The Science Factory Autumn 2021 Rights List

Page 31

Autumn Rights List 2021

FORTHCOMING TITLES

A WORLD WITHOUT STARS How the Night Sky Made Us Who We Are ROBERTO TROTTA Praise for THE EDGE OF THE SKY A master storyteller – FOREIGN POLICY A poetic primer on the universe – BRAIN PICKINGS

An astrophysicist’s reappraisal of humanity’s history that takes readers on a wonder-filled journey to discover the human connection with our cosmic environment. Imagine looking up to the sky on a dark night and seeing... nothing. Imagine Earth permanently shrouded in clouds – a thick blanket of dark grey clouds, blotting out even the face of the Sun during the day and that of the full Moon at night. Imagine a star-starved civilization struggling to take hold with our ancestral connection to the sky severed. The night sky makes us feel small and insignificant, yet proud of our ability to marvel at it and to decrypt its mysteries. Beyond the stars, at the beginning of time, at the origin of the Universe, religion and science meet and collide. Amazingly, these indifferent pinpricks of light inspired the highest expressions of human creativity: beauty and meaning, courage and hope, sprung from remote balls of gas burning away in the coldness of space. We are stardust imbued with the longing to understand where we come from and to sing what we cannot comprehend. Thousands of years ago, the sky was a constant companion to our forebears. The rhythm of their lives revolved around the stars. Not so today: for most of us the night sky is largely lost in the glow of artificial lighting. We hardly bother to look at the sky any more, and when we do there is little for us to see. Even professional astronomers study the Universe by staring at screens rather than through eyepieces. We have lost our intimate relationship with the Universe. In A WORLD WITHOUT STARS, Roberto Trotta explores the surprisingly deep influence of astronomical phenomena in shaping the trajectory of human history. From mythology, religion, farming and the creative arts, to mathematics, astronomy, technology and pop culture, he reveals how the very fabric of who we are has been shaped by our ability to see the stars. What’s more, by daring us to imagine other worlds without stars – from lifeforms beneath the icy crust of distant moons, to the prospect of pure energy beings emerging in a dark, cold, empty Universe – he impresses on us just how special and important our own view of the cosmos is. After reading this book, you will never look at the night sky in the same way as before. For we are made by stars, in many more ways than we ever imagined. ROBERTO TROTTA is a professor of astro-statistics at Imperial College London, director of Imperial’s Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication and a visiting professor of cosmology at Gresham College, London. He has published more than 50 scientific papers, contributed to two books and received numerous awards for his research work and science communication activities. His first book for the public, THE EDGE OF THE SKY (Basic Books, 2014), explains the Universe using only the most common 1,000 words in English, and was widely acclaimed. He lives in London with his wife and their two young children. Agent: Peter Tallack Publisher: Basic Books Delivery: Autumn 2022 Publication: Spring 2023 Status: Proposal Length: 90,000–100,000 words All rights available excluding World English Language (Basic Books), Italy (Il Saggiatore)

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Spike by Jeremy Farrar & Anjana Ahuja

2min
page 36

The Century of Deception by Ian Keable

2min
page 38

How to Make a Vaccine by John Rhodes

3min
pages 39-45

The Spike by Mark Humphries

2min
page 37

RECENT WORLD RIGHTS DEALS

1min
page 46

Reimagining Time by Tanya Bub & Jeffrey Bub

2min
page 35

Liftoff by Eric Berger

2min
page 34

The Invention of Tomorrow by Thomas Suddendorf, Jon Redshaw & Adam Bulley

2min
page 30

Exponential by Azeem Azhar

2min
page 33

The Patriarchs by Angela Saini

2min
page 28

A World Without Stars by Roberto Trotta

2min
page 31

The Elephant in the Universe by Govert Schilling

2min
page 29

Strike Patterns by Leah Zani

2min
page 32

What Every Woman Needs to Know About Her Gut by Barbara Ryan & Elaine McGowan

2min
page 27

Untitled on Socrates and Alcibiades by Massimo Pigliucci

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page 26

Trafficking Data by Aynne Kokas

1min
page 22

An Epidemiologist Reads the News by Cecile Janssens

3min
page 20

How to Think Like a Woman by Regan Penaluna

2min
page 25

Wondrous Transformations by Alison Li

2min
page 23

Why We Went Extinct by Tadaaki Imaizumi & Takashi Maruyama

2min
page 19

How to Interview Your Family by Elizabeth Keating

1min
page 21

Children of the Flood by Vann R. Newkirk II

1min
page 24

How To Be Authentic by Skye C. Cleary

2min
page 13

For the Culture by Marcus Collins

2min
page 14

Virtual You by Peter Coveney & Roger Highfield

2min
page 18

Untitled on Silicon Valley by Adam Becker

1min
page 12

Been There, Done That by Rachel Feltman

2min
page 15

Beyond the Hype by Fiona Fox

2min
page 17

Hijacked by Athena Aktipis

2min
page 11

Between Ape and Human by Gregory Forth

2min
page 16

How the Victorians Took Us to the Moon

2min
page 10

Spin by Roland Ennos

2min
page 6

Engineers of Human Souls by Simon Ings

2min
page 7

Borderline by Alexander Kriss

2min
page 9

Dead Minds by Jesse Bering

2min
page 4

Touchdown by Eric Berger

2min
page 3

The Beauty of Falling Claudia de Rham

2min
page 5

Six Things by Stephen Joseph

2min
page 8
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