British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering, and maths, taking place from 8-17 March 2024. This year British Science Week is marking its 30th anniversary, and this fantastic milestone inspired this year’s theme of ‘Time’.
Time is a paramount factor in the sciences; the evolution of the natural world, seasons and time zones, the studying of celestial bodies by physicists, and our entire lifecycles. Time is such an intrinsic part of our lives, one that humans have spent centuries mapping, studying, and thinking about.
Here are nine books for all ages that might help you to wrap your head around time and its impacts on our world.
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1. This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Two time-travelling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters - and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?
2. A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle
Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a “tesseract”, which, if you didn’t know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg’s father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?
3. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Was there a beginning of time? Could time run backwards? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? These are just some of the questions considered in the internationally acclaimed masterpiece by the world renowned physicist - generally considered to have been one of the world's greatest thinkers.
This book begins by reviewing the great theories of the cosmos from Newton to Einstein, before delving into the secrets which still lie at the heart of space and time, from the Big Bang to black holes, via spiral galaxies and strong theory. To this day A Brief History of Time remains a staple of the scientific canon and its succinct and clear language continues to introduce millions to the universe and its wonders.
4. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go."
When the Knight Bus crashes through the darkness and screeches to a halt in front of him, it's the start of another far from ordinary year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter. Sirius Black, escaped mass-murderer and follower of Lord Voldemort, is on the run - and they say he is coming after Harry. In his first ever Divination class, Professor Trelawney sees an omen of death in Harry's tea leaves.... But perhaps most terrifying of all are the Dementors patrolling the school grounds, with their soul-sucking kiss....
No spoilers, but it's fair to say that time plays an important role in the third Harry Potter book!
5. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: The Untold Story of a Lost World - Steve Brusatte
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a hugely ambitious and engrossing story of how dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet, written by one of the world's leading palaeontologists. Using fossil clues that have been discovered with state-of-the-art technology, Steve Brusatte traces these magnificent creatures from the Triassic period at the start of their evolution, through the Jurassic period, to their final catastrophic days in the Cretaceous and the legacy they left behind.
Along the way, Brusatte introduces a cast of new dinosaur hunters and gives an insight into what being a palaeontologist is really like. He offers thrilling accounts of some of the most remarkable discoveries he has made, including primitive, human-size tyrannosaurs, monstrous carnivores even larger than a T. rex, and feathered raptor dinosaurs from China buried in volcanic ash. At a time when Homo sapiens has existed for less than 200,000 years and we are already talking about planetary extinction, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs is a timely reminder of what humans can learn from the magnificent creatures who ruled the earth before us.
6. Flights of Fancy: Defying Gravity by Design and Evolution - Richard Dawkins
The wonder of flight. The science of evolution. From both, Richard Dawkins weaves a fascinating account of how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. Have you ever dreamt you could fly? Or imagined what it would be like to glide and swoop through the sky like a bird? Do you let your mind soar to unknown, magical spaces?
In Flights of Fancy, Richard Dawkins explains how nature and humans have learned to overcome the pull of gravity and take to the skies. From the mythical Icarus, to the sadly extinct but spectacular bird Argentavis magnificens, from the Wright flyer and the 747, to the Tinkerbella fairyfly and the Peregrine falcon. But it is also about flights of the mind, about escaping the everyday - through science, ideas and imagination.
7. Timekeepers - Simon Garfield
Timekeepers is a book about our obsession with time and our desire to measure it, control it, sell it, film it, perform it, immortalize it and make it meaningful. In this fascinating, anecdotal exploration, award-winning author Simon Garfield has two simple to tell some illuminating stories, and to ask whether we have all gone completely nuts.
Here, Garfield explores the nature of time through stories such as the Beatles learning to be brilliant in an hour and a half; an Englishman arriving back from Calcutta, refusing to adjust his watch; Beethoven’s symphonic wishes being ignored; a US Senator’s speech that goes for 25 hours; the horrors of war frozen at the click of a camera; a woman who designs a ten-hour clock and reinvents the calendar; Roger Bannister living out the same four minutes over a lifetime; and a who prince attempts to stop time in its tracks.
8. Time Travelling with a Hamster - Ross Welford
A story that crosses time and generations, for adventure-loving readers young and old. “My dad died twice. Once when he was thirty nine and again four years later when he was twelve.”
On Al Chaudhury’s twelfth birthday his beloved Grandpa Byron gives him a letter from Al’s late father. In it Al receives a mission: travel back to 1984 in a secret time machine and save his father’s life. Al soon discovers that time travel requires daring and imagination. It also requires lies, theft, setting his school on fire and ignoring philosophical advice from Grandpa Byron. All without losing his pet hamster, Alan Shearer…
Time Travelling With a Hamster is a funny, heart-warming race-against-time – and across generations – adventure that you will won’t be able to put down.
9. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Billy Pilgrim - hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier - has become unstuck in time.
Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, Billy finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out? Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency.
Want to find out more about British Science Week? Visit the official website here.
