The Physicist As Novelist

Alan Lightman is a science-guy who writes books. Good books. Full of science books. But not all science books.

Lightman’s early novel, Einstein’s Dreams, fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist troubled by dreams as he develops his theory of relativity. Each of the chapters represents one dream. Each dream focuses on a different concept of time. The dreams vary from reasonable, although exaggerated, representations of relativity to some highly imaginative fantasies, but they all demonstrate the relationship a human being has to time. Einstein’s Dreams won’t make you a physicist but it does represent a very interesting amalgam of science and literature. If you haven’t read it, please do.

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