Through The Sandglass

Death in the dunes and the Navajo creation legend.

Ralph Bagnold, the man who figured out how deserts work, was a brilliant scientist and engineer, but his writing could also be lyrical, his passion for the dramas of desert sand and dynamics of its performances showing through. He compared dunes to living organisms, and, in the midst of a sandstorm, made the following observation:

... above, the great fine-grained crests of the dunes were on the move. Cornices dissolved as we looked, swaying along the curving surfaces in heavy dark folds, as if the mane of some huge animal was being ruffled and reset in a new direction by the gale.

Historical stories of dunes swallowing individuals, caravans, and armies are common, the very word “swallowing” carrying anthropomorphic associations, the dunes alive and voracious. This theme forms a dramatic part of the Navajo creation legend, but, before we get to that, stories of life demonstrably engulfed and extinguished by sand – and how I came to find about this particular creation story (sand is a kind of primeval material in many such stories in different cultures around the world). Over the last few days there has been much justifiable excitement about the discovery and documentation of an extraordinary dinosaur skeleton disinterred from the base of a cliff near Bluff, Utah. The description of the fossil has been published in the online peer-reviewed journal, PloS ONE, and summarised by a multitude of online sources, for example, The Smithsonian and Physorg.com as well as being widely reported on the geoblogosphere; the original press release from the University of Utah can be found here. There are several reasons for the excitement about this particular dinosaur fossil – among them the completeness of the preservation and thus the knowledge provided about this herbivorous sauropodomorph in North America, where, unlike elsewhere in the world, only bits and pieces had been found before. As the Smithsonian reports:

What is most significant about this fossil, however, is that it is the best-preserved sauropodomorph yet found from the western United States. Paleontologists have been finding fragments of them for years, but this is the first time that enough has been found to compare the dinosaur to its relatives from elsewhere in the world. When Sertich and Loewen did so they found that Seitaad was  most closely related to either Plateosaurus from Europe and its close relatives or Adeopapposaurus from South America and its kin. The trouble was that most of the comparisons made for these dinosaurs so far have relied upon characteristics of bones not preserved in this particular specimen (such as the skull). But it is most certainly a variety of sauropodomorph that probably spent much of its time walking on two legs (like its distant cousin Aardonyx).

 

So, the remarkably well-preserved remains of a 190 million year old dinosaur, discovered in the dune sands of the classic Navajo Sandstone, seemingly not a classic environment for preserving fossils (they are extremely rare in the Navajo). And then what on earth were dinosaurs doing in the desert? Perhaps surprisingly, there are other examples of such events, foremost amongst them being the stunning array of dinosaur remains found in what is today the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. It’s a fascinating story, and one that sheds light on the demise of our sauropodomorph. I wrote up this story for the book:

Even allowing for what awaited them sixty-five million years ago, the dinosaurs had a good run, and they live on dramatically in the popular imagination. But for a long time, they were known only from fragments of skeletons, bits and pieces, often imaginatively put back together. Then, in the 1920s, expeditions from the American Museum of Natural History discovered a treasure trove in the Gobi Desert, a beautifully preserved abundance of what the ancient Chinese called “dragon bones”; even nests with eggs were buried, essentially intact, in the sand. Today, the museum and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, together with other research organizations, cooperate to reveal this treasure. In particular, the site at Ukhaa Tolgod, the Brown Hills, is a gold mine of paleontological riches. Ten million years before the catastrophe on the other side of the world, dozens of species of mammals and reptiles enjoyed a good place to live, and, from a paleontologist’s point of view, it was also a good place for them to die, for their remains are exquisitely preserved. Tiny mammals and dinosaurs sitting on their eggs have been painstakingly removed from the sand. But what kind of sand, and how could it achieve this extraordinary preservation? The creatures must have been rapidly buried, allowing no time for predators to dismember the bodies. On the face of it, the rich red sandstones in which the fossils are entombed bear all the hallmarks of desert dunes, ancestors of the Gobi sand seas of today. But today  creatures are not suddenly buried by sand dunes—the dunes move too slowly and predictably, and even dinosaurs couldn’t have been stupid enough to simply stand around, waiting to be buried by a dune. Besides, how could dinosaurs have thrived if the place was like the depths of the Sahara today?

A clue came from the type of sand in which all the fossils were found. Associated with the fossil-rich layers were great thicknesses of sand that showed the characteristic cross-bedding of dunes (and, occasionally, dinosaur footprints), but the sand that entombed the dinosaurs had no such features—it was, in fact, featureless, a simple, structureless mass. Layers of mud between the dunes attested to the very different climate of the time, warmer and wetter, not unlike the Sand Hills of Nebraska today, where periodic torrential rains saturate the dunes and cause massive flows of waterlogged sand, which have been known to fill up buildings located in the shelter of a dune. In Mongolia, sandstones of the same age as at Ukhaa Tolgod show the remains of burrows made by creatures, like today, escaping the heat of the day, but there are signs that they had to excavate new burrows as the old ones were plugged up with mud from the rains. At Ukhaa Tolgod, layers of sand were found that were cemented by a kind of calcium carbonate found in arid environments and known as caliche. This would have effectively blocked water from draining away, out of the dunes. Combine these pieces of evidence and perhaps the mystery is solved. Cloudbursts were probably more frequent at Ukhaa Tolgod then than they are in Nebraska today, and the dunes were significantly bigger. Saturate a towering dune face with water, prevent the water from draining away, destabilize the sand through the effects of dilatancy, and the slightest tremor, perhaps the wind, perhaps an irritated dinosaur, would cause an instantaneous slide of huge volumes of sand slurry—burying the irritated dinosaur. Here are desert processes, diagenesis, the physics of granular materials seventy-five million years ago, and forensics at work.

Now, our sauropodomorph was found in the very first deposits of the great pile of desert dunes that would become the Navajo Sandstone, and these mark a dramatic change from the earlier sediments that were deposited in a much wetter environment, rivers and rain. Desert conditions began to take over, but there was a period during which the transition was occurring in which the dunes would undoubtedly be inundated by the occasional rainstorm – very much like conditions in Mongolia. As the press release states

Research suggests that the animal was buried in a suddenly collapsing sand dune that engulfed the remains and stood them on their head…this ancient desert must have included wetter areas with enough plants to support these smaller dinosaurs and other animals

So, having figured out how our friend met its end, let’s move on to its name and the Navajo legend. Again from the press release:

The new dinosaur species is named Seitaad ruessi (SAY-eet-AWD ROO-ess-EYE), which is derived from the Navajo word, "Seit'aad," a sand-desert monster from the Navajo (Diné) creation legend that swallowed its victims in sand dunes (the skeleton of Seitaad had been "swallowed" in a fossilized sand dune when it was discovered); and Ruess, after the artist, poet, naturalist and explorer Everett Ruess who mysteriously disappeared in the red rock country of southern Utah in 1934 at age 20.

“Swallowed in a fossilized sand dune,” “a sand-desert monster,” “ the Navajo creation legend.” It is hardly surprising that your humble correspondent became somewhat excited. The reference to a sand-desert monster was enticing, but it took me a while to discover the details. The Navajo creation legend is an epic story, a saga to be told and sung and incorporated into rituals, along, perhaps with sand painting. It’s a complex tale, with many different strands and characters, and, like many other mythologies, includes a pair of sacred twins (think Romulus and Remus). The twins inevitably must embark on a journey and along the way they encounter a desert – but not just a normal desert. It was one in which “hot, whirling piles of sand encroached upon anyone passing through. These were the Seit’aad, the Boiling Dunes that they were forewarned they would eventually meet.”

This description comes from “Dine Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story,” written by Paul Zolbrod, and included in Google Books. The story continues:

It was at this place where, boiling like water in a heated pot, these dunes burned the wayfarer to a shrivel, and covered up the remains. In reality they had been put there by the Naayee who had devoured so many people. Sure enough, they assumed the shape of sand dunes. But they had the will of monsters and the unrelenting appetite for the flesh and blood of people that monsters had. 

Spotting the desert of rising sands, the twins kept right on walking as though they knew of no reason to do otherwise. Meanwhile, the dunes subsided and flattened out for them, appearing to permit them to come ahead. But barely a step or two shy of the desert’s edge, they stopped short! And the dunes, which at once began to swirl and boil, merely converged upon one another instead of submerging their victims.

Thus did the two youths trick the heaps of sand four times…..

“We must know who you are and where you come from,” insisted the dunes at last, roaring and filling the air with their furious heat as they spoke.

The boys explained who they were and where they were going, and then used the sacred object they were carrying, along with a magic formula, to overwhelm the hostility of the dunes, which slowly collapsed so that the desert floor could be easily crossed. “Continue on your journey,” responded the dunes quietly; “Long life is ahead. Happiness is ahead.”

And that’s the story behind the name of our friend, the sauropodomorph, Seitaad ruessi - and echoes of Ralph Bagnold's desert beasts.

[Illustration from the Plos ONE paper:

Sertich JJW, Loewen MA (2010) A New Basal Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Lower Jurassic Navajo Sandstone of Southern Utah. PLoS ONE 5(3): e9789. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009789]

Roman construction standards: sandstone, cross-bedding, concrete - and tafoni again

 

As our group stood in the rain in the great arena of the stunning Roman amphitheatre at El Jem in Tunisia, guess who volunteered the fact that "arena" is the Latin for "sand", reflecting its capacity for soaking up the blood?

The weather was hardly ideal, but the conditions could not detract from the wonder of this place. It's a World Heritage Site and it thoroughly deserves it. This was the latest and grandest of three such buildings that had stood on this site, and was built nearly 1800 years ago. Built to last, in spite of everything - the weather, becoming a fortress and a refuge for the Berbers during wars with the Arab invaders, and being bombarded by the Turks in a conflict over taxes - plus functioning as a quarry for centuries.

 

[photo: Jann Arthus Bertrand]

The design is elliptical, the whole building measuring 148 by 122 metres, the arena 65 by 39 metres; with a capacity bloodthirsty crowd of more than 30,000 and perhaps up to more than 40,000 it's considered the third largest amphitheatre in the world - it's not as big as the Colosseum in Rome, but it's arguably better preserved and just as magnificent. It is, frankly, awe-inspiring.

 

There was no limestone, the Romans' favourite building material, easily available in that part of Tunisia, so a sandstone from quarries 30 kilometres away, close to the coast, was used. And the extraordinary thing is that this sandstone is incredibly young - geologically - having formed in the Pleistocene period a mere 125,000 years ago when northern Europe was in the grip of the Ice Ages. It's a coarse-grained sandstone, with everywhere beautiful examples of cross-bedding on all different scales (see photo below).

 

These sandstone blocks are from what is referred to as the Rejiche formation, named after the hill from which the stone has been quarried. It's a very calcareous sandstone, with shell fragments and ooids, tiny spherical or egg-shaped (hence the name) grains of calcium carbonate that formed chemically in warm seawater highly saturated in dissolved minerals. These sands were formed in shallow marine conditions, but also in coastal dunes, and they were cemented early on in their history by water percolating through them, dissolving and re-precipitating the calcium carbonate. So, young though they are, they, combined with the skills of Roman construction methods, could make buildings built to last. Their surfaces do, however, weather - quite often to form miniature tafoni patterns (see this and other posts on these natural sculptures):  

But the immense structure of El Jem, with walls close to 5 metres thick, was not just constructed out of these sandstones. Bricks were used for some of the vaults, as well as concrete. Now I knew something about the Romans and their skills at making concrete and referred to this in the book:

The recipe for basic concrete is simple and has been around for a long time. The ancient Egyptians knew how to make it (there is a lively debate as to whether the pyramids, at least in part, are made of concrete), and the Romans perfected the formula. The fundamental ingredients are around 75 percent sand and gravel, 15 percent water, and 10 percent cement. The cement, cooked from materials such as limestone and clay, is the chemical glue; the hardening of concrete is not simply due to drying, but involves complex chemical reactions. The physical characteristics of the sand, its size and shape, influence the properties of the concrete, but because of the importance of chemistry, the composition of the sand and the other ingredients is critical. The wrong impurities will ruin the quality of the concrete.

But, coincidentally, in the April issue of Earth Magazine that recently came through the door, there's an article on "Why Roman Concrete Stands the Test of Time," and it's fascinating. I don't know if they imported it into North Africa (but given how much specialty material the Romans did import, I wouldn't be surprised), but a specific deposit of volcanic ash was consistently used as the chemically magic ingredient. The ash, from an explosive eruption around 450,000 years ago, 20 kilometres from Rome, is also known as pozzolana, after the location. Using it instead of Portland Cement makes for very different properties of the resulting concrete, some advantageous, some less so. But the Romans certainly did perfect this technology - it has stood the test of time and using pozzolana is a far less energy-intensive process than that of making Portland cement, offering some real possibilities for improving modern technology.

The photos below show (not very clearly, I'm afraid - the lighting was not great) very crude-looking concrete ceilings and their upper side viewed from above. They have certainly stood the test of time.

 

The stone for El Jem may have been quarried locally, but the structure itself later became a quarry - a source of building materials to be utilised far and wide throughout Tunisia. We kept coming across bits and pieces - sometimes substantial pieces - of Roman stone cannibalised and incorporated into houses and medinas, kasbahs and mosques, wherever we went, including Tozeur, nearly 300 kilometres southwest of El Jem. Now clearly there were endless sources of Roman materials in addition to the amphitheatre, but it does seem tragic that such a magnificent construction should be used as the local DIY store.

The idiosyncratic examples of cannibalisation below are from the Greta Mosque at Kairouan and the medina at Sfax.

 

Thoughts on writing a popular science book (3): the tedious but important stuff

 Let's face it, the research and writing are the fun parts of producing a book, and then there's the other stuff that is much less enjoyable but vital. Here are a few thoughts:

1. Editing. I've mentioned a writer's "darlings" in a previous post, and in some ways the whole book is the author's darling - it's your idea and you have slaved over the stories, the translation of science into an accessible and exciting form, and you've crafted the words, the phrases, the paragraphs. You have probably (hopefully) tried out your translations on friends, family and others (ideally those that have some kind of vested interest in the thing's success); you accept the comments along the lines of "this is not easy to understand - why don't you try something along the lines of...." But suggestions that whole sections don't work, don't belong where they are, or don't belong in the book at all, are tough. I was lucky - my wife is a devoted and critical reader (and used to teach English), and I was blessed with a great editor from the publishers. I can only think of a couple of isolated instances, one or two darlings that I was determined to hold on to as a matter of principle as much as anything (the silver bullet principle), where I ended up not doing what they suggested - but the rest went and the book was profoundly improved as a result. So listen, sleep on it, and, in the cold light of day, do what these people say - you, after all, can't approach the book from the perspective of a reader. And cut. Cut the adverbs, the metaphors, the fascinating but irrelevant meanderings. I know that my wife will laugh when she reads such advice coming from me, since I have a natural tendency to meander and to construct long and convoluted sentences - but, in the end, I followed this advice (mostly).

2. Proofreading. This is a very distinct exercise from editing: it's the administration of the mechanics of the writing. Every publisher will have a particular manual of style that they want followed; for UCP it was the Chicago Manual of Style, a dry and weighty tome that is also available online (as a subscription). This is stuff that I readily admit I have little patience with, a bad attitude compounded by having divided my life between the UK and the US and having no working recollection of the differences in punctuation etc. But I had help, a taskmistress: as I wrote in the acknowledgments, "I am under instructions to say little about the role of my wife, Carol, but little is precisely what this book would have been without her. Researcher, contributor, proofreader, and interrogator of the Chicago Manual of Style, she took on all the tasks that allowed me to write the book, including, with not quite perfect consistency, having a Job-like level of patience." (There were a couple of memorable occasions on which "the f...ing book" was referred to with vigour  - and justification).

Then, as the production process got underway, the publishers provided the services of a professional proofreader (a job that, to me, seems like another definition of hell). And was she ever professional and rigorous. However thoroughly you or your partner think that they have proofread the manuscript, there will always be things you missed. And, even after the professional treatment, little demons slip through: "depradation" appeared in both hardback editions until it was noted by a friend (to the immense irritation of my wife), and finally corrected for the paperback.

Then the page proofs arrive: pay as close attention to them as you can bear - they're your last chance. Because your readers are intelligent and critical folk - put yourself in their shoes and remember how a poorly edited and proofread book detracts substantially from its credibility.

3. References/further reading. Again, put yourself in the reader's shoes - how many times do you come across a topic in a book that is dealt with briefly but that you would like to explore further? This section is important (and several readers and reviewers of my book have said that they appreciate it). Of course, for a popular science book, it doesn't have to be as rigorous and comprehensive as an academic text, and there's certainly no point in including papers from academic journals that will be difficult for the reader to find. And one other note: in today's world, websites are important sources to list, but make sure that only those that are reputable and therefore likely to endure are included. The "page cannot be found" notice is frustrating for me and I worked on the principle that it would be equally frustrating for a reader.

4. The index. I automatically dislike a book with no index, or a poor index, but I know from friends who have tried to do it themselves that it's a soul-destroying task. Most publishers will provide the services of a professional indexer - but you will pay for it. It cost me $1450 (and needed improvement) and this cost came straight out of the first (and so far, only) royalty payment. After this, the subtraction of the advance, and the agent's percentage, there was enough for a not particularly gastronomic dinner out. But remember: you're not in this for the money.

5. Permissions. I was astonished to find that these were entirely my responsibility - and, along with the responsibility comes the legal liability. So I became somewhat paranoid and compulsive about this. The experience was very variable. For illustrations that I could not provide myself, it was generally the case that the copyright owners were only too pleased to provide the image for free, or, for institutions, a modest fee that would cover all future print editions (take care in all this to read the terms carefully - they often apply only to a particular edition and have to be done again for a paperback or a different publisher, and they rarely apply to electronic editions). For quotations, the experience was more difficult (and expensive). I liked to include epigraphs at the top of each chapter, and some of these, along with quotations in the text, were from illustrious writers and musicians. The pleasure of putting a few words from Jimi Hendrix against a quote from an ancient Greek philosopher, was somewhat undermined by what it cost me (Hendrix, not Heraclitus). I had toyed with great quotes from Dylan and others, but could never have afforded them. Using those eleven words from Hendrix has, so far, and after negotiation, cost me $700 - I keep reminding myself that I'm not in this for the money.

Most publishers' contracts will include a provision for some reimbursement of permissions costs, but chances are you'll still be out of pocket - avoid musicians!

Oh, and then there's the concept (at least in the US) of "fair use." Limited quotations can be used without needing to seek permission, and it's tempting to resort to this as a way of saving time (and money). But the concept is unfathomable and risky when you look at it in detail - the US Copyright Office website declares that "The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission." Helpful, huh?

6. The subtitle. I'll finish here with an amusement. The subtitle for a book is important - it should give the potential reader an idea of what the book's about, or at least provide a "hook." There was a long debate that used up considerable time and creative energy (but also generated much humour), around what followed the obvious, "Sand." We settled on "the never-ending story" because it suggested that it was a story, hinted at the durability of sand as a planetary materials, and reflected the symbolism of a single grain of sand that was important in Michael Ende's book (and the film) of that name. So far, so good. Until I came across the online writing of a New York Times reviewer. She expressed her irritation with a single-subject-titled book (I won't name it) on a particularly obscure and, in her opinion, uninteresting subject, and proceeded to bemoan the genre of such titles. Unfortunately, my book seems to have landed simultaneously on her desk; rather than just ignoring it, she cited it (self-respect requires me to assume that it remained unopened) as another tedious example - "Sand: the Never-Ending Story," she wrote, "I'll say!"

Oh, how I laughed. Well, at least I do now.

This interpretation had never occurred to me - or to anyone else involved. As you might have noticed, Oxford University Press changed the subtitle to "A Journey Through Science and the Imagination" - more pedestrian, but less susceptible to wit.

Thoughts on writing a popular science book (2): Writing and structure

 
Every individual, thank heavens, is different, with different habits, behaviours, and ways of thinking - that's what makes the human world such an interesting place. This is as true of writers as anyone else, and so what works for one writer is useless for another. So if I set out some thoughts on how I figured out my book and set about writing it, they are, of course, personal and idiosyncratic - but bits and pieces might be of interest to someone.

The basic principle of story telling and narrative has been mentioned several times during this discussion, and is critical whether writing fiction or non-fiction - the reader must be lured in and carried along. But it's not easy, particularly perhaps for science writing. That said, however, a writer must have a high level of enthusiasm and passion for the subject, and so sees the drama in it, the surprises, the revelations, the mysteries, and all these components make for a good story. Or series of good stories within an overall narrative. And that's the challenge - or at least it was for me. I had put together a diversity of topics that ended up astonishing even me - but how to structure them into a book that captured the reader's attention and kept it going? I had long discussions with my agent, and, ultimately, my editor (who, as I have said, was wonderful). To cut a long story short, I eventually caught a glimpse of my topic as being about scale and realised that that approach allowed a natural momentum for the structure of the book, from individual grains to landscapes, returning to the human scale and then accelerating off into the future and the universe as the finale. And once I had this view, then the "anthropological" approach was obvious - look at individuals, then families, tribes, and societies. I was very wary of overdoing the anthropomorphic element, but a little of that resonates and provides a narrative - together with some of that vital story telling ingredient, tension. This whole structure was something I could visualise, and so, being a graphically-oriented person, I drafted up an image that I eventually translated into Microsoft graphics and provided to my editor:

 

There were still some problems, however. Chapters on sand and our imaginations - very small things and very large numbers, art, writing and so on - had to be included in the momentum of the material on the natural world. I had come across, reading various sources on writing, that the idea of a narrative break is not only acceptable, but often useful, and so I decided that these two sections would make good narrative breaks, letting the reader digest what had come before, but at the same time continuing the all-important element of surprise. And then, within this whole structure, was the controversial Chapter 9 - sand in our daily lives. The amazing diversity of examples was such that I struggled heroically to construct a single narrative out of all these different topics - and gave up. I resorted to the "A to Z" structure - still, I hope, entertainingly. There was a viewpoint that suggested that this should go in as an appendix, but I resisted it - it is, after all, one of the key and provocative ideas of the book, that, if the wicked fairy waved her magic wand and removed from our lives everything that was derived from sand, then we'd be in a very bad way. So there it is, the infamous Chapter 9 - reactions have been completely polarised, some people love it, others hate it .....

One aside - about text boxes. In early drafts of a couple of chapters, I had included what I thought was "supplementary material" in the classic boxes - something that I thought gave the reader the option of pursuing or not (for example, specifics on how radiometric dating works). But my agent disliked this, and she was right. First of all, it makes the book look like a textbook, and secondly, I realised that either the boxed material was important - in which case, find a way of including it in the narrative - or it wasn't, in which case, leave it out.

The whole challenge of structure in writing a book is fractal, scale-free. From the form of the whole thing, down to the flow of an individual sentence and the choice of words, it's always there (with respect to word choice, keep a thesaurus handy - it can be not only useful but stimulating). Even having settled on the structure of the book, the way in which all the material for a given chapter could best be put together requires work and imagination. My own approach, personal and idiosyncratic, was to use the biggest piece of paper to hand (generally an A1 size) and put together a mind map. I've been using this "technique" for years, and find it very effective in either taking notes or planning a talk or an article - or, in this case, planning a chapter. The value lies in being able to jot down different topics, quotes, reminders, numbers, and so on in a way that allows me to look for connections and thus flow and, eventually, narrative. A mind map is the opposite of a list, and far more graphic and flexible. But the way of using the mind mapping approach is entirely up to the individual - there are all kinds of software and instructions out there - have a look, if you're not familiar with it, but then ignore all of it and find out what works best for you. Here's what I did in the process of thinking about the first chapter (together with some material that I came to appreciate worked better in the second) - it looks like a mess (and for anyone other than me certainly is), but there's a huge amount of not only information there, but the connections - and all on one sheet of paper (no flipping back and forth between sheets of lists, and no overlooking anything):

 

So there I would sit, at my laptop, for hour after hour, day after day, with my huge mind map and surrounded by piles of papers and articles (be prepared for the printer ink budget), dozens of tabs open on Firefox, and put one word after another. Everyone has different ways of writing, and so details of my own habits are largely irrelevant - but I did set myself a daily target of 2000 words. A couple of general observations:

• "darlings." Any writer will have ideas and passages of word-smithing of which they are particularly fond - these are your "darlings." They are often obvious to  a reader, and some of them work, many of them don't. Be prepared to defend your darlings, but accept that, if your partner or editor says no, they're probably right.
• humour (or humor). This is a tricky thing - a little of it can help the narrative along, but just a little more can be far too much. Take a long hard (and cold) look at it - and employ the default position of cutting it. What was the point of my writing "humour (or humor)"? To demonstrate my trans-Atlantic awareness? To suggest to my American friends that they can't spell? Cut it out.

Enough for now - there are obviously many aspects of this strange process that I haven't addressed - David, Brian, and I look forward to any questions or ideas.

Thoughts on writing a popular science book (1): making it interesting, finding a publisher

I'll start off with some general thoughts and thefts - and a warning that this turned into a bit of an epic, reflecting the saga of getting a book published. Perhaps I should have applied some strict self-discipline in terms of editing and cutting, but then again, perhaps somewhere in the following are some bits and pieces of interest - and the bases for further conversation. 

Your book, by definition, has never been written before - why not? You must think your idea, your topic, is interesting and exciting and that there are readers out there who will find it so. I recently came across a comment (the source, for the moment entirely escapes me) to the effect that, if you think of a book that you'd like to read, but hasn't been published, then write it. That seems to me as good a motivational starting point as any. The Guardian, the UK newspaper, last month published a piece titled "Ten Rules for Writers," a highly entertaining and provocative series of observations by the likes of Margaret Atwood, David Hare, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Proulx, Zadie Smith, and other illustrious writers - yes, primarily about writing fiction, but writing is writing. I enjoyed the piece and would have appreciated it before I set out to write - there's good advice in it and, as of the time of writing this, it's available online. Among the things I liked was Hilary Mantel's echo of the comment I just mentioned - "Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready." And then Joyce Carol Oates - "Don't try to anticipate an "ideal reader" – there may be one, but he/she is reading someone else." And if there was a recurring piece of advice, it was to read like mad, or, as PD James said, "Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious." I enjoy reading good popular science writing, but figuring out why it's good is not always easy - particularly if it's really good. A while ago, I read Richard Dawkins' compilation, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, and, while I complained about the lack of geology, it was a fascinating selection of the genre's diversity. Dawkins selected only science writing by scientists, which ignores some superb writing - there are scientists and non-scientists who are great writers - and vice-versa and everything in between; I was surprised at the challenge I had with accessing Peter Medawar's writing and deeply disappointed in Natalie Angier's The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - but I learned from both experiences. A one-star Amazon review, by Bruce Hilpert, of Angier's book echoed my reaction and is instructive:

As another adherent of what I refer to as "gonzo non-fiction," Angier insists on injecting her own ego into the work at the expense of her subject and her readers. Almost every other sentence has a pun, word play or personal aside that distracts from her explanations. She can be clever, but how can she think that a sentence such as this brings clarity to her subject: "The vast splintered vale of our universe, as far as we know, is stocked with two basic offerings, two categorical insults to His Lowly Holiness of Absolute Nothingness that might otherwise have held sway: matter and energy."?

Angier seems to have lost track of the basic goal of expository writing - to explain things in a way that brings greater understanding to the reader. If she had cut out the unnecessary, distracting prose, the book would have been 1/3 as long and ten times more effective.
Please do not get the impression that I thrive on dry, textbook prose. Non-fiction should be compelling and "clever" is okay. Bill Bryson, in "A Short History of Nearly Everything," uses his sense of humor appropriately and effectively to enhance his discussion of science. Angier, however, seems to think that her audience bought her book not to learn about science, but to learn just how clever she is.

So I guess that thinking about writing in a way that avoids that kind of review is a good approach!

But to the meat of the question: "How do you take a technical or obscure subject and make it interesting to publishers and the public without losing accuracy?" First of all, the assumption must be that the writer finds the subject interesting - in fact, not just interesting, but fascinating, exciting, compelling, and surprising. That the "compelling" includes the writer's compulsion to write about it, and the "surprising" includes an element of the writer's own surprise at just how exciting it is. Think about exactly why this is. I certainly surprised myself when I began the process of setting out all the places that sand can take you, all the stories it can tell. So I would suggest that the element of surprise is critical - the subject matter may, at first, seem technical or obscure (or even, like sand, mundane and uninteresting), but if you can surprise your reader with how wrong that assumption is, then you've accomplished what you set out to do.

A big part of accomplishing that is figuring out why the topic enthuses you and then figuring out how to convey that enthusiasm in a way that will immediately surprise the reader - assuming that they have at least taken the book off the shelf in the store and then opened it. I was amazed and delighted, in doing the research for my book, by how many creation myths from widely different cultures around the world have sand as the basic primeval material, and so I decided to start the book with one - the first words of Chapter 1 (after quotes from Victor Hugo and Ralph Waldo Emerson) are "It was love at first sight" - I like to think of a potential reader seeing that and being surprised, if not hooked.

If you're enthusiastic about a subject, it's because of its intrinsic character, not because of the jargon that may surround it. Jargon and terminology in the scientific world are simply shorthand and carry no information beyond that (although they can also be used as a smokescreen or something to hide behind). The natural world, even as it appears in the laboratory or an equation, comes with no jargon attached to it, and its phenomena are simply things we try to describe as we observe them. So that's the way to try to write about them, and doing so requires no loss of accuracy. It's a challenge, but an intellectually enjoyable one and makes you really think about the phenomenon rather than its jargon. Whether it's saltation or the reason for plotting sand grain sizes logarithmically, or phase changes in the mantle, or the basis for optical luminescence dating, it is possible to describe it in everyday language: try it, try it out on yourself and then on friends and family. Analogies are great (for some reason or another, the kitchen is an effective environment for illustrating geological processes). For numerical measures, come up with something familiar and easily visualised - I had to deal with cubic meters and metric tons of sand carried by rivers or shifted in a sandstorm, and came up with the image of a parade of dump trucks trundling by; this required some research on dump truck specifications on the internet, but I derived a sort of standard truck size and its contents of sand by weight and volume. And here's one more thought - spend some time on the things we don't know, the mysteries, because, after all, it's those things that keep science exciting and they can do the same thing for a book.

So, the proposal. I don't know of a uniquely effective or standard way of putting one together, but here are the elements of what (after any number of experiments) I came up with:

1. Intro or the up front sales pitch, trying to capture the excitement and uniqueness of the book. I spent some time drafting what I thought would be a good "blurb" on the back of the book, and this helped focus on the key points. A couple of provocative images can be good. 
2. "About the author" - a brief bio with emphasis (modestly, of course) on why you are qualified to write the book better than anyone else.
3. "Core audience and appeal" -  find some comparable books that have achieved success and describe why the people that bought those will buy yours. If, as is likely, the book will be illustrated, explain the attractiveness and information content of the illustrations (together with a comment on what proportion of them the author can provide).
4. Table of contents and chapter synopses. The chapter summaries should be a couple of paragraphs.

Have a couple of sample chapters written and ready to accompany the proposal - but, unless you have infinite time on your hands and no need for a day job, don't write the whole book first. Looking back on the proposal that I ended up with, the eventual book structure became something quite different, but the material is more or less all there in the proposal.   

Then what to do with the proposal? I put quite a bit of effort into trying to market the thing directly to publishers (via, for example, the massive London Book Fair - an experience in itself), but this is a soul-destroying task. In my experience, few publishers these days will accept unsolicited proposals ("are you agented ?" was the standard question, and, since at the time I wasn't, there was no further discussion to be had). You could get lucky (I nearly did - close, but no cigar). So, unless self-publishing is the route of choice (I can't really comment on this, but I didn't find it at all attractive), you need an agent - your next soul-destroying task.

Here, the internet is a great resource and in the UK there's an annual publication, The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, that lists, among many different resources, agents and their specialities (there must be something similar in the US). I looked for agents who specifically listed science among their specialisations, and then checked that they were willing to accept unsolicited proposals (a lot of them explicitly state that they are not). This is where I really did get lucky - after several failures, I found an agent who, for some reason or another, liked the idea and was willing to take me on. One of her first questions was "You're not doing this with the idea of making significant money, I hope?" I explained that I was realistic and that satisfaction was the primary motivation, and everything went well from there. She was tenacious - she needed to be. It took essentially a year for her to land the University of California Press, but boy, was I thrilled! I signed their contract (another learning curve in itself) at the end of 2006.

In terms of the advantages and disadvantages of different kinds of publishers, I'm really no expert on anything other than academic presses (both in the UK and the US), but some thoughts specifically on my experience:

Advantages:

• Reputation. University presses are prestigious and respected publishers.
• Production standards. Books published by academic publishers are generally produced to a high standard and with thoughtful and innovative design.
• Help. I don't know if this is universally true, but, in my case it certainly was. I knew I needed and editor - I wanted an editor, and was dismayed to hear that such a person is largely a thing of the past, at least in terms of active involvement. But I was lucky. The University of California Press assigned me a truly wonderful editor, without whom the book would have been distinctly inferior to how it turned out. She wrote that she “tried not to still the occasional meanderings, but simply to free up the larger eddies that threaten to impede forward motion.” She has become a good friend, one of the great pleasures of this roller-coaster saga. And everyone that I've been involved with at both presses has always been responsive and helpful. 
• I also have to thank the press for suggesting that authors set up a blog to accompany and continue the book - without this encouragement, I wouldn't be writing this now.

Disadvantage - here I'll have to be honest and blunt (anyone from OUP or UCP reading this, please don't take offense!). Popular science books are "trade books" and, for academic presses, aggressive marketing to the general public is not their strength. They have certainly done a good job with my book, and I don't pretend that it could qualify for bookstore attention in the same way that Harry Potter does, but I just suspect that a commercial publisher has a higher aggression level, and, possibly, budget (although the publishing business everywhere these days is facing difficult challenges).

So, more than enough for now - I look forward to comparing notes with David and Brian, and, particularly, to hearing from anyone with the tenacity to have read all this!

Stories written in sand and stone - thoughts on writing a popular science book

What to expect on the journey from an idea for a book to actually holding it in your hands? Three of us who have taken this interesting trip, Brian Switek at Laelaps (whose book, Written in Stone, will be published later this year), David Williams at Stories in Stone whose book of the same title came out last year, and I, thought it would be not only fun for us to compare notes on the process and our experiences, but that such thoughts might be of interest and use to any readers who are contemplating embarkation on the journey. So, over the next week or so, we'll be reflecting on some of what we found to be the key issues and questions, but what we really would like is that this develops into a broader conversation. So we very much look forward to questions/ideas/comments/corrections - none of us pretends to have the answers to all the aspects of the process, but at least it's something that we've experienced and that experience is something we can share.

The first episode will be around how to make a technical (and possibly seemingly obscure) topic accessible, exciting, and of interest to a publisher (not to mention potential readers), together with a look at the different kinds of publishers, putting together a proposal, and related thoughts. We'll each of us post our ruminations and Brian will collate the links on his blog. We all hope that this will be of interest and look forward to hearing from you!

On the road again

Your humble correspondent will be off for the next eight days, travelling around Tunisia - souks, medinas, Roman ruins, Carthage, the Atlas - and, of course, dunes. There may be some things to write about on my return (and a few additions to my sand collection).

[Images thanks to Cimoi at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amphi_d%27El_Jem_Tunisie.jpg under a creative commons license and http://www.internationaleducationmedia.com/tunisia/gallery.htm ]

California's underwater terrain: sandstones, folds, and a very active fault

 

Another connection-following journey, entertaining, informative - and time-consuming. For his 12th day of Christmas post, back on January 5th, Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous wrote of "Twelve folds a-plunging," describing, and giving some dramatic examples of, the natural calligraphy of large-scale folding of the earth's crust; here's one that he provided from Australia. 

 

I enjoyed this post immensely, having at one stage of my life been a structural geologist and one who continues to take great delight from the artistic and humbling manifestations of deformation and mountain-building. Then, recently, I was catching up on some of the remarkable imagery that's available through Google Earth's "underwater terrain" facility; having written about the Monterey Submarine Canyon, I immediately zoomed in to some of the incredible high-resolution data from the floor of the canyon that has been provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. I have to admit that Google's insistence on including a sort of "sunlight reflecting off moving virtual waves" effect is irritating and can obscure some of the detail, but nevertheless it's impressive. Having scrutinised the canyon, I then took off northwards, looking for other areas of high-resolution images along the California coast, and was astonished when I came to what were clearly "folds a-plunging" in the sea-floor off San Mateo County - the overall image is at the top of this post. My reaction was "Wow - what is going on here?" and that, of course, precipitated a bit of a research journey.

This is Half Moon Bay, Seal Cove, and Moss Beach. The geology, like that of most of California, is complicated - and dynamic. But, of course and as usual, the USGS came through and provided, online, downloadable, and in great detail, the answers to my questions (see the reference at the end of the post). Situated west of the San Andreas fault, this region is sliced by a number of related faults, all of which are active; the map below summarises the main faults (the numbers are their inferred rate of movement in millimetres per year).

The San Gregorio fault cuts right across Half Moon Bay, across the promontory where the airport is located, and then heads out to sea again to the northwest. Here, thanks to the USGS, is the relevant part of a detailed geological map of the area.

 

The pinkish area to the northeast is underlain by granite, the yellow and beige areas along the coast are successions of relatively young and modern marine terraces, sands and shales of beaches, intertidal, and shallow marine deposits recording changing sea levels and the ups and downs of the land over the last few hundred thousand years. But these sediments have not had a peaceful post-depositional existence: the continuing movement of the faults of the San Andreas system, and here in particular the San Gregorio Fault (locally known as the Seal Cove fault), have not only shifted them sideways and vertically, but they have squeezed the rocks into large folds that can be defined where they occur onshore. On the geological map above, the oval-shaped pattern along the coast southwest of the fault is a plunging fold. Here's an extract from the USGS guidebook to the area:

Continuing activity along the Seal Cove Fault is ominously revealed by a fault scarp that offsets the young Half Moon Bay Terrace near the Half Moon Bay Airport. The elevation of the airport runway is about 40 feet, whereas the high point west of the fault scarp is about 175 feet. The Half Moon Bay marine terrace formed when coastal erosion cut a broad bench during a Late Quaternary marine transgression. The flat, wave-cut surface of the marine terrace became exposed as sea level fell and the shoreline retreated seaward about 85,000 years ago. The marine terrace has remained exposed as the coastline (and the entire Santa Cruz Mountains) has progressively continued to rise. The Half Moon Bay Terrace is actually folded into a northwest trending, gently-plunging syncline. Since the marine terrace became exposed, the vertical component of offset along the Sea Cove Fault has produced the 140 foot high scarp that is visible today. The fault places latest Quaternary deposits adjacent to Pliocene-age marine mudstones of the Purisima Formation. Note that the rate of horizontal slip on the fault is probably ten to twenty times as great compared
to the vertical offset during the same time period.

And, along the coast at Moss Beach, at low tide, this is what can be seen: 

 

The Moss Beach Syncline, a broad fold, is exposed at low tide in the James V. Fitzgerald Marine Preserve. Folded sedimentary layers of the plunging syncline consist of fossilerous sandstone and mudrocks of the Purisima Formation (Miocene to Pliocene age). The Seal Cove Fault scarp is associated with a submerged ridge located near where the waves break just offshore of the syncline. [USGS]

And that, in exquisite detail, is exactly what the Google Earth sea-floor imagery is showing: resistant sandstone ridges, intensely folded and faulted.

What is more, whereas the geological map inevitably had to just speculate on the continuation offshore of the fault (the dotted lines and the question marks), here it shows up with incredible clarity, a long linear feature on the sea bed, disrupting the pattern of folds. So here I am, sitting at my laptop in London, interpreting the offshore geology of California......

I've put together an image of the whole area, with what I would interpret as the trace of the fault between the arrows (but, of course, I would welcome alternative viewpoints!).

This is a dramatically active, but not very well-understood fault system. The residents of the mobile-home park clearly situated across the fault next to the airport runway have probably not read the guidebook quoted above or the paper by Gary Simpson and his colleagues published some time ago in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, the abstract of which reads as follows:

The San Gregorio fault is the principal active fault west of the San Andreas fault in central coastal California, yet it remains the largest known fault in the region whose seismogenic potential is not known. In this study, we integrate traditional paleoseismic and archaeologic investigations to define the location, style, and timing of slip events on the northern San Gregorio fault at a site near Seal Cove in Moss Beach, California. The on-land portion of the San Gregorio fault at Seal Cove is a late-Holocene active dextral slip fault. Trench excavations revealed a broad zone of faulting, at least 22 m wide, consisting of five Holocene-active strands. These include a single mid-Holocene east-vergent reverse fault and four late-Holocene near-vertical strike-slip faults. The most recent event occurred after the deposition of a native Californian cooking hearth dated A.D. 1270 to A.D. 1400, but prior to the arrival of Spanish missionaries ca. 1775. The penultimate event at the site is less well constrained but appears to have occurred between A.D. 620 and A.D. 1400. The penultimate event was associated with horizontal displacement on the order of 3 m, based on reconstruction of a thrust wedge within the fault zone. The geometry of midden deposits shows a 5 (–2, +6) m deflection along the projection of faults associated with the most recent event (MRE). All or part of this deflection may be associated with the MRE. These displacements are consistent with M_w 7 to 7.25 earthquakes and show that the San Gregorio fault is an active seismogenic source that should be considered in seismic hazard assessments in the San Francisco Bay area.

Since I posted this, I have received a report from a local resident that there are plans under review for a 300,000 square feet complex to be constructed immediately next to the mobile home park - and the fault. See the website Montara Fog for more information - and note that the reported in the video would appear to be standing on the fault scarp.

[For an excellent description of the geology of the area that has provided much of the material for this post, see the USGS guidebook http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1127/; the complete geological map can be found at http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1998/of98-137/, together with the explanation and other material. The reference for the paper on the San Gregorio fault is:   Gary D. Simpson et al., "The northern San Gregorio fault zone: Evidence for the timing of late Holocene earthquakes near Seal Cove, California"  Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; October 1997; v. 87; no. 5; p. 1158-1170]