portable Atheist, ed by Christopher Hitchens; Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm since Hippocrates, by D. Wootton,
Guardian, December 8, 2007
"Beep beep beep", Red Moon Rising, by Matthew Brzezinski; Iron Curtain, by Patrick Wright,
Guardian, November 17, 2007
Masters of rock: PD Smith on Ted Nield's Supercontinent, a book that shows us a world in which 250 million years is but the blink of an eye. Guardian, October 6, 2007
"The man beneath the electrified halo of hair": PD Smith on Walter Isaacson's sympathetic biography of Einstein, Guardian, August 25, 2007
Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism, by Erhard Bahr. Times Literary Supplement, August 17, 2007
Suffer & Survive is a wonderful new biography of physiologist J. S. Haldane by Martin Goodman. He saved thousands of miners' lives by teaching them to use a canary in a cage to warn of possible toxic gases. He also designed the first space suit - before the Second World War! Times, 4 Aug 2007.
Book of a Lifetime, PD Smith on Kafka's Josephine the Singer, Independent, 22 June 2007
Lots more of my work on my website.
