Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Does this mean that corporations and chemicals companies are not re-
sponsible for the ailments that their products and by-products may induce
- that we are
all
somehow 'responsible' for them? Powers avoids that
kind of evasive, anodyne conclusion. For one thing, we cannot but feel
the injustice of Laura Bodey's fate. Moreover, corporate malpractice in
chemical companies unquestionably does occur, as the thalidomide and
Bhopal incidents reveal; and the public-relations blandishments of Clare,
regardless of whether or not the reader thinks their products have caused
Laura's cancer, are all too reminiscent of the responses to such cases. But
Gain
succeeds in showing how a simplistic 'little guy against big busi-
ness' narrative does us no favors either. And most of all, it illustrates the
error and indeed the danger of imagining that the hazards of chemical
manufacturing somehow stem from an intrinsic malignity within chemis-
try itself.
5. PortentousPolymers
If Richard Powers seems to have done his homework, that is because he
started it early. He says that as a child he always felt “destined to be a
scientist”, and he read Darwin's
Voyage of the Beagle
in fourth grade. He
began studying at the University of Illinois as a physics major, but then
switched to literature. He worked as a computer programmer after gradu-
ating, and continued to read about science. His other novels have also
explored scientific themes:
Prisoner's Dilemma
(1988), as the title sug-
gests, took in the game theory of nuclear conflict, while his most well-
known work,
The Gold Bug Variations
(1991) used metaphors from
genetics and computer science.
A similar background of scientific training informs
Gravity's Rain-
bow
, the topic that made Thomas Pynchon a cult figure. Pynchon is fa-
mously reclusive, to the extent that there are no publicity photographs of
him and the few facts that are known about his life have been gleaned
only through the detective work of his obsessively curious fans. He stud-
ied engineering physics at Cornell in the 1950s before serving in the
navy. He then returned to Cornell to study English, during which time he
was taught by Vladimir Nabokov. But like Powers, he returned to techni-
cal work before his writing career took off, and in the early 1960s he was
